The radiance of Hehe culture transcends mountains and seas

Taizhou, located in eastern Zhejiang Province, gleams like a pearl on China's shoreline facing the western Pacific. The majestic Tiantai Mountains and the expansive East China Sea converge here, nurturing a profound cultural heritage - the Hehe culture.

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Taizhou, tucked away in eastern Zhejiang Province, gleams like a pearl on China's shoreline facing the western Pacific.

The majestic Tiantai Mountains and the expansive East China Sea converge here, nurturing a profound cultural heritage - the Hehe culture - through their unique mountain-and-sea landscape. This civilizational gene, a distinctive Oriental wisdom nurtured between mountains and seas, has endured for millennia.

In Taizhou you will often meet the "Two Immortals of Harmony." One fairy greets you with a lotus flower, the other with a round gift-box; both have chubby, good-natured faces that make everyone smile. The words "lotus" (hé) and "box" (hé) sound exactly like the word for "harmony" (hé), so the picture has become a visual wish for happy marriages and peaceful families. Chinese folk traditions have long revered these two cheerful gods named after "Hehe", yet the idea of "Hehe" stretches far beyond matchmaking. So what has "Hehe" actually meant across China's long history?

Shi Bo, a thinker in the late Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771BC), was the first to make a systematic theoretical exposition of He (harmony) culture. Based on the theory of the harmony of the five elements, he not only defined the concept of "harmony" but also put forward the viewpoint that "harmony generates life, while uniformity stifles progress," laying the foundation for the Chinese Hehe culture.

During the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC), the terms "he" (harmony) and "he" (integration) evolved from single concepts into the combined term "Hehe" (harmony and integration). Its connotations continuously deepened while its scope of application gradually expanded, eventually accumulating into a cultural spirit that values harmony, inclusiveness, and balance.