German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer considered the scarcity of material goods and the emptiness of the spirit as the two greatest pains in life. This view coincides with that of Karl Marx, who also believed that the holistic abundance of material and spiritual aspects constitutes a free and comprehensive human development.
However, upon closer examination of this proposition, while the abundance of material possessions is relatively easy to quantify, how should the richness of the spirit be defined?
Ancient Chinese wisdom states, “When the granaries are full, people know courtesy; when they have enough clothing and food, they know honor and disgrace.” “Courtesy” refers to behavior and etiquette, while “honor and disgrace” symbolize moral concepts. Naturally, both are essential elements of spiritual civilization, but people’s pursuit and aspirations nowadays clearly go beyond these factors.
Within the country as a whole, a city’s pioneering efforts have caught our attention:
In 2017, Huzhou was ranked 7th in the list of National Civilized Cities.
In 2020, Huzhou became the first city in the country and the first at the provincial level to achieve the “All Red” status of National Civilized City at both the municipal and county levels. It also passed the re-evaluation as the top-ranked prefecture-level city in the country.
In 2022, the urban-rural income ratio in Huzhou narrowed to 1.61, and it was designated as one of the first pilot areas for “narrowing the urban-rural gap” in the construction of high-quality development and shared prosperity in Zhejiang Province.
With balanced economic development and leading civilizational construction, Huzhou has become an ideal space for studying the practical implementation of spiritual abundance within a city. On May 15th, the “Seminar on Exploring Spiritual Abundance in City Domains” will be held on the southern shore of Taihu Lake, co-hosted by the Party Building Magazine, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, the Zhejiang Provincial Federation of Social Sciences, and the CPC Huzhou Municipal Committee.
The path to spiritual abundance in this city is worthy of our exploration.
