It doesn’t make much sense to me to interpret “culture” as exclusively “high culture.” We didn’t have any of the “high” stuff for 10,000 years but we certainly had our songs and poetry. What does this “high” mean? Are the books, CDs or DVDs on the top shelf of the library? All modern nations have many “cultures” and Estonia is no exception. We have traditional culture (folk song, dance and costume), our culture of learning (our 589 schools, 28 institutes of vocational learning, five universities, 250 museums, hobby clubs, the Academy of Science), our on-line virtual culture nurtured by the ambitious “Tiger Leap” policy (Estonians are the most active users of computers in the EU), our business culture (that, whatever your view, has an excellent international reputation), our political culture (pass on quickly), our oral, literary, musical, cinematic and theatrical culture, our painting, sculpture and architecture, our sports, our culinary culture and the ethnic minority cultures that we play host too. What a rich heritage!
Connections between the second Republic of Estonia and the People’s Republic of China stretch back 20 years. We have co-operation agreements on science and technology, trade, culture, education, taxation, business and transport. Estonia celebrates Chinese New Year (my student’s particularly liked the Chinese ice sculptures in Tallinn and Tartu). The former captain of the Estonian national football team (Raio Piiroja) now plays for Chengdu Blades in southwest China. Children’s choirs from Saku and Tianjin (in northern China) have exchanged visits, Chinese films and music are seen and heard here and there’s been an Estonian film festival in Shanghai.
The Shanghai students were puzzled about our past and asked why different rulers had occupied us for centuries. It’s not as if Estonia is crammed with gold mines, has fabulously productive farmlands or is drenched in perpetual sunshine. I had hoped to skim over our horrible history by indicating that the area of modern “Estonia” has been populated since the end of the last Ice Age (about 10,000 BC) and that a mere 700 years (6% of the time) has been spent as imperial colonies. This did not work. The students were far too smart. Hmm. I called a quick coffee break and consulted my teaching material. The answer turned out to be simple. Using a toy sword purchased for my seven year old cousin’s birthday (that just happened to be in my bag) as a pointer and a projected map of the world, I was able to show that Estonia, since the rise of the Hanseatic League and the City of Novgorod has always been on the way to somewhere else stuffed with goodies. The Germans wanted the road to Novgorod (the junction between the “road from the Vikings to the Greeks” and the Silk Road to, yes, China!). Peter the Great wanted his “window to the west” in order to drag Russia, kicking and screaming, into the 17th century.
My second encounter with the big wide world took place back in Tartu at the Alexei Mishin Summer Skating School show at Lõunakeskus ice rink. I like ice skating because 1) it’s first cousin to ballet and 2) I admire people who can do things that I can’t. Even if I was able to keep upright I have visions of myself gliding across the rink to crash into the Maxilla sign on the barrier ... Alexei Mishin is a Russian figure skating coach who was Soviet champion and a World silver medallist (both wins with Tamara Moskvina) in 1969. He’s trained, among a host of successful skaters, Swiss world champions Stéphane Lambiel and Sarah Meier. This year, at Lõunakeskus, Swiss skaters performed alongside youngsters from Latvia, South Africa, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Estonia, Serbia, Russia, The Netherlands, France and Belgium. The youngest was a little girl aged 3 who even the waitresses and shop assistants stopped to cheer on. The standard was excellent and no doubt the world will hear of young talent first seen in Tartu …
I leave you (striking a presidential pose while an unimpressed kass Jelli sleeps on in the summer sun) with a paraphrase of one of our greatest cultural figures, Gustav Suits – “Let us be Estonians but let us also be citizens of the world!”
(First appeared in Estonian in [i]Maaleht