YOZA SURYAWAN, an 80-year-old Chinese-Indonesian publisher, tried hard to hold his sobs when accepting the 2013 Special Book Award in Beijing.

    The prize was awarded by China’s General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to honor Suryawan’s persistent effort in promoting Chinese language and culture through publication and education.

    No one knows more about the longing for their mother culture in time of suppression than Suryawan himself, and about how much courage and faith is required to make one move on.

    “I love the land of Indonesia, but I also love the profundity of Chinese culture. So I firmly believe it’s necessary for the Indonesian people to read, learn, and understand China,” he says in a shaky voice, but with a gentle and confirmed tone.

    A second-generation Chinese immigrant in Indonesia from Guangdong Province, Suryawan has tasted the delight of spreading Chinese culture through books as well as the hardships when his home language was prohibited from appearing in the public domain from 1965 to 1998 in Indonesia.

    “The lifelong love I have for the Chinese language started from childhood days of reading little comic-strip books that the adults sneaked in from boat trips,” Suryawan says.

    Also winning a 2013 Special Book Award were American scholar Ezra Vogel, Italian Sinologist Lionello Lanciotti, Argentinean writer Jorge E. Malena, Egyptian translator Mohsen Fergani and Swedish translator Anna Gustafsson Chen.

    Since the first award in 2005, a total of 33 foreign translators, writers and publishers from 14 countries have been honored for their contribution to promoting Chinese culture to the world.

    The 83-year-old Vogel, whose work “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China” is a recent best seller in China, says: “I have been studying China for half a century ... I wrote in English for an American audience. It is a special honor to know that Chinese friends feel that my book has also contributed to the Chinese people’s understanding of Deng and his era.”(SD-Agencies)