Ten influential Chinese are honored at an event for Chinese Culture Figures of 2015. They include Peking Opera performer Wang Peiyu (left) and artist Yan An (right).[Photo provided to China Daily]

A Nobel laureate and a Peking Opera performer are among those honored for their roles in promoting Chinese culture at an annual program that is jointly hosted by a government body and a TV station.

Ten influential Chinese, known for their achievements in promoting Chinese culture in 2015, were honored for their efforts recently.

The winners include a Nobel laureate and a Peking Opera performer.

The Chinese Culture Figures of 2015 event at which they were honored is an annual show organized by the Chinese Culture Promotion Society and Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.

The event, which was started in 2009, has feted nearly 100 celebrities in the past few years.

The awards ceremony was held on Jan 6 in Xi'an city, the home of the world-famous Terracotta Warriors in Northwest China.

Zhou Gongxin, the former curator of Taipei's Palace Museum, was recognized for her contributions in boosting joint exhibitions across the Taiwan Straits.

She was behind two milestone shows－the 2009 Taipei Palace Museum's exhibition to showcase emperor Yongzheng (who reigned from 1723 to 1735) and the sensational 2011 reunion of the two halves of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) painting, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, after a 360-year separation.

While the former event saw the lending of 37 treasured antiques－one-third of them until then to be publicly displayed on the Chinese mainland－from Beijing's Palace Museum, the latter led to the display of ancient China's most recognized landscape painting in full.

The two halves of the painting are with Taipei's Palace Museum and the Zhejiang Provincial Museum.

Zhou was the driving force behind the two landmark exhibitions.

A series of other influential shows, besides the two big events, were also held during her tenure.

"The value of the exhibitions is to let viewers gain complete knowledge of the history and culture of the time," Zhou tells China Daily.

Zhou is now in charge of developing an online game to attract teenagers to learn about tradition and culture.

Coincidently, a big name from the Palace Museum in Beijing also made it to the list of awardees.

Shan Qixiang, the director of the museum, visited 32 departments of the museum and checked more than 9,000 rooms in the Forbidden City in a month after he took office in 2012.