Seashell echoes poet's ties to China

"The Chinese are among the people in the world who smile the most," Neruda, who may be Chile's most famous poet, wrote in his memoir, I Confess I Have Lived, published in 1974, a year after his death.

The gift of the seashell in the early 1950s tied the visiting Latin American poet to a newly founded country. Renzo Soto, a historian and retired professor of the University of Chile, told China Daily that Neruda was part of a small but active group of Chilean writers and artists drawn to China well before embassies and official visits became routine.

"I don't know how widely his visits to China are discussed. Several Chilean authors and artists visited China before the formal establishment of diplomatic relations in 1970," Soto says.

"In the 1950s it was Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Jose Venturelli, and Gonzalo Rojas," Soto says.

The list spans different art forms and temperaments. De Rokha was a major poet with fierce political views. Venturelli was a painter and activist with long ties to China. Rojas became one of Chile's leading poets. Each, in different ways, helped build early cultural contact.