On the eve of Golden Week, after returning to my family home in Tai'an from university, I received a call from my father.

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'I met a Japanese traveler on the Shinkansen heading to Tai'an. He seems to want to climb Mount Tai alone. Since you major in Japanese, would you like to interact with him if you have the chance?' My heart pounded at my father's words. Although I usually had opportunities to speak with Japanese teachers at school, this was my first time interacting with an unfamiliar Japanese person.

'Yes, sure,' I replied.

And so, I became WeChat friends with Mr. Yoshimi, a Japanese man. Mr. Yoshimi told me that his planned Chinese friend couldn't come due to a sudden illness, and he was having trouble with his Mount Tai sightseeing. He invited me, saying, 'If you have time, would you like to climb the mountain together?' I gladly accepted. We made a plan to meet at the foot of the mountain the next morning.

That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about it—I was going to climb Mount Tai with a stranger. It might be a little rude, but when I searched for Mr. Yoshimi online, I found a video of him participating in the Chinese Corner/Japanese Corner at Tokyo's Nishi-Ikebukuro Park. What surprised me even more was that I had seen that video before and had thought, 'If I go to Tokyo, I want to participate!' I felt it was a strange twist of fate to have such a coincidence.

However, upon further thought, I became a little anxious. I was just a university student who had only studied Japanese for two years. While I could manage reading and writing, listening and speaking were my weaknesses. I had never been to Japan, and my only experience speaking with Japanese people was with two Japanese teachers at school. Would I really be able to converse well? But that anxiety quickly disappeared. As a resident of Tai'an, it was my role to introduce Mount Tai to a foreigner. I remembered my Japanese teacher's words.

'Words are not tools, they are bridges. True communication requires courage more than perfect grammar.'

At the entrance of Mount Tai, I met Mr. Yoshimi in person. He looked much more energetic than he did in the video, and he smiled gently when he saw me. 'Hello! Nice to meet you...' We bowed to each other nervously, and our journey to Mount Tai began.

It was probably the most concentrated day I had ever spent using Japanese in my life. I struggled to keep the conversation going the entire way, but my grammar was muddled and I couldn't organize it well; I could only string words together in fragments. Even honorifics that I could use during regular exams somehow failed to form proper conversations when spoken in front of a Japanese person. Sometimes, when he spoke quickly, I couldn't understand what he was saying at all.

Yet, strangely, Mr. Yoshimi and I discussed various topics, such as cultural comparisons between China and Japan, school life, and interesting travel anecdotes. Every time we passed a tourist spot, I explained as much as I could with the Japanese I knew. Even though I often relied on a translation app due to a lack of words, Mr. Yoshimi never interrupted me and waited patiently for me to finish speaking haltingly before giving a thoughtful reply.

When I brought up the Chinese Corner/Japanese Corner at Nishi-Ikebukuro Park, Mr. Yoshimi happily pulled a plastic ruler from his backpack—it was exactly what I had seen in that video, printed with the Chinese Corner/Japanese Corner logo. What I had seen on a screen was now right in my hands.

Even if words aren't perfect, sincerity can overcome barriers. This small ruler cannot measure the distance between Tokyo and Tai'an, but embedded within it is the bond of China-Japan grassroots exchange—just as the steles of Mount Tai have withstood a thousand years of wind and rain and remain vivid, the Chinese Corner in Tokyo continues to foster exchanges that do not fade with the years.

Cultural exchange begins with such small triggers. A single ruler, a simple 'hello,' and the courage to open one's heart—when these accumulate, the language barrier disappears. Words may have borders, but hearts have none. If we bravely take a step forward and sincerely connect our hearts, we can overcome any distance, no matter how far.

■Original Title: A One-Day Bond Forged on Mount Tai

■Author: Wang Xinyi (Qilu University of Technology)

*This text is reprinted and edited from 'New Japan-China Exchange Born from "Oshikatsu"' (edited by Duan Yuezhong, Japan-China Publishing Co., 2025), a collection of winning works from the 21st Chinese Japanese Essay Contest. The expressions in the text are basically as they appeared in the original. The essay is published with the permission of Japan-China Publishing Co.