The good integration of eastern and western cultures is the only way to true peace.

Qi Xin is 68 years old. Since the 1980s she has been leading, providing guidance, organizing and planning, and participating in most of the archaeological excavations in the Beijing area. Her research unfolds the historic process of cultural integration among the Han and the few ethnic groups from Northern China.

Qi Xin has been working in the Beijing Cultural Relics Establishment since she graduated from Beijing University in 1961. Through archaeological excavations, data processing, and multi-disciplinary integrative research, Qi Xin discovered that cultural integration and exchange between the Hu and Han ethnic groups occurred in three areas - West Liao River and Yongding River basins, North Shanxi Province, and north of the Yellow River. Qin’s archaeological findings prove that Beijing culture carries both central China culture and minority culture of ethnic groups from the northern China grasslands. China experienced a boom in the real estate industry recently and Qi Xin has called for cultural relics surveys to be carried out before any construction project can begin; she believes that Beijing is full of underground treasures. She and her colleagues actively undertake cultural relics excavation projects often rescuing and protecting cultural relics found in construction sites. However, more often they have to do excavations passively. As member of Standing Committee, Beijing Municipal People's Congress and the support of representatives, Qi Xin saw the endorsement of the regulations that stipulate that surveys for cultural relics must be made before construction projects are to begin. In Beijing today, the cultural relics department surveys and excavates before the construction of highways, gas pipelines, etc.