Yesterday, October 9, the Institute of International Relations, History and Oriental Studies hosted the opening ceremony for the International Scientific Conference “Russia-China: History and Culture”.

The organizers said that 2014 edition of the conference sparked great interest among scientists and gathered experts from all over the globe – Europe, North America, the Far and Near East.

The conference suggests a wide range of discussions on philology and Chinese teaching, Russian and Chinese relations, international policy of People's Republic of China, history, Chinese philosophy and culture. There will also be a young sinologist section.

The opening ceremony was kicked off by the welcoming speech of Linar Latypov, KFU Vice-Rector for International Relations, who emphasized the significance of the event devoted to the 210th anniversary of Kazan University and spoke on the history of the Kazan school for oriental studies.

Yang Xiaoyun, Vice-Rector of Hunan University, took the floor: “It is great honour for me to be here in the ancient city of Kazan and in Kazan Federal University. Great people – Leo Tolstoy, Nikolay Lobachevsky, and Vladimir Ulyanov – who studied at your university, played a significant role in the world history”.  Yang Xiaoyun reminded that the Confucius Institute had been opened in KFU in 2007 and expressed his hope that the relations between the two universities would deepen in the future.

The Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations, History and Oriental Studies Valery Letyaev greeted the participants of the conference stating that the number of Chinese tourist in Kazan and Russian eager to learn Chinese had recently grown. “Over 1 thousand people study the language at the Institute of Confucius. We hope that we will increase the number of Chinese teachers to meet the growing students' interest towards this language. The KFU Rector suggested to expand the cooperation with China to other divisions of the university, natural sciences, in particular”, he said.

The last but not least was Li Miao, the Director of the Confucius Institute at KFU, who addressed to the attendees, “I am happy to see people from across the world. We should stay unique but be together”.