Today both Chinese people and those enthusiastic about the culture celebrate UN Chinese Language Day. The event was established by the UN Department of Public Information in 2010, seeking to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six of its official working languages throughout the organization.

When speaking of the Chinese language more often than not we use the superlative most. This is the most spoken modern language; the total number of its speakers surpasses 1.3 billion people. This is one of the most ancient languages on the Earth – according to old legends, the Chinese writing system was created by the court historian of the emperor several thousand years ago. In addition, the Chinese language is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn – the most complete dictionary of hieroglyphs contains more than eighty thousand hieroglyphs, and there are as many as 10 dialectic groups in this language.

However, Krasnoyarsk residents did not avoid the complexity of the Chinese language. In fact, Krasnoyarsk first implemented Chinese in higher education institutions back in the 90s. And since 2019, several Krasnoyarsk schools introduced the Chinese language into the general education programme as a second foreign language.

China is the first country with which municipalities Krasnoyarsk began its international cooperation. It is in this country that our city has the most sister cities: Heihe (1999), Daqing (2002), Harbin (2003), Qiqihar (2005), Changchun (2014) and Manchuria ( 2017).

For Krasnoyarsk, China is a special strategic partner. We maintain good relationships with the cities and actively realize shared projects in various fields. For example, this year Chinese sculptors decorated our city with their ice and snow works of art as part of the VIII Open Festival-Competition Magic Ice of Siberia. Besides, the cities of China annually participate in the International Charity Festival of Creativity ?Children to Children.

Congratulations to all the residents of our sister cities in China on this amazing holiday! We sincerely hope to continue our friendly cooperation in the foreseeable future!