The opening ceremony of the Symposium was graced by the presence of Prof. Alan K.L. Chan, Provost of CUHK, who delivered the opening address. Prof. Tang Sze Wing, Director of CLRC, delivered the welcoming address. The seven keynote speakers were from China, Finland, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, and the United States, namely Prof. Benjamin Brosig (Nazarbayev University), Prof. Hilary Chappell (École des hautes études en sciences sociales/CUHK), Prof. Yen-hui Audrey Li (University of Southern California), Dr. Erika Sandman (Helsinki University), Prof. Shuangcheng Wang (Shanghai Normal University), Prof. Dan Xu (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), and Prof. Yonglong Yang (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences).

The Symposium featured four parallel sessions, where over forty scholars shared their research and insights on topics such as phonology, lexicology, grammar, sociolinguistics, and language contact. The presentations sparked lively discussions among participants. The presenters demonstrated a diverse representation, including France, Japan, Morocco, and a wide range of provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and a special administrative region of China, namely Beijing, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Henan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.

This Symposium built on the success of the Maritime Silk Road Suite, the first international linguistics event devoted to the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road under the Belt and Road Initiative, which was organized by CLRC in 2017. According to Prof. Tang, the previous event focused on the Maritime Silk Road and the current Symposium covering the Silk Road Economic Belt together provide a complete picture of the linguistic research along the Belt and Road routes. He hoped that these events could serve as a platform to boost the visibilities of the findings on language phenomena in specific regions, enhance exchanges in relevant studies, and broaden the academic community’s understanding of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The International Symposium on Silk Road Linguistics, sponsored by the CUHK Research Summit Series, is one of the academic events celebrating the 60th anniversary of CUHK.