In order to help the 2021 freshmen to better adapt to the school life in the Silk Road School, promote contacts among freshmen, and enhance the unity and cohesion of the Silk Road School members, the Silk Road School held an online orientation meeting for 2021 freshmen on the afternoon of September 9th. Professor Jiang Xiaoli, theDeputyDean forSilk Road School, Dr. Zhu Fengyu,the Director of Teaching and Student Affairs Department of Silk Road School, Zheng Lu, the assistant for student affairsof Silk Road School, and all 2021 freshmen attended the meeting.

On behalf of the Silk Road School, Jiang Xiaoli extended warm welcome to all the freshmen and congratulated them on being part of the international community. Leveraging RUC’s academic advantages in the field of humanities and social sciences besides the international education experience, the Silk Road School has offered a series of high-quality courses centered on the four topics-- Chinese politics, China's economy, China's law, and Chinese culture. Excellent Courses like Chinastudies, Belt and Road Initiative studies,China's national conditions and development studies etc. have been offered. Famous experts and scholars are invited to the classroom to share academic views with the students. At the same time, the schoolprovides students with a series of carefully designed study courses, academic conferences, cultural experience and other activities to understand the real, three-dimensional and comprehensive China. Since its establishment three years ago, the school has attracted more than 200 excellent students from 60 countries around the world, and nearly 100 Silk Road graduates have gone all over the world, becoming elites in the fields of politics, economy, culture, education and so on. Jiang Xiaoli pointed out that the Silk Road School is not only a high-quality platform to promote all-round developmentof everyone, but also a window to help students understand China. She hopes that the freshmen can continue the glorious tradition, cherish their study time in the Suzhou, cultivate first-class knowledge, and strive to become international compound high-end talents and future elite leaders who love Chinese culture and deeply understand China's development path, development modelas well as the development experience.

At the meeting, Zhu Fengyugave a detailed introduction to the degree requirements, curriculum arrangement, the forms of professional lectures and seminars, evaluation and other contents of the Silk Road School, with emphasis on attendance and discipline requirements. She hopes that the freshmen can earnestly study their professional knowledge, complete the course tasks with quality and quantity, complete the required credits on time, actively integrate into the collective life, deeply experience Chinese culture. She also expected students to become wise people who understand China, scholars who study China and messengers who introduce China.

At the last part of the meeting, Jiang Xiaoli, a teacher of the campus library, briefly introduced the general situation of the library in Suzhou campus, the process to inquiry and borrow paper resources, reader service and use rules for freshmen. In order to better help freshmen who are unable to enter China due to the epidemic to acquire the latest online academic information, Jiang Xiaolishowed the studentsexamples of how to obtain online collections of English resources and how to use the Belt and Road Initiative Collection,etc. This introduction provided students with an effective approach to obtain online academic resources in their later study.

Start a new journey and be determined to strive for a new one. I believe that in the near future, more "China Masters" and "Silk Road Envoys" will set sail from the Silk Road School。As the "Marco Polo" of the new era,they will bring China's development experience and the deep friendship of the Chinese people to the world.

Written byHe Chunjie

Translated by Li Ting