Welcome Letter

May 1, 2007

    Dear Colleagues:

    As you may already know, the 16th Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) will be held from July 15th to 23rd in 2008 in the city of Kunming in southwest China. The congress’s theme -“Humanity, Development & Cultural Diversity”- was proposed by Chinese scholars and approved by IUAES in 2003. As organized around this theme, the congress is being designed to address multidisciplinary issues within the broadly defined fields of anthropology and ethnology. The central site for our congress will be the campus of Yunnan University where conference facilities are being upgraded to meet our needs.

    Kunming is the capital of Yunnan province where the climate in summer is mild, averaging at 15 to 25 Centigrade. The central conference site at Yunnan University has very ease access to 10 hotels nearby, all of which have been designated by the city government of Kunming for the lodging of our congress’s participants. These hotels are within a 10-15 minutes of walk to and from our main conference site. We should mention that the Kunming International Airport is connected by 90 international and domestic flights. But given that our congress will be held two weeks prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, we strongly recommend participants from overseas get to Kunming directly or via Shanghai and Hong Kong instead of Beijing. The specific reason for avoiding Beijing in planning your trips is that we anticipate air travel restrictions to Beijing prior to the Olympic Games. To facilitate your arrival in Kunming, we will set up information desks at the Kunming International Airport and the Kunming Railway Station. All the information desks will be staffed by English-speaking volunteers to help you find transportation to your hotels.

    Information on academic activities being planned for this congress can be found at www.icaes2008.org. Information about hotel reservations will be announced at later date. At the present, our main task is calling for submissions of proposals to organize academic sessions. Once we have a list of international participants coming to this congress, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs will send it to Chinese embassies all over the world so as to facilitate visa applications by overseas scholars and students. All international or domestic participants need to register prior to the registration deadline of our congress or pay a late registration fee on site. Please check our website at www.icaes2008.org if you need more information on registration.

Best regards,

Li Dezhu
Honorary Chairperson
Chinese Preparatory Committee of the 16th Congress of IUAES