MoscowCongress
A Grassroots Surgeon Bound for Moscow: April 2023 and the First Keynote by a Chinese Practicing Veterinarian
In the spring of 2023, a long-delayed envelope arrived that marked a quiet historical threshold for Chinese veterinary medicine: an official invitation to deliver a keynote on canine total hip replacement at the Russian International Veterinary Congress in Moscow. The trip had been frozen for two years during the pandemic, but in April 2023, the flight path was cleared. Standing as the first practicing small animal orthopedic clinician from mainland China invited to address their assembly, I packed my slides with one mission: to showcase the raw surgical caliber and objective data of China's frontline practitioners. As for delivering a complex orthopedic lecture entirely in English? I shrugged and laughed: "Giving the talk is my job; whether they can follow my English is entirely their problem!"
Snow in Moscow, Sparks on the Podium: Keynote Reflections from the Russian Veterinary Congress
Back in December 2024, I traveled across Eurasia to the snow-blanketed capital of Russia with a focused academic mission: presenting seven years of clinical breakthroughs in canine knee reconstruction to our international colleagues. At the Partners Science Forum Annual Veterinary Congress in Moscow, I shared our Chinese surgical protocols and biological total knee arthroplasty (TKA) data with hundreds of Russian practitioners. The congress concluded with an unexpected and humbling honor: being presented with the Professional Excellence Award for surgical breakthroughs—an accolade I joked that I hadn't even achieved back home in China. But beyond the standing ovations and heated biomechanical debates, what anchored this journey in my heart was something purely personal: as a surgeon born and raised in subtropical Guangzhou, this trip was the very first time in my entire life that I saw falling snow.