The Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 changed the trajectory of many people's lives, including mine. I was attending an academic conference in Hong Kong when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred. At that time, I tried to go to the Wenchuan earthquake stricken area, but due to various reasons, I was unable to make it. I first came to the Wenchuan earthquake stricken area for scientific research in 2009, and since then, I have formed an inseparable bond with this place. I still remember the first time I arrived in Wenchuan. At first, I was shocked by the extent of damage in the earthquake stricken area, and the landslide almost stripped away the hillside. What impressed me even more was the efficiency of post disaster reconstruction carried out by the Chinese government and relevant institutions. Despite facing extremely harsh conditions, including geological disasters such as mudslides and landslides, almost everything in the area was rebuilt in a short period of time. Since then, I have visited the Wenchuan earthquake stricken area almost every year and found that towns and villages have been restored with astonishing efficiency. The post disaster reconstruction here is not a uniform use of "standard concrete buildings" to provide people with housing. During the reconstruction, each town and even village preserved its own characteristics. The Wenchuan earthquake has intensified local mudslides and landslides, and the collapse of dams can cause flash floods and mudslides that directly inundate residential areas, with water levels even reaching the third floor of buildings. People clean up the accumulated sediment and stones, build protective facilities, and continue to live there. This is amazing. The tens of thousands of landslides left behind by the Wenchuan earthquake have made the Wenchuan earthquake area a "natural laboratory" for studying geological hazards caused by strong earthquakes. To help more scholars around the world understand the prevention and control of large-scale landslides and subsequent disasters, I established the International Large Landslide Research Association with experts from China, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Japan and other countries and regions at the National Key Laboratory of Geological Disaster Prevention and Environmental Protection at Chengdu University of Technology. Why should we focus on large landslides? This is because, although any landslide poses a threat to the location, large landslides can cause extremely serious disasters. Large landslides can spread for several kilometers from the bottom of mountain slopes, with an impact range of tens or even hundreds of square kilometers, and can also cause barrier lakes. Once a barrier lake breaches, the disaster it causes may be even more severe than a large landslide itself. Since 2016, the International Landslide Research Association (iRALL) has been organizing annual public welfare international doctoral training courses, inviting doctoral students from around the world to come to China for practical learning. Currently, over 9000 international doctoral students from more than 20 countries and regions around the world have participated in this training program. The training course is mainly held in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Sichuan Province. Beichuan suffered heavy damage in the Wenchuan earthquake. Doctoral students from all over the world can not only see the tragic traces left by this natural disaster here, but also witness the great efforts made by the Chinese people to restore the affected areas and put life back on track. They learned different methods of identifying large landslides in the field using various remote sensing data in the Wenchuan earthquake area. Some methods can not only be used for landslide research, but also applied to a wider range of fields. In these 17 years, we have indeed seen significant progress made by Chinese researchers in understanding the causes and mechanisms of natural disasters, including the disaster chain. China's disaster prevention and reduction achievements benefit the world. One of my purposes for coming to Sichuan this time is to promote joint research and development between Russian and Chinese researchers in the field of disaster prevention and control. Accurately distinguishing between earthquake induced and non earthquake induced landslides is one of the most challenging issues in geological hazard research. Normally, people classify any large landslide with unknown causes as earthquake induced, but this assumption is more subjective than scientific judgment. Whether this judgment is correct or not will greatly affect the accuracy of geological hazard assessment. In response to this challenge, researchers from Russia and China have chosen two regions with significant differences in geological conditions for research, namely the Longmen Mountain Fault Zone in China and the Caucasus Mountains in Russia. We have just started this work, hoping that the research results can be applied to mountainous areas with similar geological conditions worldwide, and help with global disaster prevention and reduction. I want to say to my Chinese colleagues and global partners: the Wenchuan earthquake, which reshaped the landscape of Sichuan, also changed our perception of global risks. Geological disasters have no borders. In the era of climate change, disasters caused by earthquakes are becoming increasingly difficult to predict. Working together between the East and the West is not only beneficial, but also crucial for life and death. The restoration and reconstruction of Wenchuan demonstrates what results can be achieved when science and governance work together. Now, we must promote this cooperation globally because the next major disaster could happen anywhere and the whole world needs to be prepared. Interviewee profile: Alexander? Alexander Strom is the Chief Expert of the Russian Geodynamics Research Center, an internationally renowned expert in the field of large-scale catastrophic landslides, and an editorial board member of the international academic journal Landslides. He has rich experience in the fields of major landslide mechanisms, landslide dams, active faults, neotectonic movements, earthquake structures, engineering geological remote sensing technology applications, paleoseismology, etc. He has established a global database on surface rupture caused by earthquakes (including more than 300 earthquake event parameters) and compiled a database of major rock slides in Central Asia (about 1000 cases). He translated and published the second edition of "Paleoseismology" in Russian, as well as "Rock Slip and Collapse in Central Asia".