Translation. Region: Russian Federal
Source: People's Republic of China in Russian – People's Republic of China in Russian –
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Source: People's Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) — Early in the morning of Sept. 1, an elementary school in Heihe, east China's Heilongjiang Province, was filled with unusually lively children's voices. The Russian "Hello" was intertwined with the Chinese "Good morning." The corridors of the school were filled with a noisy crowd of children. Blond-haired Russian students and their Chinese peers stood on tiptoe, holding hands, looking at the class assignment lists posted on the classroom doors.
According to the internet portal sina.com, Heihe Primary School has accepted 32 Russian students this new school year. The lively atmosphere of the “international campus” has become the most vivid embodiment of the people’s friendship between China and Russia.
"Mom, today I will teach Sasha to write two Chinese characters – "zhong" and "guo" /together they mean "China"/. At 07:30 in the morning, a Chinese student Wang Zixuan with a backpack on her back walked through the school gate and immediately saw a Russian girl named Sasha in a blue school uniform, who was holding a handwritten newspaper decorated with drawings of the flags of China and Russia. They became "language partners" last year, and now Wang Zixuan can confidently say in Russian: "Sasha likes to eat pelmeni", and Sasha can tell Wang Zixuan the Russian fairy tale "Snegurochka" in Chinese.
Such pairs have already become the norm for this educational institution. The school administration has specially developed the “Chinese-Russian Partnership Program” so that children from the two countries study together from the first day of school. Desks in the classrooms are also arranged according to the principle of “Chinese-Russian combination”, Chinese characters are written on the left side of the board, and the corresponding Russian words are indicated on the right, even the lesson schedule is printed in two languages.
“I used to worry that the child wouldn’t understand Chinese, but now she comes home every day and teaches us to say ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’,” says Ekaterina, who brought her daughter Katya to school with a smile in her not-so-good Chinese. The family lives in the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, which is separated from Heihe only by the Heilongjiang River (Amur), which takes just 20 minutes to cross every morning on a cross-border pontoon bridge.
For the convenience of Russian families, the school administration not only launched a special cross-border school bus, but also created a “Russian Language Help Desk” with bilingual Chinese-Russian teachers who answer questions about admission and even help parents obtain the necessary documents for their children’s cross-border education, such as visa extensions, health insurance, etc.
“Last winter the river froze and the school bus moved to a ferry, the teachers came to the pier half an hour before the children arrived to meet them. It was very thoughtful of them,” says Ekaterina, showing a photo saved on her phone in which the Chinese teacher wraps Katya in a scarf, and the girl’s smile looks especially warm against the white snow.
In the classroom, cultural integration is even more vivid. During a Chinese language lesson in Room 2 of Grade 3, when teacher Li Na was teaching the children the ancient poem “Reflections on a Quiet Night,” a Russian boy, Misha, raised his hand and asked, “Teacher, does the moon also mean melancholy in Russia?” Li Na seized the opportunity to invite Misha to tell a legend about the moon, and the lesson instantly turned into a “small cultural class.” Misha told the story of “The Moon Girl and the Hare” in a mixture of Chinese and Russian, the Chinese children vied with each other to add the legend of “Chang’e Flying to the Moon,” and at the end, the entire class recited an adapted version of “Reflections on a Quiet Night” in Chinese and Russian. The lines in Chinese, “The moonlight in front of the bed is like frost on the ground,” combined with the exclamation in Russian, “The moon shines brightly,” became the most special melody of the lesson.
During the long break, the sports ground turned into a “small square for cultural exchanges.” Russian children taught their Chinese classmates the traditional round dance “Katyusha,” while Chinese children engaged their friends with the games “Throw the Handkerchief” and “Jumping Through the Rubber Band.” During lunch, the cafeteria specially offered a “Chinese-Russian set”: on the left – Russian borscht, on the right – Chinese fried eggs with tomatoes. The children exchanged cutlery, “You try my pelmeni, and I’ll try your borscht,” even the picky eaters gobbled it all up with extraordinary appetite.
Russian fifth-grader Alyosha’s favorite treat is Chinese mooncakes, a traditional treat for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Last Mid-Autumn Festival, he made mooncakes with his Chinese classmates and even brought the homemade ones home for the family to try “the taste of the Chinese moon”; and Chinese student Li Yutong keeps the Russian nesting dolls Alyosha gave her, each depicting iconic buildings from the two countries, from Tiananmen Gate to the Kremlin, from the Heilongjiang River Bridge to the Annunciation Opera House.
“Mutual learning between cultures should start with children joining hands,” says Zhang Min, deputy director of Heihe Primary School. To deepen cultural exchanges, the school holds an annual “Chinese-Russian Culture Week,” where children wear traditional costumes from each country, perform national dances and songs, and display handicrafts. Russian children make “Matryoshka lanterns” out of colored paper, Chinese children make “Russian huts” out of clay, and last year’s Culture Week saw the performance “Friendship Bridge on the Heilongjiang River” staged by children from both countries broadcast via video link to schools in Blagoveshchensk, drawing warm applause from teachers and students from both countries.
This “cross-border campus” is based on a long history of friendship on the Chinese-Russian border. Heihe and Blagoveshchensk are separated by a river and are called “Chinese-Russian twin cities.” In recent years, with the deepening of border trade and cultural exchanges between China and Russia, more and more Russian families have chosen to send their children to study in Heihe, not only because of the high quality of education, but also because “you can learn Chinese and experience Chinese culture right at home.”
Nowadays, many of the Russian graduates of Heihe Primary School are engaged in Sino-Russian trade or cultural exchanges, and some have entered Chinese universities, continuing to promote the cause of friendship between the two countries.
“I want to become a translator so that more Russians learn about China, and so that more Chinese people love Russia,” says sixth-grader Nadya, who dreams of going to university in Beijing and whose Chinese has already reached the fourth level of the HSK, seriously.
From the classrooms of Heihe Elementary School to the Friendship Bridge over the Heilongjiang River and gifts passed on by children from both countries, this cultural exchange that started in school is slowly changing the lives of many people.
Ekaterina, who often participates in school parent-teacher meetings, learned to cook Chinese food and opened a cafe in Blagoveshchensk with Russian-Chinese flavors, which is very successful; Chinese parent Mr. Wang, through communication with Russian parents, began importing Russian honey and chocolate, becoming a “people's ambassador” for trade between the two countries.
As the head of the propaganda department of the Heihe city party committee said: “When children from the two countries study, play and grow up together, the friendship established between them will be like the waters of the Heilongjiang River – long and deep, a ‘soft power’ that cannot be replaced by any diplomatic rhetoric.” -0-
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