Russian is becoming the most popular foreign language in China. Schools and universities are teaching it, even though it's as hard for a Chinese to learn Russian as for a Russian to learn Chinese. Just take the letter "R" alone.
Anastasiya Sakhovskaya with the details.
These students always greet their "laoshi", teacher in Chinese, twice. "Hello". Practice makes perfect, no language's an exception. "Hello, hel-lo". They've mastered the alphabet and are learning the basics of communication. "He, she".
A child's hand swiftly writes hieroglyphs and stumbles with letters but they've just been studying for 3 months. Russian is compulsory in this school.
Liang Anke: "Russian sounds are different from Chinese or English ones. The letters are different too. It's hard to memorize and pronounce them".
English, Japanese, and Russian are currently the top-three studied languages in China. Even the Russian cuisine is in the curriculum. That's how the students react to the mysterious dressed herring. They sing songs and watch cartoons even read Russian books in high school. The shelves are full of Russian classical literature.
A teacher: "That's Pushkin”.
Of course, the books are mostly translated. It's a whole new kind of art in China. Boxes of books reach the ceiling. This is not just a home library. These books are the gold reserve of the biggest Chinese book collection.
A son of Jou Long, Chinese translator: “Here are our first books — the complete works of Chekhov. It's printed in traditional writing with hieroglyphs positioned vertically”.
His father Jou Long is one of the most famous Chinese translators. In the 1940s, when China had almost no foreign literature, he discovered the Russian classics and shared it with billions of his countrymen in the New China. What's a frock coat in Chinese? Tiny pencil remarks on the margins. The eternal search for the right word. Jou Long was poring over his translations with the true national patience. Now, the Russian classics are immortal in Chinese as well. The translations of Chekhov have recently been reissued to commemorate Jou's 100th anniversary. More copies are currently being printed because the books got sold out in 3 months.
Anastasiya Sakhovskaya, Mikhail Artyukhin Vesti, Beijing Office
