CHINA> Profiles
|
CHINA> Profiles
|
|
Odyssey of love and her bond with China
By Jiang Wanjuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-06 15:02 After 50 years of teaching Russian to Chinese students at Beijing's Foreign Studies University, she retired in 1996 at the age of 82. And after more than six decades in China, she is Chinese in every respect - not just symbolically, but she is a Chinese citizen and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Today, she not only uses her Chinese name but feels Chinese at heart. She prefers Wuliangye liquor to Vodka, and reads Chinese language newspapers every day. During a recent interview inside her cozy Xicheng district apartment in Beijing, Kishkina discussed her years in China and her life with her husband. She never remarried. "Her book is the best gift to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC and of diplomatic relations with the now Russia," says Chen Haosu, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. During her 95th birthday party held recently at the Great Hall of the People, Sergei Razov, Russia's Ambassador to China, praised her as "woman of the times" for her great contribution to Sino-Russian relations. The book, published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, also touches on her early romance and tribulations of life with Li, the tough days of the "cultural revolution", her career, and anecdotes about a foreigner coping with life in Beijing. She met Li Lisan in 1933. But it wasn't the first time she was setting eyes on the man who would change her life forever. "The seeds of my destiny were sown when I was 13," she says. "The face of a handsome Chinese young man on TV had caught my attention. But it was many more years before I realized that face was that of my fianc Li Lisan." As a young student in Moscow, her blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes would have caught any man's attention. But when she met Li at the party, she encountered a reserved young man, she recalls. "At first, Chinese men like him didn't interest me at all. Russian girls like boys to be open and enthusiastic," she says. However, the man won her over with his honesty and sincerity. But as was to be expected, life with a political figure came with risks and unexpected turns, both in the former Soviet Union and then later in China for both of them. He was sent to prison for two years in Moscow during Stalin's campaign of purging "counter-revolutionaries" across the former Soviet Union. But they managed to stick together despite personal setbacks and cultural differences. |
