Collaboration continues

That drive is not the sole preserve of youngsters in Russia. Just as young people in Novosibirsk are both frustrated and charmed by the complexity of Chinese characters, their counterparts in China are delighting in the beauty of the Cyrillic script that helps them understand the language of Leo Tolstoy.

One such youngster is Shen Yu, a first-year student in the advanced Russian program at Harbin No 6 High School in Heilongjiang province. Her father also studied Russian in his youth, filling the family home with Cyrillic books. For Shen, learning Russian started as a daunting challenge of declensions and tongue twisters.

The study is punishing, but the payoffs are astronomical, she said."Whenever I can fluently express a complete thought, or understand a Russian news broadcast or a song without relying on a translation, the sense of accomplishment is overwhelming."

While learning Russian with native-speaking educators every Friday at her high school, she is also developing a profound kinship with her Russian counterparts.

"They face exactly the same academic pressures that we do, with the same stress over exams, but they also have the same love for video games and music," she said.

Harbin No 6 High School has a rich history of teaching Russian that goes back more than 80 years, and it hosts the Chinese secretariat of the Association of Sino-Russian Middle Schools. The association was initiated by the school eight years ago, aiming to advance educational exchanges and collaboration at the secondary level and cultivate talent, with an emphasis on biculturalism.

Wu Xia, principal of the school, said the association had 30 schools as members when it was established. It now has 145, with 50 of them in China and 95 in Russia.

The association operates as a high-level, institutionalized dialogue platform, with annual meetings in both countries attracting thousands of educators who discuss collaboration in secondary education.

It also organizes training courses for Chinese educators who teach Russian, and Russian educators who teach Mandarin. More than 700 Chinese teachers have benefited from the courses.