Published on: 2026-05-20
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Beijing, May 20 /Xin Hua/ — At the opening ceremony of the exhibition of works by teachers and students of the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which recently took place in the city of Hangzhou /admin. center of Zhejiang Province, East China/, the 96-year-old Chinese artist Yuan Shanshi was awarded a medal dedicated to the 260th anniversary of the academy for his outstanding contribution.
An elderly professor of the Chinese Academy of Arts, whose Russian name is Sasha, which coincidentally matches his Chinese name in pronunciation, studied for 6 years at the aforementioned renowned Russian academy of arts. “This experience has brought me enormous benefit in life,” he said with a smile.
The years 2026 and 2027 were declared the Years of Education of China and Russia. For decades, generations of young Chinese and Russian people, such as Yuan Shanshi, have studied and are studying in each other’s countries, acting as a bridge to strengthen the traditional friendship between the peoples of the two countries.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF RUSSIAN LIFE
According to the rector of the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Semen Mijailovsky, the academy once taught excellent Chinese artists back in the 1950s.
Yuan Shanshi was one of the few. In 1954, while working as a painting instructor at the institute — the predecessor of the Chinese Academy of Arts — he brought several Chinese students to Leningrad to study oil painting.
“At that time, we had already obtained higher education in China and were supposed to enroll in a master’s program, but we decided to start bachelor’s studies from the first year in the USA, in order to consolidate the foundation of our knowledge and skills,” said the artist.
“From the first to the fifth course, every morning we had to attend two-hour contour drawing classes; from the first to the third course, in the second half of the day, there were classes on artistic anatomy and perspective drawing, and in the evening — sketching classes,” he recalled, adding that very strict requirements were imposed on them during the course of study, and this greatly helped him in his artistic creativity.
In 1960, Cuiuan Shanshi, who also made tremendous efforts, overcame difficulties in studying the Russian language, and with distinction graduated and received a red diploma. “Six years of study in the Soviet Union allowed me not only to become familiar for the first time with a large number of original European paintings, including Russian ones, but also to understand that oil painting has its own unique language.”
According to Yuan Shanshi, in the work of the famous Soviet artist Andrey Andreevich Mylnikov, who was his scientific supervisor, special attention is paid both to realism and to the expression of emotions, which had a great influence on him.
For over 60 years, Yuan Shanshi was engaged in teaching oil painting. He headed the oil painting faculty of the Chinese Academy of Arts and held the position of deputy head of the Chinese Oil Painting Society. According to him, his contemporaries from China, who studied with him in the Soviet Union, upon returning to their homeland, also became pillars of higher art education in China and nurtured many talents in the field of fine arts.
APPRECIATION OF CHINESE CULTURE
In 2007, in the Russian city of Penza, where Olga Pron’kina was studying at the university, a Chinese troupe with a creative program arrived. Among the performances was the dance “Thousand-armed and Thousand-eyed Goddess of Mercy,” based on the motif of a wall painting from the Mogao cave complex in the city of Dunhuang in Gansu province.
“This dance made a deep impression on me. I was very interested to get acquainted with Chinese culture,” said the now 40-year-old Russian woman.
In 2015, Olga, who had already moved to the city of Lanzhou /administrative center of Gansu province, Northwest China/ and worked as a teacher at one of the local universities, made her first trip to the Mogao Cave complex. “The most amazing thing for me is the huge number of early wall paintings and statues, as well as manuscripts,” Olga recalls well how strongly this UNESCO World Heritage site impressed her.
In 2019, Olga enrolled in the Institute of Dunhuang Studies at Lanzhou University, becoming a graduate student of the well-known scholar in this field, Professor Zheng Binlin. She is studying the specialty “Archaeology in Central Asia” within the Dunhuang Studies program and has frequently visited Dunhuang, reading and translating a large volume of literature on Dunhuang studies.
“The culture of Dunhuang gave me a lot. It was precisely thanks to the study of Dunhuang that I discovered the rich culture of China and understood for myself the origins of the confidence of the Chinese nation in its culture,” said Olga.
Outstanding traditional Chinese culture continues to attract an increasing number of young people from Russia. In 2025, 31-year-old Rostislav Tsvetkov from Russia enrolled in the Cizindechen Ceramic University, located in the city of Cizindechen / Jiangxi Province, East China, known as the ‘porcelain capital’ of China.
“From the very first day I arrived here, I was deeply impressed by the amazing ceramic culture and the vibrant atmosphere of artistic creativity here,” said the young man.
Rostislav is currently studying in the field of ceramic arts and contemporary design. He plans to integrate his accumulated experience in design and architecture into the creation of ceramic products and research of contemporary art.
A young person especially seeks a cultural connection between traditional Russian and Chinese ceramics. During several visits to the Chinese Ceramic Museum and the Museum at the Imperial Kiln Ruins in Cizindzhen, he repeatedly compared the well-known Russian Gzhel with Chinese porcelain.
“Ceramic art is a universal and straightforward way of cultural self-expression that can overcome language barriers,” said Rostislav.
BRIDGE FOR UKRAINE SUPPLY
In 2014, on the initiative of Yuan Shanshi, a public-benefit art center named after him was established in the city of Hangzhou.
In this Center, a hall was specially opened to showcase outstanding works of contemporary Russian artists, and every year exhibitions of works by Russian painters are held here. For many years, Yuan Shanshi has also been engaged in translation activities, collecting works of Russian artists for publishing in China.
“I hope that by acting as a bridge, I can tell young people what I have learned in Russia and introduce the residents of China to the wonderful works of Russian art, and in this way, through my efforts, contribute to promoting exchanges in the fields of art and education between China and Russia,” said Yuan Shanshi.
In recent years, Olga, a professor at Lanzhou University, has paid special attention to the international spread of Dunhuang culture. She conducts teaching work in Chinese and Russian languages to train specialists in the field of intercultural exchanges, organizes internships in Russia for Chinese students, runs clubs on Russian culture, and helps them participate in international scientific student conferences and competitions.
She noted that there is still room for development of cooperation between the educational spheres of China and Russia, expressing hope that it will itself also become an active participant in the events within the framework of the Years of Education of the two countries.
According to data, currently more than 60 thousand Chinese citizens are studying in Russia, of which more than 50 thousand are enrolled in bachelor’s, master’s, and postgraduate programs. And about 10 thousand are in preparatory language courses. At the same time, more than 20 thousand Russian students are studying simultaneously in China.
In the joint communiqué following the 30th regular meeting of the heads of government of China and Russia, published in November 2025, it is noted that the parties agreed to gradually increase the scale of mutual academic exchanges and create favorable conditions for the study of students from the other side.
“Mutual academic exchanges play an irreplaceable and important role in promoting the development of Chinese-Russian relations.Citizens of China and Russia who have received education in each other’s countries are not only a solid foundation for bilateral humanitarian exchanges, but also a social basis for building long-term friendly relations, as well as an important factor for strengthening friendship between the peoples of the two countries,” noted the leading researcher of the Institute of Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Tsian Tszin, who is also the secretary general of the Chinese Association of Graduates from Russian/Soviet Universities.
According to her, the holding of the China-Russia Year of Education is expected to promote further growth in the number of participants in mutual academic exchanges between the two countries. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Chinese Association of Graduates of Russian/Soviet universities will contribute to the development of educational cooperation between the two countries, which is an important component of Sino-Russian strategic interaction.
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