New | President Xi has a deep understanding of our culture, Russian experts say
Xi Jinping arrives in Moscow on Thursday in his second visit as China's president, and experts there say he already knows a great deal about Russian culture
Russia’s leading sinologists said they were looking forward to President Xi Jinping’s second visit to Russia and were impressed with his knowledge of Russian literature, Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
China’s president will arrive in Russia on Thursday for a three-day visit to attend the opening ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and for talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Xi chose Russia as the first stop of his initial overseas tour as president in March last year, followed by a visit to Africa.
The Chinese president told Russian students and sinologists at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations then that he had been deeply influenced by their culture.
“The Chinese people cherish profound goodwill toward the people of Russia.”
“The people of China and Russia enjoy a long-standing traditional friendship and a solid foundation for people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Even when I was still young, I had read many works by Russian writers, such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Sholokhov, whose works had a large impact. The Chinese people cherish profound goodwill toward the people of Russia,” he said, according to the official website of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.