On the eve of the Chinese New Year, which is called the Spring Festival in the Middle Kingdom, Xinhua journalists visited the amazing long-liver - 91-year-old Liu Molan, or simply Nina. After spending 84 years of her life in China, despite her Slavic appearance and green-blue eyes, the heroine of this report has become a "real Chinese grandmother."
During her long life, Nina experienced many shocks, ranging from the horrors of war and ending with the death of loved ones. She and her husband had a son and a daughter, but none of them are alive anymore, and today the grandmother lives with her daughter-in-law.
Nina herself met the journalists at the doorstep of her small village home in Shandong province. She happily greeted the guests in Russian: "Hello!" She is wearing a colorful wadded jacket, a woolen hat and a yellow shawl - so in appearance and not distinguishable from any other elderly resident of a Chinese village. But "a high nose and somewhat deep-set light eyes can tell us about her unusual past."
Nina was born in 1926 in Vologda. Her father was Chinese and had his own small business in the Soviet Union. There he met a girl Lida, married her, and they had two children - Nina and her older brother. When the girl was 7 years old, her family moved to China. At the age of 17, Nina met and later married the secretary of the air force of the Kuomintang party, Liu Chunshu. Together with him, they wandered around the war-torn country for several years, moving from place to place. In the end, Nina lost touch with her parents and brother, even their photos were gone.
When the communists finally came to power in China in 1949, Nina and her husband settled in the same Shandong village, where she still lives. However, for the Chinese, the name Nina sounded too childish, so the spouse chose for his wife the Chinese version of Molan, which means one of the types of orchids.
Nina can still speak in simple phrases in Russian, she can write her name and the name of her native village - Vakhnevo. However, this is where the memories of Russia practically end, she never returned there. The grandmother is sure that she has long since turned into a Chinese woman, because her family is here.
Nina remembers her husband with special warmth. He was 20 years older than her, but, despite this, he always and in everything was inferior to her, and over the long years of their life together, they never quarreled. When Liu Chunshu became paralyzed, Nina took care of him for 15 years without leaving a single step. To please her sick husband, she worked hard to save 330 yuan and buy a small black-and-white TV - a thing for a Chinese village in the 80s is simply exceptional.
At the age of 60, Nina did not disdain any work: she sewed clothes, sheared stones, even drove carts with chicken dung. “I did whatever I did, but I never thought it was hard for me. You just have to work, and you will find something to eat,”says the Russian grandmother. In 1989, her husband passed away, then her daughter, son-in-law and son passed away, and Nina could not recover from this grief for a long time.
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In the village, the Russian grandmother is known as a kind and bright person. Except for cataracts and minor heart problems, Nina does not complain about her health. According to her, she is often asked the secret of longevity. Nina replies: “I have no secret, you can eat anything, you just need to love to work, and getting angry is not good. Someone here tried to persuade me to move to a nursing home, but I don’t want to, there’s nothing to do there, I’m already here on the sly.” The 91-year-old woman does not sit still, during the interview she nimbly scampered between the guests, treating them to tea - perhaps this is the secret of her longevity, journalists say.
However, besides work, Nina has another passion in her life - to singing. In addition to the famous Chinese compositions, she also likes to sing Russian songs: "Katyusha", "My native country is wide." However, the grandmother admits that now "the throat is not the same - she used to sing very powerfully."
Today, long-liver Nina is often visited by guests, including from Russia, who bring gifts. And the local authorities provided her with a material allowance, which in the new year will be 12 thousand yuan a year. “I live very well, you care about me so much! I am very happy . Nina says that she has no special desires, she doesn't want to go anywhere else - just to be at home and do what she likes.