My name is Kseniya and I come from Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia. At the age of 19, I came to Yancheng, China and started my study life at Yancheng Polytechnic College. In the first class, I got a Chinese name “李开秀”, which means happy and beautiful.

After coming to Yancheng, I heard that there are red-crowned cranes here. There are also red-crowned cranes in my hometown, Siberia. After understanding, these red-crowned cranes will fly to Siberia in the summer, and when the weather gets cold, they will fly to Yancheng. What a wonderful fate! I am just like a red-crowned crane. When I was studying, I was in Yancheng; when I was on vacation, I was in Siberia. Yancheng is veritable second home to me.

The climate in Yancheng is similar to that of Novosibirsk, but warmer than Novosibirsk. So I quickly adapted to life here, except for the language.

For me, learning Chinese is not too difficult, because I found that teachers at Yancheng Polytechnic College is as strict as my teachers in Russia, which makes me very happy. They taught me patience and diligence, which helps me a lot in China. To be honest, many foreigners are not serious about learning, so strict teachers and strict systems are very important. For most of us, of course, the Chinese language is very complex due to various characters, grammar and logic of sentences. It takes enormous patience to learn this language. At first it was very difficult to adapt in another communication environment, as the language I didn’t know at all. My knowledge of English has benefited me and my teachers have helped me a lot. Now I am already studying in the third year in this college and I am preparing to pass the exam of HSK5.

Time flies. This is the third year since I came to Yancheng. I am already familiar with the streets here, the wind here, the flowers here and the people here. I know that there are bird singing inside the campus in the morning, ringing bells at 8:00 in each morning, broadcast singing in the evening campus and the serenity of late night campus. When it is out of class, I will ride a hello bike with my friends. Sharing bicycles has brought great convenience to our lives. I think this is a very smart project, incredible! After dinner, I will go for a walk. The streets here are very clean, the air is very fresh, and the security is very good. Every walk makes me very satisfied. On weekends, I often go shopping with friends. I like H&M in the mall opposite my school, fashionable but not expensive. I also like Taobao very much. Can you imagine that you can buy everything you want on Taobao, only you can’t think of it. The logistics here is also shocked me, with efficient and high quality service. For example, if I bought Beijing goods on Taobao, I can get it after two or three days. Who knows that Beijing is more than 900 kilometers away from Yancheng! Here, my cash is often kept in my wallet, because people here use Alipay and WeChat everywhere. They just need to take a mobilephone to take bus, to have dinner, to shop etc.. All these make me deeply fall in love with here.

I was very happy when I heard that the Yancheng Yellow Sea Wetland was successful in applying for the World Natural Heritage. That feeling is just like seeing your loved ones win. I am willing to work with the people here to maintain the natural environment, because only the wetland environment is good, the red-crowned crane can survive. Red-crowned cranes are precious wild animals, and I hope they have a good environment for growth in Yancheng and Siberia. And I am also a “red-crowned crane”. I hope that the relationship between China and Russia will be better and better, so that I can study and live happily in China. I hope that I can use the knowledge I have learned to be a messenger of cultural exchanges between Russia and China. When I fly to China, I tell locals the Russian culture; when I fly back, I tell my families and friends Chinese story.