In the lobby of a drab teaching building in downtown Moscow, Nina Izmaillovana gazes at a Chinese couplet hung from the wall which hails spring flowers and prays for blessings. She prays for luck to find her Chinese boyfriend whom she fell in love half a century ago.

"We parted in tears at the railway station and I just couldn't help crying," Nina said, recalling the rosy days she shared with the Chinese weight lifter when she worked as a interpreter for a Chinese sports team undertaking training in the former Soviet Union.

After the training period ended, the separated pair shared joys and tears with exchanges of letters and photos. However, Nina never had a chance to work in China and meet her lover again, as the bilateral relations between the two countries experienced a downturn in the late 1950s.

"I has kept his pictures since then and is still waiting for any word about him," said the 76-year-old secondary-school teacher, who is yearning for a dream-come-true with the launch of the Year of China in Russia, a reciprocal event of bilateral exchanges to the Year of Russia in China last year.

Nearly 200 festivities, including some 10 national-level events such as exhibitions, performances and trade fairs, are planned for the theme year and they will help foster the friendship between the two peoples.

Nina's students are luckier. Maya Mogulina, one of Nina's students and also a teacher at the Russian school which has been teaching Chinese for five decades, envies her students for their better compiled text books with Chinese nursery rhymes and ancient poems.

"After my graduation in 1965, I didn't have any chance to speak Chinese with a native Chinese speaker face to face. The first such chance came eight years later when I met a Chinese immigrant in Indonesia," Maya said.

Zoya Pliaguhina, a young teacher at the school, was also in luck. Graduated in the early 1990s, she won a chance to receive further education in eastern China's Anhui province.

Teaching Chinese with lanternslides, Zoya is now proud of her students. "China has the Great Wall, and many beautiful flowers..." her grade-one students described China and its scenery in not so perfect but fluent Chinese.

Some 10 students in the school visited China last year and were deeply impressed by a fast modernizing Beijing, China's capital, Zoya said.

"Time changes, but our love for China, for Chinese, has never changed in the last 50 years," Nina said, looking at the happy and playful boys and girls.

Editor: Wing