A jumble of strange sounds foreign to millions of Anastasia Prytkova’s Russian compatriots slip off her tongue as effortlessly as if she had been uttering them since she was a baby. Throw in a delightful melody, and suddenly the Chinese language does not seem as intimidating and as difficult as it is usually cracked up to be.
What she speaks means “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, my gift is here.”
And what a gift this is, one that has put ninth-grader Anastasia from Novosibirsk, Russia, on a path that is likely to shape her life.
For the past three years she has been studying Mandarin online with a Russian teacher, cultivating her fascination with a country she has so far had no physical contact with.
“My favorite food is kung pao chicken,” she said in Chinese. The dish is a favorite in Sichuan province, the home of spicy food, and is a place she dreams of visiting. Seeing the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors is also on her wish list, but for now, there is still plenty of Chinese learning to do.
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