News and events
The Story of Wang Shuai, an AmSU Postgraduate Student Who Devoted Her Life to the Study of Russian Language and Religion
She arrived in Blagoveshchensk in 2012 knowing only three words: “milk,” “cookies,” and “water.” Today, Wang Shuai — or simply Zhenya, as she is known here — is a postgraduate student at Amur State University (AmSU), a lead instructor for the “I Understand Russian” project, a researcher of shamanism, the mother of seven-year-old Alisa, and quite possibly the busiest person in our city.
We met at a café not far fr om the university. In an hour, she would have to rush off to work. More than once during our conversation, I caught myself thinking that the woman sitting across from me was a native of Blagoveshchensk, not a young woman from Harbin. Almost. A faint, barely perceptible accent gave her away.
In the Beginning, There Were Three Words
It was 2012. Fourteen years ago. Before that first day in Blagoveshchensk, there was her hometown of Harbin, and three years of studying Russian in Heihe. Her university offered a program: two years of undergraduate studies at a university in Heihe and three at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University (BSPU), or the reverse. She chose “two plus three” and found herself in Blagoveshchensk.
“I had studied Russian, but it was all in my head,” she recalls. “Just written language. Then I heard people speaking — and I understood nothing. On my first day, I went to the store and bought cookies, milk, and soda. Because those were the only three words I knew.”
Fourteen years ago, there were no smartphones with voice translators. There was only a paper dictionary, and later an electronic one — a marvel of technology that allowed you to type in a word. She walked through the city, reading every sign.
“I’d hear a word, like pizza. Pizza? What is pizza? I’d look it up in the dictionary. Apteka (pharmacy), apteka — what’s that? I’d look, translate, write it down, memorize it. Every word, like that.”
Six months later, she was beginning to speak a little Russian. Then she found a job teaching Chinese at a kindergarten. Three hours a day, a salary of ten thousand rubles a month.
“I lived on Lenina Street, and the kindergarten was near AmSU. Not convenient. Every day, it was a long bus ride. I worked there for about two months, but my Russian got much better. Practice really helps.”
After that, she worked as a waitress in a café — which took her Russian to a new level. Then she became an accountant for a Chinese businessman.
“The owner was Chinese, but he wasn’t in Russia often. All the employees were Russian. I had to check every income and expense of the company. Was it correct or not? Was there any fraud? I worked there for two years.”
Sidebar: Amur University Background
Wang Shuai (Zhenya) is a postgraduate student at Amur State University and a lead instructor at the “I Understand Russian” educational and consulting center (the project is implemented with support from the Presidential Grants Foundation; its main office is at 49 Komsomolskaya Street). She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University with honors. She is the co-author (together with A.P. Zabiyako) of a scholarly article, “The Cult of the Mountain Spirit among Ethnic Groups of the Greater Khingan: Traditions and Innovations (Based on Field Research Materials),” published in an AmSU collection. Her research focuses on Oroqen shamanism.
A Daughter of Harbin
The young woman adapted to Russia quickly. Though she didn’t know the language, almost nothing about Russian culture or behavior surprised her. After all, she comes from the most “Russian” city in China: Harbin.
Harbin occupies a unique place on the map of China. In the early twentieth century, thousands of Russian emigrants — fleeing wars, famine, and revolution — settled there to build the Chinese Eastern Railway. They left behind their architecture, their words, their memory.
“When I was a child at home… well, my mother often made soup. We called it supotang. Sup is the Russian word for soup, and tang is the Chinese word for soup. A blend of languages. At home, we also had a Russian spoon, a Russian dress. Also sour cream, some clothes, culture, and lots of Russian food. So I adapted to Russia quickly. Culturally, I understood people without any problem.”
A Fate Named Zabiyako
After her undergraduate degree, she pursued a master’s in philology. Her mother was firm: you have to keep studying. Wang Shuai listened. She began looking for options and learned about AmSU and Professor Andrey Pavlovich Zabiyako, a scholar specializing in religious studies.
“I heard that AmSU had well-known scholars and professors. One of them was Andrey Pavlovich Zabiyako. I asked my friends about Andrey Pavlovich — was he a good person, a kind person? Everyone told me he was a good person and a serious scholar. Once I was sure of that, I decided to enroll at AmSU.”
After her master’s, pursuing a doctorate came naturally. Wang Shuai realized that academia was exactly what she wanted to do. Today she studies religious studies, and her dissertation is focused on the Oroqen people.
Sidebar: The Oroqen
The Oroqen are one of the small indigenous peoples of Northeast China, historically living in the taiga regions of the Greater Khingan Range. Traditionally, they engaged in hunting and reindeer herding, and they have preserved unique shamanic beliefs and the worship of nature spirits. Today, their population numbers around nine thousand, and they are considered one of China’s smallest ethnic groups.
“Religious studies, religion — this is my main interest, because I myself am a Buddhist. My mother raised me in this faith from childhood. So I already knew something about this field. That’s how I chose my dissertation topic.”
Four Expeditions to the Greater Khingan
The Greater Khingan is a mountain range in northeastern China, stretching nearly 1,200 kilometers along the border with Russia. It is a territory wh ere indigenous peoples still live, preserving ancient beliefs and shamanic traditions. The region is remote, taiga-covered, with a harsh climate, difficult to access — even today, some areas remain hard to reach.
Together with Andrey Pavlovich, she traveled there four times.
“The Oroqen had a female shaman. She died in 2019. When I entered AmSU in 2020, she was already gone. It was hard to find information about her. Interviews were impossible. And Andrey Pavlovich told me we needed to go to the Greater Khingan quickly. Because right after someone dies, people still remember things for about a year. In two or three years, everything will be forgotten.”
They gathered all the materials they could about the shaman Guan Kouni, interviewing her relatives and local residents.
“I took notes, but translating everything into Russian was hard. First, I had to type it all out in Chinese — pages and pages — and then rewrite the story, figuring out what was unnecessary and what was important. Then Andrey Pavlovich told me: ‘Zhenya, you can’t do that, because what you think is unnecessary may be important for us. So you have to do it completely.’ After our fieldwork, we wrote a scholarly article together.”
On the second expedition, they studied more than just shamanism.
“This people has not only shamanism but also other religious traditions preserved among the contemporary Khingan Oroqen. For example, there is the Mountain God, the God of Wealth. In the past, the Oroqen lived in the taiga and hunted. Before hunting, they would pray: ‘Dear Baynacha (that’s the name of the god), please send me gifts during the hunt. We need food for the children, we need food for the family.’”
They recorded video and took photographs of people communicating with Baynacha. They searched for the shaman’s grave — wandering for two hours through the taiga, through grass waist-high.
“It was hard to communicate with people, because the Oroqen are not Han Chinese (the titular nationality of the PRC, comprising 92% of China’s population — author’s note). There’s a difference between us. When we first met them, they were reluctant to talk. Andrey Pavlovich told me that in field research, there’s a secret to how you quickly get to know people. It was valuable experience, summarized by a scholar with extensive field research experience.”
On the third expedition, they searched the taiga for petroglyphs. And they found many.
The Ancestral Spirit
On one expedition, something happened that could never appear in an official report but was impossible to forget. They were interviewing the shaman’s niece, a woman in her mid-sixties.
“She has some kind of power too. As we sat and talked, I kept yawning. My nose got blocked, tears were flowing.”
The woman told her: a spirit is beside you. An ancestral spirit.
“I asked: ‘Where?’ She said: ‘Beside you, that’s why you’re yawning.’ ‘Where did this spirit come from?’ ‘Fr om your father.’ She told me that in the past, my ancestors were also involved in shamanism. Then they drove the spirits away, and misfortune and calamity struck our family.”
Wang Shuai returned home and asked her mother. Her mother confirmed it: yes, that story was true.
“Andrey Pavlovich told me: ‘You can’t rely on hearsay. Some people say shamans are frauds. Others say shamans truly have power. As scholars, we can’t just listen to people. We have to study, analyze, and draw conclusions based on facts.’”
“I Understand!”
“Anna Anatolyevna Zabiyako asked me to work with them on a project — to teach Chinese students who want to learn Russian. I agreed, and we started working.”
Thus, Wang Shuai became a lead instructor, curator, and consultant for the “I Understand Russian” educational and consulting center. The project is based at AmSU and supported by the Presidential Grants Foundation. Students at the center learn the language through cartoons, films, conversation clubs, and radio broadcasts.
Wang Shuai’s motto: “My lessons are always interactive and focused on the practical application of knowledge.” And these are not just words — behind them lies the experience of someone who learned the language through practice herself, but in far more challenging, field conditions.
Alisa, White Boots, and the Russian Unsmile
Wang Shuai has a husband; he is also Chinese and works in Blagoveshchensk. Their daughter, Liu Yutong — Alisa — is seven years old. Until recently, the girl lived with her parents and even attended a Russian kindergarten. But when she turned seven, her parents sent her to her grandmother in Harbin, wh ere she will start school.
“Liu is the surname. Tong means ‘red.’ Yu is an ancient Chinese hero. So, ‘Red Hero.’ This year, it’s time for her to go to Chinese school. Of course, she misses me. And I miss her too. Our plan is this: if she does well, she’ll stay in China and go to university there. But if it doesn’t work out for her, we’ll bring her back to Russia, and she’ll go to a local school here.”
Wang Shuai visits her daughter every month or two. She always brings dairy products: milk, yogurt, cheese. And a little candy. Sometimes sausage, but not obsessively — after all, Harbin has plenty of Russian sausage of its own.
She is raising her child the Russian way.
“I teach her that in cafés or on the street, you can’t speak loudly, you can’t shout. In Russian kindergarten, I noticed that if a child falls, they just tell him to get up. No one fusses over him. In China, if a teacher sees that a child has tripped, they immediately run to the child, fuss over him, and coddle him. Then they apologize to the parents: ‘Sorry, I didn’t watch closely.’ Children grow up pampered. But I want Yutong to grow up strong and independent, so I give her the freedom to make mistakes. I don’t make a big deal out of it when she trips.”
Wang Shuai has noticed differences not only in child-rearing. In her view, Russians and Chinese behave differently.
“You often don’t smile when talking to strangers. Your faces in those moments are normal — not angry, just not cheerful. But in China, people smile often. It doesn’t matter if they know the person or not. When I first came to Russia, I thought the teachers didn’t like me, because they didn’t smile at me. Later, they said: ‘Why smile? Is there a reason? Give me a reason.’ Then I understood. Russia is for serious people. Not sad people, just serious people.”
And then there are the roads.
“Two years ago, I bought myself white boots. Very beautiful. But to this day, I’ve never worn them, because in Blagoveshchensk, spring and autumn are too muddy, and in winter it’s slippery. You can’t wear white here.”
Time Is Like a Sponge
She wakes up, works at AmSU, and in the evenings works on her own projects. She sleeps six hours a night, sometimes less. She also runs a small business, selling items from China on online platforms in Russia.
“I don’t have time for everything,” the postgraduate student admits. “In China, we have a saying: time is like a sponge — you can squeeze a lot of water out of it. My usual schedule: during the day, I work at AmSU; in the evening, I work for myself. I only get six hours of sleep. Sometimes less. You have to work, to earn money.”
Next on her agenda is defending her dissertation on the Oroqen — in St. Petersburg, most likely at St. Petersburg State University. After the defense, two options: stay in Russia, work with the scholars at AmSU, and live with her husband; or look for work in Harbin, to be close to her mother and daughter. She is confident that in China, she will be in demand as a specialist.
In Lieu of an Epilogue
We say goodbye at the entrance. She glances at her watch — she’s late, she has to run. There is still much work to do today. She adjusts her scarf, wraps herself tighter against the wind. Her white boots remain at home, untouched: the roads are slushy.
Fourteen years ago, a young woman from Harbin who knew only three Russian words could buy cookies, milk, and soda. Today, she writes scholarly articles in collaboration with Professor Zabiyako, participates in a project supported by the Presidential Grants Foundation, raises a daughter, helps her husband, and knows one thing for certain: time is like a sponge. You can squeeze out of it everything you need. Even if outside the window there is ice, and the white boots have to wait another year.
