Chapter 17 "Light of the Earth" went to study in Russia

Study in Russia (1) 3 When they were in their senior year, Xin He began to plan to go to Russia to study for a master's degree, and actively made plans.Because her father had studied in the Soviet Union, she knew some Russian.Jian Sheng didn't have this plan at first, but Xin He begged him repeatedly, and his aunt encouraged him again and again, so he agreed.I started to cram in Russian, and I was overwhelmed for a while. During this period, Huai once wrote a letter asking where he would go after graduation.He replied that he planned to study in Russia after graduation and was preparing for it.Very busy.

After that, there was no further news from Huai. At that time, he was busy handing in his graduation works, participating in the anniversary art exhibition, studying Russian, applying for schools, and going through the formalities, and he was too busy.No time to think about anything else.He and Xinhe worked together for a close goal, and their days were fast and fulfilling.They submitted excellent oil painting creations, and both of their applications were accepted.Exciting results, St. Petersburg Repin Academy of Fine Arts.Like the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, it is the world's top art temple.When he got this result, he was so happy that he couldn't believe it.After that, the long-awaited visa was finally obtained, and the flight ticket was booked immediately.

It all turned out to be surprisingly smooth.He wanted to tell Huai the news.However, it was discovered that since Huai got married and moved, they had never called each other again. He had to write.Before waiting for the reply, he and Xin He had already flown to Russia. First to Moscow, then fly to St. Petersburg.When the plane was about to take off, she was shocked by the powerful acceleration.She said to him, Jian Sheng, I read a quote from a female photographer in Germany that I liked very much. She said that when the plane takes off, it needs to resist a very large resistance, but once it breaks through this resistance and rises to a high altitude, Then the resistance of the air is simply not worth mentioning for the ground.It can fly freely on the ground.It's like life.

Jian Sheng, look, we are flying.She said innocently with a smile. He smiled lightly.But in my heart I was worried.Russian is not good at all, language barriers, economic and life problems, social turmoil and racial discrimination in Russia, and the goal of studying in graduate school... This is a foreign country, and the future is uncertain.It takes enough faith to persevere. When passing through the customs inspection at the Moscow airport, a blond Russian policewoman held his Chinese passport and looked up and down coldly. The smooth line stopped at him.He was puzzled, and when he was about to ask, before the first vowel was pronounced, the policewoman snapped: NOEnglish! Actually, he was going to speak Russian.

The policewoman stretched out her hand to signal him to stand aside.His passport was inexplicably withheld, and he was then brought into the office by another police officer.Just as Jian Sheng was about to question him, the door was slammed shut.After waiting for half an hour, two policemen came in and said something in a long string with a strong Slavic accent, but he didn't understand a word.I didn't want him to understand.Then the policeman copied the number on the passport and called the other side, looking as if he wanted to confirm something. The announcement that the flight to St. Petersburg has boarded has already sounded in the radio.The police put down the phone and heard voices on the radio.Finally, I asked, are you taking this flight?He replied yes.The policeman turned his face away, looking very impatient.After a while, the policeman tossed him his passport, shook his head, and motioned to leave.No apology whatsoever.

He was inexplicably tossed about like this-holding a Chinese passport, he met a middle-aged woman who was in a bad mood.Xin He waited anxiously for him at the exit, but he didn't know what happened.Seeing that he finally came out, the two of them hurried to the counter to get a boarding pass before they had time to explain what happened, and then hurried to the boarding gate to board the plane. After boarding the plane, his face was still ashen.Xin He comforted him, are you okay?she asked. He shook his head.Not a word. Perhaps it was because the preparations before going abroad were too smooth, the first moment he set foot on a foreign land, he faced such an ominous event.Later things proved that there were indeed more hardships ahead.

In the freezing winter in St. Petersburg, it often snows heavily.Food has become especially expensive.Heating costs are also high.It was a long night with almost no dawn in sight.Two people still have to plan carefully.When religious festivals come, there is depression and silence.I can only go to the supermarket to bring back a bag of potatoes or long bread to satisfy my hunger before the door closes.It was snowing heavily that day, and he was huddled with a bag of potatoes and rushed to the apartment. When he walked through the quiet and deserted neighborhood, a group of skinhead teenagers appeared from behind and beat him up and down.He threw potatoes at them, fled with his head in his arms, but he couldn't get away. Instead, he was kicked in the abdomen several times, and he curled up in pain.He squatted down, groped for the broken brick at his feet with his right hand, grabbed it, closed his eyes and slapped it blindly for a while.There was only a scream, maybe someone had been hit, and blood splattered everywhere.The teenagers panicked and rushed to help the injured man up. He took the opportunity to escape and ran all the way calling for help.I don't know whether my own blood or someone else's blood is stained on my hand, and it drips bright red all the way in the snow.

He returned to the apartment in shock, and Xin He was also taken aback.The two have been in a state of terror all week. It is such suffering. Study in Russia (2) At the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, Asian faces are conspicuous.They interjected from the senior year of the Repin Academy of Fine Arts. After the senior year, if the professor agrees that you go to the fifth year, it means that you can continue to study for the master's degree.He wants to be strong. In the studio of his tutor, there are more than 30 talented painters from all over the world. They take classes together, copy and create together, and go to sketching and museum copying together during vacations.In terms of talent, he is not inferior, and he is the most hardworking.But to some extent, European-style training standards are different from domestic training.At the beginning, he felt a bit at a loss, and it was very difficult to communicate with the professor verbally.If he didn't rely on Xin He's help and companionship, he would just feel a little difficult to move forward.Life is really dependent on each other.

During the three years they were in Russia, the government's finances were tight, and the comprehensive maintenance of the ancient city was not in place.There is a certain desolation in St. Petersburg.The history of the city begins in 1703.Peter the Great established the waterway fortress of Peter and Paul Fort here, and later gradually expanded from the fortress to a city, named St. Petersburg, and moved the capital here from Moscow in 1712, and became the capital of Russia for 20 years. .Most of the buildings in the city have a history of two to three hundred years. The Baroque and Rococo styles should be extremely gorgeous and elegant. However, due to lack of repairs, most of them are old and the walls are mottled and dark.The power supply in the room is unstable, and the huge decorative lights are bright but gloomy, and the atmosphere is extremely gloomy.There is a special feeling of desolate vicissitudes.

Looking at the palaces and squares of the imperial Russian era, the tall bronze statue of Peter, and the battle-baptized warships on the Neva River, under the leaden sky, it seems that the history of alternating war and peace is repeated with sobs.The Little Black River where Pushkin fought, the old apartment where Tchaikovsky lived.The history of art is embedded in it everywhere.The ancient Orthodox Church towered under the sky, with a blue-gray silhouette outlined in the mist.Pigeons fly silently around the spire, ominous and melancholy.It makes people unconsciously feel depressed and sad.

There are still good days.In midsummer, the two of them walked along the Neva River like those lovers in St. Petersburg, admiring the white night in the setting sun that never sets.When I walked to Zi, the sunset that had just fallen slowly rose from the other side.The memory of Dostoyevsky flashed before his eyes.The transparent sky is white, and it seems that you can look at the little sails of the Baltic Sea in the distance.And the Caucasian woman who passed by lightly, was dressed in fashion, with an aristocratic and arrogant expression. This is what Leningrad used to be.During the October Revolution, the cannons that attacked the Winter Palace are still standing quietly.The red era of heroes and ideals has long gone.Those young Russian girls will no longer be the tragic Anna wrapped in black struggling between love and fate, nor will they be Katyusha standing on the cliff thinking of her lover who went to the battlefield.The heroes have already left, but under the hawthorn trees in the countryside, at night on the outskirts of Moscow, in the vast birch forest, and beside the quiet Don River, those bloody dawns are still silent. The most precious thing for man is life.It is given to us only once.How should a person spend his life: When he looks back on the past, he will not regret for wasting his years, and not be ashamed for doing nothing.When he was dying, he could say: "I have dedicated my whole life and all my energy to the most magnificent cause - to fight for the liberation of mankind." These are the imprints of heroes and ideals who have gone far.And whether these heroic and magnificent vows that have inspired a whole generation of people can really remain chaste in the truth of history.Just like the girls passing by the Neva River today—with their blue eyes open, their eyes linger on the gorgeous clothes in the European and American luxury brand stores on both sides of Nevsky Avenue—that is their dream, but they My parents, who have struggled all their lives for Stalinist absurd ideals, may be counting their meager pensions to worry about heating bills in the coming winter.The sorrow of this collective fate can only be redeemed through one's own struggle.As a result, those tall and beautiful Russian girls continued to go abroad for the dream of becoming famous: in the fashion industry of the fashion capital of Western Europe, and on the crowded commercial streets of North America, their wandering figures began to appear.And leaving such a beautiful hometown, what kind of bitter tears will these flower-like girls bathe in along the way. Just like them - Jian Sheng and Xin He.The wrong era ended the youth of the previous generation, and still left a shadow on their collective destiny. at school 4 He paints very hard.When I was in school, I spent most of my time in the studio of my tutor. When I was out of school, I practiced in museums and copied famous works according to the arrangement of the school.The Hermitage Museum, also known as the Hermitage Museum, is known as the world's four major museums together with the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Today's 2.7 million works of art, it is said that if you stay in front of each exhibit for one minute, calculated as eight hours a day, it will take 11 years to see all the exhibits.The Chinese exhibits in the Winter Palace are familiar, including cultural relics from Dunhuang and Chinese paintings by Qi Baishi.Regardless of the value of those art treasures, it is absurd that large European and American museums have a penchant for shamelessly displaying the results of aggression and robbery.These are all spoils from the blatant looting by the Eight-Power Allied Forces.He stood there looking at these treasures, and felt an inexplicable sense of national mourning in his heart. The splendor of the Winter Palace is amazing.From then on, Jian Sheng discovered that he would always feel inexplicably afraid and dizzy about the overly tall space and the structure of the colonnade. If the space is dark and gloomy, the situation will be even worse. Fortunately, the interior decoration of the Winter Palace Complicated and extremely luxurious, it conceals the emptiness of the huge space.He still felt unsettlingly as if he were in an ornate tomb.It is also because of this anxiety that I am even more thrilled by the works of masters that are close in front of me.In order to copy those famous paintings, I sat for a whole day for five or six consecutive weeks, reaching a certain state of intoxication. While painting at school, Xin He also taught himself photography. During the holidays, he went to Moscow to study photography.When Jian Sheng was in school, he copied and created. During the holidays, he followed the junior undergraduates to sketch in Pushkin Mountain and the Black Sea.On the Black Sea, look at the layers of waves left in Pushkin's poems.The sunset shines at night, the water and the sky are the same color.Seagulls passed by, leaving panic calls.He spent all his holidays in the sketching base of the Academy of Fine Arts.Sitting on those cold shores for a long time will leave one's heart infinitely empty. He and Xin He support each other and are very affectionate.I just feel that three years are fleeting and pass quickly.Persevered until the end, they all graduated with honors.Xinhe also won an international youth photography award in Moscow.After returning to China, Jian Sheng directly taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, and Xin He started to engage in photography, doing some creations in the photography studio while studying.Because Jian Sheng and Xin He had the experience of returning from studying abroad at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, and the relationship between Xin and his mother in the circle, the two quickly became the darlings of the youth painting circle.Art exhibitions, photography exhibitions, competition judges, Chinese and foreign art exchanges... one after another. Busyness makes a person dull.Traveling around the country and staying in high-end hotels at night, I often feel exhausted physically and mentally.He said to Xinhe, maybe we should take a break. Xinhe said, let's get married and then go on a trip. He smiled softly and kissed her face.I was at a loss in my heart.More than ten years have passed since he was brought back to the city by his mother.He has also reached the age to get married.He didn't know how Huai's life was in the far south.At some point, he felt his own determination.After being with Xin He, he basically lost contact with Huai. She used to be the whole of his life.His only love. But he will still sincerely accept the established path.Xin He is a rare woman in life.He likes her and cherishes this feeling very much.He marries her. She said, Jian Sheng, if you feel tired, then we will go on a trip and count it as a honeymoon.I have been invited by the publishing house to participate in the special photography of a large picture book.Is going to Tibet.Jian Sheng, come with me.You can sketch there if you like.It's more beautiful than you can imagine. Jian Sheng frowned.He was unprepared, so he hesitated.But as soon as Xin He begged, he had no choice but to agree. He never refuses her.I don't know how to refuse.