A Russian engineer and his Chinese "iron son"

In a black-and-white picture, Russian engineer Konstantin Silin smiles along his colleagues with a grand bridge stretching out behind.

It is the Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge in central China, which, put into use in 1957, was designed and constructed under the supervision of Silin.

In the eyes of the ancient Chinese people, the Yangtze River was a divide between North and South China. Before the bridge was built, it took up to a whole day to cross the river by railroad ferry.

Silin was among the first group of people to cover the natural gap with a 1,670-meter bridge that included a four-lane highway and a double-track railway.

Years after the project was completed, letters of gratitude kept coming to Silin from Wuhan. Some even asked him for permission to name their babies in his honor, Silin's daughter Yelena said.

After graduating from Moscow Railway Engineers Institute, Silin worked in China from 1954 to 1957 as the supervisor of a group of Soviet engineers that helped the Chinese build the Yangtze bridge.

"Before my father, no one dared to build that bridge in the point where Yangtze's stream was so powerful," Yelena said.

Silin proposed the most economically efficient cantilever bridge design and thus received an honorary certificate from the Chinese government.

Following the birth of his Chinese "iron son," the Yangtze bridge, in October 1957, China became Silin's second home and he often recalled that period of life to his family. Decades afterwards, his children and grandchildren sustain even closer relations with China.

In 1950s, the Silin family came to China for a second time and stayed in a Beijing hotel. Yelena attended the embassy's school along with other children of foreign experts.

"We were brought to the excursions where we climbed mountains by donkeys. The beautiful landscape was stunning but a lack of roads made us nervous. We often saw dugouts, poor huts," she said.

With the completion of the bridge and deteriorated relations between the Soviet Union and China, Yelena returned to Russia with her father. China became a blurry yet unforgettable picture in her memory.

Yelena recalled her father's visit to China again in 1983, during which he could hardly recognize the country that he first came to know 30 years before.

The impression was reaffirmed again, when Yelena returned to China in 1999 at the invitation of the China-Russia Friendship Society.

Fifty years after her first visit, Yelena realized that China has transformed into a brand new country. Almost all marks of poverty have disappeared.

Yelena said her father built several railway bridges in China but the Wuhan bridge became the construction of his life. He loved his Chinese "iron son" so much, she said, that it was even engraved on his gravestone.

"Father had devoted all his energy and passion to the construction of that bridge. He loved China and the bridges so deeply throughout his entire life. 'China' was a sacred word in my family," she said.

Yelena's daughter Yekaterina followed her family's "China route" and first came to China in 1996, immediately after her grandfather's death.

Yekaterina studied at the Central China Pedagogical University in Wuhan and got a gloomy first impression of the city as she arrived in the midst of the rainy season. Everything changed when she came to China again two years later. Wide roads appeared, old and decrepit houses demolished, even the relations between people had changed, she said.

After being admitted to the Geographical department of Moscow State University, she came to Peking University for a two-year internship.

Yekaterina has visited nearly all of China's provinces. Now she works in the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Science and in Moscow State University as an expert in Chinese geography and ecology studies.

Almost all of the family's children inherited Silin's devotion to China. In 2010, more than 60 years after Silin's first visit, his 6-year-old grand granddaughter Anastasia came to China.

"She felt there like a duck to water. We walked in the parks, skipping no event. She danced in the streets and loved playing mah-jong," Yekaterina said.