From Russia with love

Ties between China and Russia are celebrated by a Beijing chorus group, Liu Xin and Cheng Lu of China Features report.

The Chinese singers don't speak Russian and have no musical background.

Yet, when they sing old-fashioned songs in Russian, they don't just sing idiomatically, they also follow the complex polyphony of eight vocal parts, following the beat set by Ekaterina Ilyakhina:

Pear trees are blooming,

Mist floats over the river

Katyusha stands on the steep bank,

The sound of her singing is as enchanting

As the radiant spring sun.

The Beijing Hand-to-Hand Chorus interprets Katyusha, above, with a Chinese touch and makes the love song, which was popular in the Soviet Union during World War II, more interesting and attractive.

Ilyakhina is the director and conductor of the group, which was founded in Beijing 2003. It has 30 Chinese members, mostly aged between 22 and 35.

In the beginning they knew little Russian. "We would substitute Chinese characters or phonetic letters for the Russian lyrics," the group's translator Gao Lei recalls.

He adds that Ilyakhina, however, insisted on expressing the songs in the original language and would explain the history and cultural background of each song.

Ilyakhina studied conducting with the Russian conductor and composer E. Fertelmeister at Nizhny Novgorod (former Gorki) Conservatory. For several years after graduation in 1993 she conducted choruses in Russia.

"I have been interested in China since childhood," she says. "Back then, I often heard my mother singing a song called Moscow-Beijing. It was a popular song in both countries during the 1950s."

She went to Beijing in 1999 with her husband, Yury Ilyakhnin. She was art director of the Beijing Russian Art Center, while he was formerly an ITAR-TASS news agency correspondent.

Ilyakhnin says he fell in love with Beijing at first sight and became obsessed with Chinese arts and particularly Peking Opera.

He now runs the Chinese newspaper Hand to Hand and financially supports the chorus "out of my love for Ekaterina (Ilyakhina) and China".

Ilyakhina says they love the Beijing dialect and humor, and after living in China for so many years she decided to set up a choir.

The Beijing Hand-to-Hand Chorus debut was in a terminally ill care hospital in Beijing.

"They all seemed to have a special love for Russian songs. I guess because they experienced the honeymoon period between China and the former Soviet Union," Ilyakhina says. "They even joined in the chorus when we were singing Katyusha.

"A 70-year-old man told me he had been longing to see a performance of Russian songs. Now, he told me, he could leave this world without regrets."

The chorus members come from all walks of life and although none had musical training before joining Hand-to-Hand, they all had a passion for Russian music.

Wang Weiguo, a 52-year-old cook says: "My parents' generation had a fascination with Russia due to the close bilateral relationship between the two countries during the Cold War. Russian literature and songs were very popular in China during the 1950s, and had a big effect on them and their children."

When he was young, Wang imitated his parents singing Russian songs while playing guitar.

When he saw an ad for the chorus group in the Hand-to-Hand newspaper in 2003, he joined up without much hesitation.

He said it was difficult to get to grips with Russian pronunciation at first, but he practiced hard and would often sing late at night.

He is so dedicated now to singing that he has cut down his working hours at the restaurant.

The hard work has paid off and Wang is now a good baritone, able to sing more than 100 classic songs in fluent Russian.

Zhang Cheng, 22, a tenor, is one of the younger chorus members.

"I knew almost nothing about Russian music," he says. "However, when I watched a Russian animated film Rabbit, Let's Wait and See, I was deeply touched by the sound track of the movie."

After graduating, a friend persuaded him to join the chorus group and he says it changed his life.

"Ilyakhina treats us like her children," Zhang says. "Her love and passion for the Russian songs she teaches just totally captured me. I cannot live without the chorus now."

In 2004, the chorus attended the Moscow International Chorus Competition, where it took second place.

"It wasn't until the end of our performance that the audience realized we were Chinese. Then the audience all stood up to salute to us. It was both touching and rewarding," Ilyakhina recalls.

Huang Hui, a music producer, says many popular Soviet songs are in a minor key, melancholy but not gloomy, gray yet dignified, like the Russian landscape.

Ilyakhina says more than 14,000 Chinese people sing Russian songs in various choruses in China. But in 2009, she decided to set up another chorus called Katyusha, to teach Russians in Beijing Chinese songs.

Alexey Kosarev, 27, the son of a Russian diplomat says: "I joined the chorus because I wanted to learn more about Chinese culture and promote bilateral ties through music."

Guo Chunlei, research assistant at the World History Institute, under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, notes China and Russia can more easily understand each other's culture because of geopolitics, and close economic and military relations.

"In the 1920s when China faced many choices, socialism came to China," Guo says. "When China chose socialism, the country had a similar ideology to the former Soviet Union.

"That allowed the two countries to build close emotional ties. Those ties still exist today and that's why the Chinese and the Russians still have great interest in the other's cultures."