How HSE Taiwanese Students Kill Time In Russia

Taiwanese students love to go deep into Russian culture. We often hold various activities to explore and travel around Russia.

How HSE Taiwanese Students Kill Time In Russia

Well, in addition to the Golden Circle and St. Petersburg, Taiwanese students love to go deep into Russian culture. We often hold various activities to explore and travel around Russia.

Compared with other countries, the number of the Taiwanese in Russia is a minority. The total number of Taiwanese students in HSE is less than 20, which is even much less than students of Moscow State University or Moscow City Teacher Training University. Our school is kind of really new in Taiwan, and the reputation has just come to fruition.

Taiwanese students have an advantage – although we have a small number, we are really good at looking for something funny in Russia. Most of Taiwanese students have just traveled to Moscow within two months to travel to Golden Circle, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Murmansk, Kalmykia, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and other places, some people even traveled to the Caucasus following Mikhail Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time” and spent a full two months in Dagestan.

Russian traditional music instrument -- Gusli

The Taiwanese Students Association in Moscow regularly organizes various events, and a while ago invited Russian traditional musical instrument master to teach students to play Gusli. Gusli is the oldest East Slavic multi-string plucked instrument, belonging to the zither family, due to its strings being parallel to its resonance board, similar to Chinese dulcimer and guzheng, but the playing method and musical instrument history are very different from the Dongfeng culture.

Dacha

We rented a country house in the suburbs of Moscow Oblast, experienced Banya (Russian sauna). With naked body full of heat steam, we all together went down to minus three degrees Celsius outdoor, enjoying cool wind and winter snow, and listened to the Slavic mythology that the landlord told us. This was one of the most interesting and freshest experience never before!

Ostankino Tower

In addition, the students organized a visit to the Ostankino Tower (a television and radio tower in Moscow, owned by the Moscow branch of unitary enterprise Russian TV and Radio Broadcasting Network.), which is a cool place, overlooking the Moscow city from a height. It is rare to have a chance to observe this different place totally different from our country. Moscow is a vast and complete city with an extensive skyline. There is almost no barrier to obstruct the view. From the Tower we can see a nice scene - night lights twinkling, and the Soviet architecture combines the Russian tradition with its own characteristics.

Village of Zhostovo

The favorite thing for girls is to draw painting plate. Zhostovo painting, which is an old Russian folk handicraft of painting on metal trays, which still exists in a village of Zhostovo in the Moscow Oblast. It appeared in the early 19th century mainly under the influence of the Ural handicraft of flower painting on metal. In addition to explaining the history of Russian painting to the students, the teacher also taugh us how to paint plates before the end of the event.

Text by
Yang Yi-Wen