BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- About seven decades later, a youthful smile still lights up the face of 96-year-old Chinese artist Quan Shanshi as he recalls his student days in what is now St. Petersburg, a city famed for art.

"During my years studying in the Soviet Union, my teachers and classmates simply called me Sasha, a name whose pronunciation resembles my Chinese one," said the silver-haired oil painter who studied at the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Quan recently received a commemorative medal marking the 260th anniversary of the world-renowned academy at an alumni exhibition held at the Zhejiang Art Museum.

He spent six years studying at the art academy in then-Leningrad beginning in 1954, part of an early generation of Chinese students sent abroad to study art.

Now, decades later, China and Russia have designated 2026 and 2027 as the China-Russia Years of Education to further enhance people-to-people exchanges. The two sides have pledged to build consensus on cooperation, expand areas of cooperation and elevate the level of cooperation.

And behind the official framework lies a much longer story told through generations of students and scholars who crossed borders in search of knowledge and became bridges between the two countries.

"I benefited from those years for my entire life," said Quan, a veteran professor at the China Academy of Art.

Although he and his classmates had already completed higher education in China, they chose to start over from the first year of undergraduate study. "We wanted to strengthen our foundations from the ground up," he recalled.

Surrounded by original European and Russian masterpieces for the first time, the young Chinese painter began to understand oil painting not merely as a technique, but as a distinct artistic language.

During his years abroad, he also forged deep friendships with his classmates, and local students would often invite him to their homes during holidays.

After graduating in 1960, Quan returned to China and devoted more than six decades to art education. Many of his fellow Chinese classmates who studied in the Soviet Union also became influential figures in China's art education system.

Even now, Quan continues introducing Russian art to Chinese audiences through translation and academic exchanges.

"I hope to serve as a bridge," he said, "sharing my experiences with younger people and helping promote exchanges in art and education between our two countries."

For Olga Pronkina, a Russian scholar now teaching in China, her connection with China began in a theater in the Russian city of Penza.

In 2007, while still a university student, she watched a Chinese dance performance inspired by the murals in the Mogao Grottoes. "It made me want to understand Chinese culture more deeply," she said.

Two years later, that curiosity brought her to Lanzhou, capital city of northwest China's Gansu Province, where she began teaching at a local university. In 2015, she finally visited the Mogao Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Gansu's Dunhuang.

The ancient Buddhist grottoes, with murals, sculptures and manuscripts preserved for centuries along the Silk Road, made an unforgettable impression and nurtured her personal connection to the Chinese heritage.

In 2019, Pronkina began pursuing a doctorate at the Institute of Dunhuang Studies of Lanzhou University. Since then, she has traveled repeatedly to Dunhuang for field research and translated large amounts of academic material related to the site.

Now teaching in both Chinese and Russian, Pronkina has spent years helping students engage in cross-cultural communication. She helps arrange study opportunities for Chinese students in Russia and fosters participation in international academic programs and cultural activities.

She believes educational cooperation between the two countries still holds enormous potential and expects to take part in activities under the China-Russia Years of Education framework.

In the famed "porcelain capital" of Jingdezhen, another young Russian student is discovering his own connection with Chinese culture.

Rostislav Tsvetkov arrived in China in 2025 to study at Jingdezhen Ceramic University.

"From my first day here, I was struck by the depth of the ceramic culture and the artistic atmosphere surrounding the city," he said.

Majoring in ceramic art and modern design, he has spent time visiting the China Ceramic Museum and the Imperial Kiln Museum, comparing traditional Chinese porcelain with Russia's Gzhel ceramics.

To him, ceramics offer something beyond words. "Ceramic art is a universal language," he said. The China-Russia Years of Education will likely bring more opportunities for cooperation in ceramic art, he added.

Data show that more than 60,000 Chinese are currently studying in Russia, while over 20,000 Russian students are studying in China. The two countries are working toward a goal of reaching 100,000 two-way student exchanges annually by 2030.

A joint communique issued after the 30th regular meeting of the Chinese and Russian heads of government in November 2025 pledged to expand two-way educational exchanges and create better conditions for cross-border study.

Nik Gu, a Russian master's student at the School of Social Sciences of Tsinghua University, moved to China with his parents in 2005. He is set to graduate this July and is likely to stay in China for work.

"In recent years, more and more Russian students as well as tourists have come to China, thanks to the mutual visa-free travel policies," he said. "I also have many Chinese friends studying in Russia. I'm very happy to see people from the two countries coming closer together and learning more about each other every day."

Educational exchanges have long been an indispensable force driving China-Russia relations forward, said Jiang Jing, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Students who travel to each other's countries become the social foundation for lasting friendship," she said.

The launch of the China-Russia Years of Education is expected to further expand two-way study exchanges and deepen broader people-to-people ties between the two countries, Jiang noted.