Kulaev Nikita Vladimirovich, from Russia, hails from a city just 30 kilometers from the border with China. When Nikita was a boy, his grandfather often told him that China was Russia's good neighbor and friend. Nikita's mother worked in the local education department, and she often visited China to promote cultural exchange. After one visit, she gave him a Chinese textbook, and reading it planted in him a desire to travel to China to learn the language. Today, Nikita is in the second year of PhD studies at the School of Chinese as a Foreign Language at Peking University. He is also a respected translator, having rendered several Chinese classic works of literature into Russian. "Encounters with China – Deciphering Chinese Characters" tells a story of friendship that has lasted three generations.