Falling & Laughing

Russian Youngsters Tumble to Warm Welcome

Yuri Armanov, 15, Sasha Poshchelski, 12, and Sasha Golegov, 14, watch their classmates practice their flips.

"We miss home, but not as badly as in the first year," says Yuri Armanov

The Russian students at the Beijing Acrobatics School are not your average here-today, gone-tomorrow international schoolchildren. They are not the offspring of wealthy expats, they do not live in 5,000-dollar-a-month apartments, and they do not benefit from the latest Montessori Method.

Aged between 7 and 15, these children have left their parents far behind to live in a dormitory for seven years while they learn to be acrobats in Beijing.

Fifteen-year-old Styopa Anisimov thinks the world of the Chinese capital. He reckons it's not just big, not just beautiful, but also ... hot. All the children are from the Siberian city of Yakutsk, which happens to be the coldest city in Russia. It's an especially bleak place these days.

"In Russia, things have got bad," said Styopa. "One dollar is, what, 25 rubles?"

He Yifang, the head of the school, recalls that when the children went home for the summer holidays, they looked very healthy. "Two months later, when they came back, they did not look so good.

The boys are in a cavernous hangar that smells of captive animals. Their teacher has not arrived, but they need no encouragement as they line up to practice flips and tumbles down a long, blue crash-mat. Behind this hangar is another where two brown bears are crammed into wooden cages; outside, two bactrian camels ruminate.

A few of the least bashful take a break and sit on a pile of mats next to a makeshift circus ring. Their reasons for coming to Beijing are a mixture of curiosity and a desire to become performers.

The School took four of the Russian boys to Italy to take part in an international show.

Four days a week are spent on the practice floor.

"I wanted to have a look at China, see the Great Wall," says Yuri Armanov, 15. "I already wanted to become an artist, too, and a friend told me about the selection for children to come here.

That selection came about thanks to a visit to Beijing by the head of the Yakutsk education committee in 1997. His hosts took him to an acrobatics show that impressed him so greatly, he arranged for a group of 20 Yakutsk children to be sent to Beijing to study, all expenses paid (the Yakutsk government pays US$60,000 a year to fund the group's tuition and living costs).

The children, six girls and 11 boys --two more girls are due back from Yakutsk soon, one has dropped out --are into their third year of study. "We miss home, but not so much now," says Yuri. "It was bad for the first year." Are they sorry they came? The answer is a chorus of "No!"

Together with the basics of acrobatics, the children study Russian history, literature, math, Chinese and music. They do four days of acrobatics, and spend two days on other subjects. Sunday is their only day off. Since April, the boys have performed every day at the Universal Theater in the city center. They don't seem to think the schedule is too tough.

For their performances, the boys earn 10-15 yuan a night. "They used the money to take lots of gifts back home in the summer," says He. "I am touched by their love for their families."

The school head has also been struck by the differences in her foreign charges.

"The Russian children have more individuality than the Chinese," she says. She tells a story to illustrate her point. "Nine-year-old Tolya disappeared one night. Everyone searched all over the school, but couldn't find him. He eventually turned up at one in the morning holding a big apple. Next day, I asked him why.

"He said he got the apple at the meal after the performance, then climbed up onto a platform on the roof to look at the stars. They were so beautiful they made him miss home a lot, and then he fell asleep. A Chinese child would never behave this way."