The thing is that I have never been in China. And now I will tell separate fragments of my childhood memories. The previous chapter was about Aunt Rufa. So Aunt Rufa was in China and gave birth there to her twins Vitka and Natashka, whose combined weight at birth was 8 kg!
For the Chinese doctors this was a shock, and they would not have saved Aunt Rufa if it had not been for our professor, who I do not know how was delivered to China, most likely by a special flight from Moscow. Having covered all the Chinese with Russian swearing (the Chinese had arranged a ceremonial welcome with ceremonies for him), he broke through to Aunt Rufa and took the birth. The girl weighed 200 grams more than the boy, for which later Vitka received from loving relatives the nickname — Dovesok!
I cannot fail to recall a solid man, Uncle Sasha — Aunt Rufa’s husband. He was a leading specialist, a Stalin Prize laureate, worked in China, helped the Chinese comrades there to build socialism. Then the Communist Party sent some specialists to work in China. Upon return to the Homeland they brought “a wagon of goods,” as my mama used to say.
This “goods” was bright Chinese wool for knitting. Then I first saw a woman who knits. That was Aunt Rufa. At that time things of hand knitting were a rarity (as they used to say). And so this knitting crept into my soul and became my dream, and I knitted my first mittens at the age of 9. Unfortunately knitted Chinese things when washed bled very strongly, “felted and shrank.”
I also remember Chinese apples and persimmons, which were sold in Moscow. The persimmon in colour and shape resembled large ripe tomatoes, and the apples were also large, burgundy, without a single spot, like wax. My grandfather was surprised how one could grow such fruit?! In his Moscow-region garden there were apples of only one variety — the famous Antonovka. And he tirelessly fought garden pests, but it was not possible to defeat them completely, and little worms settled in the apples. I liked Chinese apples — after all they were not wormy.
To be continued….