China

I already thought I had finished my memories of China with the ill-fated Chinese trainers, with which I got it on the fingers. It turned out that events of a week ago awoke in me memories of almost 50 years ago, the so-called Soviet–Chinese armed conflict over a tiiiny Far-Eastern island, Damansky, belonging to the Soviet Union. I was 15 years old in 1969, when the conflict happened. I only remember that we at School No. 90 of the city of Kyiv solemnly met a hero from Damansky Island and listened to his story, of which I remembered nothing. I only remember that diplomatic relations were “almost” broken and we were on the brink of war. And the island itself supposedly no longer exists — it is “wiped off the face of the earth,” as they said then, but “at what cost?!” ...

Chinese trainers. I think this was the first, very high-quality, sports footwear. I was 5 years old. We lived in Kyiv in a military town. Now this is the district of the metro station “Druzhby Narodov.” So I went out to walk from our barracks. Towards me comes a boy, Slava, 7 years of age. He has put on his hands! brand-new Chinese trainers with a snow-white sturdy rubber sole, walks and claps them as if clapping his hands! So merrily he claps! Clearly he decided to show off. He comes up to me and says: “Feel how smooth it is here!” And shows me the beautiful white sole of a Chinese “Druzhba” trainer. Well I felt it with my little fingers… And he slaps me on the fingers from above with the second trainer! It was very painful.

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! ...