At the end of the 40s of the last century, a Chinese boy working in Xinjiang met Valentina, a beautiful girl who worked in a local hospital, and the two really fell in love and got married and had children. Later, for some objective reasons, Valentina returned home, when their son was only 6 years old. When the child grew up, he kept looking for his mother, tried all kinds of methods, and never heard from him. In 2009, the son finally found his mother, Valentina, who lives in Almaty. This year, the son was 61 years old and Valentina was 80 years old. Later, the son came to Almaty to visit his mother and took his mother to China for a tour. This happiness, which is half a century late, is a powerful testimony to the friendship between the Chinese and Kazakh peoples.

-- "Promoting People's Friendship for a Better Future: Speech at Nazarbayev University" (September 7, 2013)

Further reading:

This exotic relationship began in the late 40s of the 20th century, when Li Yuankang's father, Li Huaiyu, was working in Xinjiang and met Valentina, who worked in a local hospital, and the two foreign young people soon fell in love and got married and had children. In 1954, Valentina returned to China with her daughter for special historical reasons, leaving behind 6-year-old Li Yuankang. "Mom and sister, don't cry, I'll stay with my father for a week and come back." The smell of bread, milk, and sausages carefully prepared by his mother when he was a child, and the old watch and carriage that he asked for from his mother when he was separated have become Li Yuankang's only support for missing his mother.

In the 80s of the 20th century, after the death of his father, Li Yuankang missed his mother even more. Whenever an acquaintance goes to Russia or a nearby CIS country, Li Yuankang will ask the other party to bring a copy of the information on finding relatives. In the winter of 2007, a friend sent his family search information to a Russian state television program called "Waiting for Me". The staff of the column group found that Li Yuankang's family search information was highly consistent with another family search information from Kazakhstan. It turned out that while Li Yuankang was looking for his mother, Valentina had also been looking for her child.

In September 2009, CCTV's Russian International Channel's "Long Years" column and "Waiting for Me" jointly conducted a cross-border video live broadcast. On December 27, under the arrangement of CCTV, Li Yuankang came to Moscow to participate in the production of the program, and Valentina, who settled in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and her daughter were also invited to the scene. In the studio, Li Yuankang's mother in front of her is no longer what she was when she was separated, her body is already rickety, and her face is full of wrinkles. Li Yuankang knelt down with a thud, hugged his mother's legs, and burst into tears.

The success of the half-century search for his mother has benefited from the increasingly close people-to-people exchanges between China and Kazakhstan. Today, the number of people in China and Kazakhstan has reached 500,000 per year, and the number of China-Kazakhstan friendship provinces, states and cities has reached 12. After Xi Jinping told the story, Li Yuankang's phone was almost blown up, and all relatives and friends he knew called to congratulate him. Li Yuankang said that President Xi mentioned him, he was very happy and very warm, "If these relatives of my mother and sister in Kazakhstan are family affection, then for the two countries, we can also be a symbol of friendship between the two countries."

"The history of a land is the history of the people above it." In his speech at Nazarbayev University, Xi Jinping explained the depth of China-Kazakhstan friendship through the story of the reunion of this long-lost family, and let the audience feel the friendship, family and cultural blood of the Chinese and Kazakh people, and narrowed the distance between the hearts of the two peoples.

As close neighbors, from the camel bells of the ancient Silk Road to the whistling of the modern "Belt and Road" China-Europe trains, China-Kazakhstan exchanges have been endless. Before telling the story of "half a century of searching for my mother", Xi Jinping said, "My hometown Shaanxi is located at the starting point of the ancient Silk Road. Standing here, looking back on history, I seem to hear the echoing sound of camel bells in the mountains, and see the lonely smoke floating in the desert. All of this makes me feel very delighted." The hometown memory at the starting point of the ancient Silk Road and the emotional resonance of "half a century of searching for his mother" effectively convey Xi Jinping's sincerity, sincerity and sincerity in cherishing the friendship between the two countries from the perspectives of history and reality.