With the People in Mind

When President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in 2013, he called for renewed vigor in Sino-Russian cultural relations while at the same time acknowledging the challenges of the historic relationship between the two great nations. The road of history is not the walkway on the Nevsky Prospect, Xi opined, quoting the Russian writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889). Sometimes it passes through dust. Sometimes it passes through mud. Sometimes it crosses swamps. Sometimes it passes through jungles.'