Elizaveta Kishkina at her home in Beijing. [China Daily]

The last time Russian-born Elizaveta Kishkina was with her Chinese husband Li Lisan was on June 21, 1967, at a gathering of Red Guards, where the couple were denounced as capitalist-roaders, counter-revolutionaries and foreign spies.

"Do take care of yourself," Kishkina still remembers the parting words of her husband, as they were led in different directions.

Kishkina was locked up at Qincheng Prison, a place for holding high-ranking officials.

It was not until 1976 that she got confirmation from her daughter of what she had long feared: Li Lisan, the man she had married in Moscow and followed to Beijing, had died years earlier in the persecution of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

Today, after 62 years in China, people still ask why she didn't take her children back to the former Soviet Union immediately after she was set free in 1975.

She always offers the same response.

"It was history," she says. "We shouldn't lay the blame on history. It didn't change my affection for this land and its people."

Today, at 95, Kishkina is able to provide first-hand accounts of her life in Chinese society that stretches back to before the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949, her experience of learning Chinese in prison, and how she fell in love with a Chinese official while he was exiled in Moscow over allegations that were later recanted by officials in Beijing.

This and dozens of other unique stories are detailed in the recently published My Fateful Bond With China (Wode Zhongguo Yuanfen), a 411-page Chinese-language autobiography which is part tribute to her late husband and part tribute to China.

They got married and she moved with him to Beijing in 1946, three years before the founding of New China.

Kishkina, who now only uses her Chinese name Li Sha, still speaks about her husband like a smitten schoolgirl. She says she wrote the book to let every Chinese know about his life, his struggles and most importantly, his role in the creation of New China and his association with Mao Zedong.

After 50 years of teaching Russian to Chinese students at Beijing's Foreign Studies University, she retired in 1996 at the age of 82. And after more than six decades in China, she is Chinese in every respect - not just symbolically, but she is a Chinese citizen and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Today, she not only uses her Chinese name but feels Chinese at heart. She prefers Wuliangye liquor to Vodka, and reads Chinese language newspapers every day.

During a recent interview inside her cozy Xicheng district apartment in Beijing, Kishkina discussed her years in China and her life with her husband. She never remarried.

Li Lisan and Kishkina in 1940. [Courtesy of Elizaveta Kishkina]

"Her book is the best gift to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the PRC and of diplomatic relations with the now Russia," says Chen Haosu, president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

During her 95th birthday party held recently at the Great Hall of the People, Sergei Razov, Russia's Ambassador to China, praised her as "woman of the times" for her great contribution to Sino-Russian relations.

The book, published by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, also touches on her early romance and tribulations of life with Li, the tough days of the "cultural revolution", her career, and anecdotes about a foreigner coping with life in Beijing.

She met Li Lisan in 1933. But it wasn't the first time she was setting eyes on the man who would change her life forever.

"The seeds of my destiny were sown when I was 13," she says. "The face of a handsome Chinese young man on TV had caught my attention. But it was many more years before I realized that face was that of my fianc Li Lisan."

As a young student in Moscow, her blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes would have caught any man's attention. But when she met Li at the party, she encountered a reserved young man, she recalls.

"At first, Chinese men like him didn't interest me at all. Russian girls like boys to be open and enthusiastic," she says. However, the man won her over with his honesty and sincerity.

But as was to be expected, life with a political figure came with risks and unexpected turns, both in the former Soviet Union and then later in China for both of them. He was sent to prison for two years in Moscow during Stalin's campaign of purging "counter-revolutionaries" across the former Soviet Union.

But they managed to stick together despite personal setbacks and cultural differences.

In her book, she describes an incident to illustrate this. One day, they were waiting for a bus in Moscow. When the bus pulled up, Li jumped in and left her to fight her way in. She was so angry that she stood on the sidewalk while the bus sped away.

A few minutes later, Li ran back after exiting at the next stop, sweating and confused.

"Why didn't you board the bus," he asked.

She explained that it was common practice in Russia for men to allow the women to board first. She was too upset to follow him.

Recalling their lives in prison, she jokes: "He was jailed in the Soviet Union before I was jailed in China. We are even on this matter.

"I improved my Chinese in prison and he improved his Russian in prison."

The book is authentic in its storytelling and most stories come from the heart. Her loyalty to China isn't wrapped in diplomatic jargon.

For example, when asked if she was proud of being a member of the CPPCC, she replied: "No, I'm not proud of myself, but I'm proud of the Party and this country. I never thought China would have the chance to hold the 2008 Olympic Games when I first arrived here."

Kishkina attended the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics despite her frailty, the four-hour security check, and the heat of August, against the wishes of her family.

"I knew I wouldn't have a second chance to watch the Olympic inauguration," she says. "It was China's dream as well as mine."

In the 1980s, when she had already lived in China for at least 30 years, she casually asked a Chinese friend why so many Chinese were so eager to go to the United States and other countries.

"Why do most people dream of moving abroad, I have never had the desire to do so," she said. Her Chinese friend laughed and reminded the Russian that she was, in fact, already abroad.

"Yes, you are right, but I don't feel like I have been living abroad," she responded.

(China Daily May 6, 2009)