The 25th China Harbin International Economic and Trade Fair
30.06.2014 -
Fr om June 30 July 4, 2014 the city of Harbin hosted the 25th China International Economic and Trade Fair. One of its sections was devoted to the Summit of Russian painting within Russian-Chinese EXPO. The forum’s opening ceremony was attended by the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, Governor of the Amur Region Oleg Kozhemyako, Governor of the Primorsky Krai Vladimir Miklushevsky, Governor of China’s Heilongjiang Province Lu Hao and the Mayor of Harbin Song Xibin.
Under the dome of a big exhibition space provided by the organizers for the Russian exposition visitors could see more than 300 works of artists fr om the Far East, Nakhodka, Magadan, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Blagoveschensk, cities of Siberia and Central Russia (Smolensk, Voronezh, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Tula, Kaluga, St. Petersburg, etc.). The Russian Academy of Arts was represented by works of Zurab Tsereteli, Sergey Goryaev, Natalia Anikina, Evgeny Romashko, Konstantin Petrov, Vladimir Sokovnin, Maria Burganova, Andrey Dubov, Andrey Poletaev. The Chief Scientific Secretary of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Arts Oleg Koshkin told the audience about art education at the Academy’s institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg wh ere many Chinese young artists study fine arts.
Members of the Russian delegation visited some places connected with Russian construction and railway engineers, workers and other specialists who since 1889 had been involved in the construction of Trans- Manchurian Railway and founded Harbin in 1898 as a station of this Railway. They visited St. Sophia Cathedral – a former Russian Orthodox Church in Harbin turned into a Museum in 1997 containing photographs depicting the history of the Russian colony in Harbin, the life of Alexander Vertinsky there in 1935-36, concert tour of Fyodor Shalyapin and stay of other noted Russian people, as well as the acting Pokrovsky Orthodox Church. The Church has a club-house for the Society of Russian Songs and Dances wh ere local people study the Russian language and arrange Russian folklore concerts.