Language student expresses her passion for China through poetry, reports Chen Xue.

Born in Ryazan, Russia, the hometown of Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, it seems that Anastasia Podareva is destined to follow a similar career.

Podareva, 28, has loved poetry since she was a girl, when her father would introduce her to works by great Russian poets such as Alexander Pushkin and, of course, Yesenin. Growing up, she wrote many poems in both Russian and English and, after she came to China to study in 2013, the world of Chinese poetry opened up before her.

She soon gave herself a poetic Chinese name, Tang Xilan, with "tang" alluding to the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when Chinese poetry entered a golden age, and both "xi" and "lan" are characters taken from The Book of Songs, the earliest collection of Chinese poetry. Her name means an orchid that blooms in the morning.

"One thing that strikes me in reading and writing Chinese poetry is the power of the language — its melodious and rhythmic," says Podareva in My China Surprise, a video series produced by 21st Century, a media organization affiliated with China Daily.

In fact, one can easily tell from the name of The Book of Songs that the earliest Chinese poetry was meant to be sung.

Podareva has had colorful experiences in China over the past decade. She has won awards in multiple poetry writing competitions, published her own Chinese poetry collections, and participated in Chinese Poetry Conference, one of the leading poetry-themed TV programs in China.

On top of that, her most unforgettable memory is of one of her poems being turned into a song.

And even better: She sang it herself.

The poem, titled If, was written in early of 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.