Chinese Students Facing Christian Culture in Russia: Cross-Cultural Practice in Educational Process

Abstract

Chinese students while studying at Transbaikal State University and Irkutsk State University are in the world of Christian values, so that students' personalities enter to a new cultural process. Traditional Chinese philosophical and religious syncretism now includes orientation towards Christianity in the form of Protestantism. Besides the traditional values current generation of Chinese youth as well inherited and continues to some extent convey stereotypes, myths and values of Soviet ideology and atheism, received from the old school teachers (often taught in the USSR). The purpose of the study is to reveal features and mark the outlines of Chinese students’ entering the world of Christian (Orthodox) values in the context of cross-cultural education in Transbaikal State University and Irkutsk State University. Comparative and typological, axiological and systematic methods allow us to put together Christian and Confucian cultural traditions and offer cross-cultural pedagogical technologies for the development of an individual’s empathy to another culture. Analysis of the texts and the written works techniques, focus group interviews in cross-cultural educational process show common ideas of Chinese and Russian students about good and evil, freedom of conscience and responsible action. The study results that acquisition of Christian values by Chinese students widens their views on global world and offers such an ideological paradigm, in which a man can be transformed spiritually and expand his understanding of the cultural universe. The authors conclude that the growing interest to the Christian world of today’s Chinese students is due to the search of spiritual ideals, renewed identities and new worldview discoveries along the way, which demonstrates high adaptability of the Chinese. Interaction of Russian and Eastern cultures on the basis of Christian values offers broadbased opportunities for personal development, which is an important issue in the context of cross-cultural education.

Keywords: Russian literature; Chinese students;Russian Christian Orthodox culture;Russian cinema; cross-cultural education;