The elderly Russian woman displays her letters and other items exchanged with her Chinese pen pal. [ynet.com]

With the support of news reporters and netizens, an elderly Russian woman has successfully rebuilt contact with her pen pal from central China's Hunan Province during the recently concluded FIFA World Cup after a suspension of over half century.
The elderly Russian woman, whose Chinese name is Liu Xia, said that she wrote three letters to her Chinese pen pal, Duan Chunxiu, and received two replies from her in 1962. They mainly talked about their campus lives during the exchanges in Russian.
Duan wrote in her replies that she was a student in a middle school in the city of Xiangtan. Moreover, she attached her portrait, a postcard covered with the scenes of the West Lake, a popular tourist destination in the city of Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, and several pieces of fragrant paper produced in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeast China's Fujian Province.
They lost contact due to various reasons over the next several years. Liu disclosed that she saved Duan's replies and gifts carefully over the past several decades, though she has moved home several times and lost many items in the process.
The wish to rebuild contact with Duan burnt up again in Liu's heart when she found that several Chinese news reporters lived in the apartment opposite her during their coverage of 2018 Russian FIFA World Cup in Saransk.
Therefore, Liu asked them to do her a favor before they flew back to China.
These Chinese news reporters accepted the proposal with great pleasure. They found someone to help them translate the letters and published the information on domestic social media shortly after they came back.
The story quickly became an Internet hit and drew the attention of a social media user, who replied that Duan was her classmate.
The actual identity and living place of Duan was finally confirmed when Duan's son appeared. He disclosed that his mother, 71, still lived in Xiangtan but her health was not good.
At last, Duan and Liu successfully exchanged their email addresses. They are expected to hold more interactions with each other, though they have to seek assistance from software translations.

The postcards and letters sent by Duan Chunxiu to her Russian pen pal [ynet.com]