Russian students resort to a selfie to pose for a picture with Chinese students before the forum starts on Wednesday morning. [Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn]

Maria Shipulina watched, entranced, as two Sichuan Opera actors changed their masks with a flick on a stage of the gymnasium of Sichuan University in the capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province on Wednesday morning.

“It is exciting. We never do that in Russia,” said the 21-year-old journalism major from the Samara State University in the Samara region of Russia.

She said it is the first time she is in China and hopes to see more new things in the ancient country which she could never see in her motherland.

The Sichuan Opera performance was one of the activities held to mark the beginning of a so-called youth forum attended by 341 Chinese and Russian university students which will end on August 8.

“The Chinese students are from Sichuan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei provinces and Chongqing municipality from the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River in China and their counterparts are from 14 republics and states along the Volga in the Russian Federation,” said Li Xiaojun, deputy chief of the Sichuan provincial government information office.

The Chinese and Russian students, who are divided into seven groups, will attend activities in seven institutes of higher learning in Sichuan.

They will attend lectures on China’s national condition and Sichuan’s basic conditions, Chinese and Sichuanese culture, have informal discussions together, visit sights of historical and cultural importance in Sichuan and learn how to cook Sichuan dishes, according to Zhou Hai, an official from the Sichuan provincial department of education.

Organized by the Chinese foreign ministry and Sichuan provincial departments of education and foreign and overseas Chinese affairs, the forum will draw State Councilor Yang Jiechi who will meet the Chinese and Russian youths on August 7 before the forum ends.