"Neither of us wanted to see this song – a song that I wrote and he put music to – just stay on paper," said Anastasia Podareva, 28, talking about why she decided to meet someone she had become acquainted with online three years ago.

Podareva, 28, a Russian who lives in Shanghai, tells the China Daily internet program My China Surprise that she has loved poetry since she was little and started to write poems in Chinese after she came to study in China in 2013. One of her works, If, was published online in 2020. It is about the close relationship between China and Russia. A Chinese musician, Zhu Hai, who lives in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, saw it, composed a score for it and sent it to Podareva.

Eventually both thought it was high time to combine the lyrics and the melody, which led to their meeting this month in a studio in which Podareva sang the song and Zhu accompanied her with a harmonica. The result is superb.