Cai Ni

Cai Ni, born in April 1922 in Shanghai, was the daughter of revolutionaries Cai Hesen and Xiang Jingyu. In 1929 she went to the Soviet Union with her parents and lived and studied at the Monino International Children’s Home on the outskirts of Moscow. In August 1931, her father Cai Hesen was martyred in Guangzhou. She spent her childhood and adolescence in Moscow, and after the outbreak of the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War in 1941 she moved with classmates to Ivanovo, where she entered the First International Children’s Home to study. There she grew up together with children from around the world and experienced wartime evacuations and material shortages.

While studying in Moscow, Cai Ni graduated from Moscow Medical College. She studied alongside Mao Zedong’s sons Mao Anying and Mao Anqing; when Mao Anying delivered speeches in Chinese, she served as his Russian translator and participated in propaganda work for China’s Anti-Japanese War effort. In addition, Cai Ni studied in the History Department of Ivanovo State Pedagogical University, majoring in Russian history. She spent roughly 24 years in Moscow.

In November 1953 she returned to China, initially being assigned as a pediatrician at Beijing Children’s Hospital. After about three years she transferred to Beijing Red Cross Hospital. After the Cultural Revolution, Cai Ni moved to the Russian Department of Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she served as a professor of Russian language, teaching an overview of Russia and Russian history, until her retirement in 1986. Her teaching was renowned for a solid foundation in Russian.

In her later years she lived in a courtyard house in Beijing’s Dongcheng District, with her husband Hong Ge and family. Hong Ge, born in 1921, and Cai Ni married in 1949; he had served as Deputy Minister of the Metallurgical Industry and as an advisor, among other positions. They had two children: daughter Wang Xiaoli, born in 1950, and son Wang Hong, born in 1954.

In 2010, the President of Russia issued the Medal for Chinese Veterans who participated in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, which was personally presented to Cai Ni by the Russian ambassador to China. On June 7, 2012, Cai Ni passed away at Shanghai’s Huadong Hospital, aged 90. On June 13, her body was laid to rest at Shanghai Longhua Funeral Parlor, with a farewell ceremony attended by representatives of relevant units and leaders.