A foreign face with a local soul

Driven by her passion for providing quality healthcare, a Latvian woman has won over the hearts of the elderly residing in the nursing home she oversees, Cao Chen reports in Shanghai.

It is incredibly rare to find a Caucasian woman working as the director of a nursing home in Shanghai. But the fact that Anastasija Puzankova can even converse in Liantang, a Chinese dialect spoken only by residents in a small town in southwestern Shanghai, makes her one of a kind.

As the director of the Jiufeng nursing home in Liantang, Qingpu district, the Latvian's main responsibilities include supervising the nursing staff, attending internal training and overseeing administration.

Seeing as she can communicate fluently with her colleagues in Mandarin, there was no need for her to even pick up the dialect. But driven by the desire to understand her residents better, she spent a year learning the dialect.

"I had always wondered how the elderly were getting along with others, or if they were well cared for. I realized that I could better serve them and understand their concerns if I spoke their dialect," says the 35-year-old, who also speaks Russian, English, Latvian, French and Spanish.

"The elderly people need more care and attention than we think. We have to try our best to make them happy and feel at home."

Puzankova, who was appointed as the director of the nursing home last year, is an example of how one's studies do not necessarily determine his or her career path.

Driven by her curiosity about China, Puzankova chose to study Sinology, learning about the history, politics and culture of ancient China at the University of Latvia in 2003. The next year, she traveled to Shanghai as part of an exchange program.

Little did she know that this marked the beginning of a new life in China-she spent the next 10 years studying law at Fudan University, graduating with a master's degree in 2014.

Despite her qualifications, Puzankova started her career at a major corporation that produced solar-energy equipment. She later joined a healthcare company that specialized in medical equipment and genetic tests, where she developed a passion for the field.