The Emperor Far Away (39 page)

Still smarting over the loss of Outer Manchuria, China long refused to recognise the demarcation of sections of the frontier between Heilongjiang and the Russian Far East. Only in 2008 did the two countries agree on the border, which tracks the Amur River as it wiggles east for almost 3,000 kilometres from just west of Mohe, China’s most northerly town, towards the Sea of Japan. By then, China was the dominant partner in what is an increasingly unequal relationship, and Beijing was able to claw back a tiny portion of the land it lost in the nineteenth century.

Those formerly contested borderlands were my ultimate destination in Dongbei. I intended to follow the Amur River and the Chinese–Russian frontier south from Mohe, travelling through the counties where the remaining minorities of the north-east live to Heihe. A flourishing trading town, and compelling symbol of how China has prospered as its neighbour and one-time enemy has declined, Heihe lies opposite Blagoveshchensk, where my journey around China’s far edges would end.

Dongbei’s minorities are the most obscure of all China’s ethnic groups. Persecution in the pre-1949 era and now intermarriage with the Han means only around 15,000 Oroqen, Hezhen and Daur people are left in Heilongjiang, although more live across the frontier in Russia. Like the Manchu before them, their languages will likely die out completely within a generation or two. They are the last reminders of what Outer Manchuria once was: a barely populated land whose tribes congregated on both sides of the Amur, roaming through endless taiga where frontiers were unknown.

Even now, the extreme north of Heilongjiang remains relatively inaccessible. Harbin is the starting point for any journey to the borderlands, but it is still a considerable distance from where Outer Manchuria once began. Rather than risk the roads which are often closed because of heavy snow and ice, I was faced with a twenty-one-hour train ride to Mohe. My berth was in a carriage full of people chattering away in Pinghua, the unfamiliar, Cantonese-like dialect of Guangxi Province in the south of China. They were a tour group who had chosen to travel to Dongbei in the winter so they could see snow for the first time.

Southern Chinese are fascinated by snow, as are South-east Asians, because it never falls where they live. That makes January Harbin’s peak tourist season, as people from the more temperate regions of China flock to the city’s ice festival in brand-new heavy coats, boots and scarves that are destined never to be used again. They brave temperatures that drop to -20 degrees Centigrade and below, as well as a wind so sharp it feels like your skin is being slowly stripped away layer by layer.

But snow wasn’t a novelty for me. I had begun to dread the relentless weather, especially the forbidding, mostly sun-free sky of low-hanging, grey-white clouds. Of all the different legs of my journey around China’s far edges, I found Dongbei the hardest. I was gripped by a lassitude I couldn’t shake off – my reaction to the sub-zero temperatures and extreme landscape.

Winter in Heilongjiang is a black and white movie. Green fields disappear under a white blanket of snow, while the blue waters of lakes, rivers and streams are covered in dark ice. The closer we got to Russia, the emptier the countryside became, save for the increasing numbers of spindly and leafless pine trees which rose up the hills in the distance. There are no big cities in the northern borderlands, only towns and villages, and we could have been in Siberia rather than China.

On the train the heaters ran full blast, making it too hot to sleep in anything but a T-shirt. But it took only a trip to the unheated toilets with their frozen windows, or a smoke in the gaps between the carriages where ice covered the floor, to remind you of what it was like outside. It grew colder and colder as we meandered across the north-west of Heilongjiang, dipping briefly into neighbouring Inner Mongolia, until we were just a few hours from Mohe.

Now the rolling hills beyond the empty fields were far more thickly forested and the snow deeper. The train stopped at tiny stations where streets of wooden cabins started where the platforms ended. Smoke from their makeshift chimneys curled away towards the clouds that appeared to be descending lower the further north we went, while piles of timber as high as the houses themselves waited to be burned.

Mohe is the end of the line in every sense – China’s far-northern outpost. It is also the coldest place in the country, and I stumbled off the train into a snowstorm. The town was coal black in the early evening, apart from the lights glowing in the windows of the apartment blocks. A taxi took me down the wide empty streets until I found a hotel, where I was greeted with confusion by a flustered receptionist. Few westerners make it to Mohe, and there was a quick consultation about whether I was allowed to stay.

I crunched through the snow in search of a still-open restaurant. Thick green blankets hung over its door, to keep out of the draughts, but inside it was deliciously warm, the windows shut tight, the air thick with cigarette smoke. I started peeling off sweaters, much to the amusement of two men downing glasses of
baijiu
. ‘You’re wearing too much,’ said one, laughing. ‘It’s not that cold.’

He had the raw, wind-chapped face common to the people of northern Heilongjiang and was used to the extremes of the local climate. Winter in Mohe runs from early October to the middle of May and there are only three months a year when frost doesn’t cover the ground. While I was there, the temperature never rose above –16 degrees Centigrade. In a town where the mercury has been known to plunge below -50, that is balmy weather, and plenty of people walked around during the day with their jackets wide open.

A waitress brought a menu containing a selection of typical Dongbei dishes. Thick stews of beef or donkey meat, sausage and roughly folded pork dumplings, nothing like the delicate little packages served in the south of China, provide insulation against the elements, as well as revealing the Russian influence on Heilongjiang’s cuisine. I ate a lot of cabbage in the far north, one of the few vegetables that can be stored throughout the winter, and became accustomed to the lack of fresh fruit.

Mohe’s residents, like those of most Chinese small towns, are friendly. They were both chuffed and intrigued to have a foreign visitor who wasn’t a Russian from over the border eighty kilometres away. Mohe’s quiet, surprisingly car-free streets too ensure it is far more pleasant than most places of an equivalent size in China. It is a modern town now, after an inferno in 1985 reduced most of its original wooden houses to ashes. Many of the new buildings are in a mock-Russian style, with peaked red roofs, domes and ornate façades.

Despite its isolation, Mohe is one of China’s more unlikely tourist destinations. During the summer, when the sun shines for over twenty hours a day, it is the only place in the country where the northern lights are visible. Now, in an effort to attract visitors all year round, Mohe has appointed itself as the home of Father Christmas in China. Right on the border with Russia is the North Pole Village, and a section of it has been refashioned as a copy of the hamlet in Lapland that is Santa’s ‘official’ residence.

China’s rulers may dislike Christianity, but Christmas, along with other western holidays such as Halloween and Valentine’s Day, is now part of the Chinese calendar. Retailers in the big cities view them as a chance to take advantage of the local fascination with the more obvious aspects of western culture. I was used to hearing Christmas carols in supermarkets in Beijing during December, but was surprised to discover Mohe following the trend.

Borderland kitsch was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I set off on the journey north to Santa’s Chinese grotto and the frontier with Russia. Accompanying me were Zhu Guo and Zhang Lei, two twenty-one-year-old students and former high-school classmates from Guizhou Province in the south-west. Zhu Guo was a tiny, skinny, energetic girl studying engineering, Zhang Lei a thickset lad and trainee tenor. ‘Peking opera is too hard to sing and too traditional, so I’m learning Italian opera,’ he told me.

They spent their university holidays exploring their country. ‘We’re travel buddies, not boyfriend and girlfriend,’ explained Zhu Guo. ‘We go everywhere by train, always hard seat. We’ve been to lots of places, but Yunnan is my favourite. Good food, good weather and good fun.’ Hard seat is the cheapest option on Chinese trains, its name an accurate description of the comfort level. I hadn’t endured it on a long journey since 1988, and shuddered inwardly at the thought of twenty-one hours perching on the edge of a bench alongside migrant workers spitting, smoking and drinking their way north from Harbin.

Knowing they were travelling the tough way around China on a meagre budget prompted me to invite them to join my excursion to the North Pole Village. They are part of a new breed of Chinese travellers, and I admired their spirit. Their parents belong to the generation which join tour groups when they go on holiday; Zhu Guo and Zhang Lei were far more independent and confident.

Zhu Guo said they were planning a trip to Tibet the following year, but until then Heilongjiang was the next best thing. ‘It’s a bit of dream to come here because it’s so cold and different from where we come from. I’ve seen snow before but never anything like this.’ I hadn’t either, because outside Mohe all signs of civilisation disappeared. In its place was a bleakly beautiful vista of pines, silver birches and virgin snow that lay across the land as if a pristine, never-ending white rug was unfurled every October, only to be rolled up the following spring.

Huddled together in a taxi against the cold, we drove north along a road of compacted snow overlying the ice beneath it. There was little traffic and we passed no villages or people. The first sign of life came when we turned on to a track which ended in front of a small wooden cabin. A man appeared and unlocked the door. Inside, was a one-room museum dedicated to the prostitutes who had come to the region in the late nineteenth century.

For a few years from 1889, the area north of Mohe was the site of a gold rush. Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Korean prospectors, as well as a few westerners, flocked to Outer Manchuria to try and find their fortunes. In their wake came women also in search of more money, and this simple museum which I thought unique in China – a country which rarely acknowledges the existence of prostitution – is a poignant memorial to their lives. There are remnants of their clothes and jewellery and on the walls sepia photos of girls who looked no older than teenagers, staring straight at the camera as if daring it to judge them.

Behind the cabin, a small glade surrounded by pine trees made it clear why the museum is located here. Beneath the snow were the burial mounds of some of the women who had died of disease or unknown causes. A few crosses sticking up above the snow indicated the graves of Russians, but most were unmarked, their occupants forgotten as soon as they were underground. All cemeteries are austere, but the remoteness of this one, and imagining the lives of its occupants, reduced us all to silence.

North Pole Village wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland either. A proper settlement of 2,000 people, despite its tourist-inspired, geographically inaccurate name, it has a neat grid of streets which are lined with solid wooden houses, as well as a few shops and restaurants, a school and a post office selling Santa stamps. Zhu Guo and Zhang Lei rushed in to send postcards as proof they had visited the far northern edge of China.

Father Christmas’s home wasn’t open and neither he nor his reindeers were around, but the setting was authentic enough. Beyond the streets were fields of snow, and when I ventured off the path through them, I sank down to my knees in it. As I struggled out, the sound of loud squeals announced the arrival of a tour group riding on horse-drawn sleighs. They glided swiftly past towards the north of the village.

Following them, I reached an imposing slab of stone covered in red characters announcing that this was the end of China in the north. Below was the Amur River, and a couple of hundred metres away on the other side of it were the pine-covered hills of Russia. There was only one way to reach the shore, the closest I could get to the border which runs through the middle of the river, and that was to body-toboggan down the banks.

Huge lumps of ice were backed up at the river’s edge, like boats jostling for a mooring in a busy harbour. A few patches of ink-black water were visible, but soon the entire Amur would freeze and it would be possible to walk across it to Russia. The wandering bands of Manchu and Oroqen would have done so when both sides of the river were the same land. But no one travels between Heilongjiang and the Russian Far East from here now. The only place to cross the Amur legally is in Heihe. I would have to follow the river south.

25

Along the Amur

If Mohe is quiet at night, then Tahe is a graveyard: flurries of snow drifting aimlessly; the roads deserted apart from a few cars skidding slowly along; shuttered shops and restaurants. Finding a place to eat after dark was a struggle. I was always the only diner, and then it was just me trudging back to my chilly hotel room through the empty streets. It is as if a plague descends on Tahe every evening in the winter, leaving only a few survivors until morning.

Nearly 200 kilometres south-east of Mohe, Tahe endures a sub-Arctic climate too. Tahe, though, lacks the cachet that comes with being China’s most northerly town. Hardly anyone visits, whether Chinese or foreign. But I had no choice. I needed a base while I searched for Heilongjiang’s minorities in the outlying villages because, despite being as far north as you can go in China, Mohe is defiantly Han.

I had hoped to find Daur people, an ethnic group descended from Mongolians, in the area. But I discovered that almost all of the 130,000-odd Daur now live in Inner Mongolia, fifty kilometres to the west of Mohe, and I was going in the opposite direction. Nor would I find any Hezhen on the route I was taking. Distant relations of the Manchu, the fewer than 5,000 Hezhen live much further east along the Amur in the region of Heilongjiang that lies opposite Khabarovsk. There are more of them in Russia, where they are known as the Nanai, but in China intermarriage with the Han has resulted in their numbers shrinking dramatically.