The Emperor Far Away (42 page)

Nikolay Kukharenko, the engaging head of the local Confucius Institute, a Beijing-funded scheme to encourage the learning of Mandarin and present a softer side of China to the world, disagreed. ‘I know lots of Russian businessmen who’ll tell you how they will pay 30,000 roubles [£550] a month to a Russian and they work for a month and then they start drinking. The Chinese don’t drink, work hard and they’ll accept 20,000 roubles [£370] a month. You know, it’s a lot easier for a western Russian politician to say the Chinese are taking jobs than it is for them to create jobs.’

Nationalist deputies in the Duma, the Russian parliament, crack jokes about how Blago is so dominated by Beijing that the city government includes Chinese officials. None of the migrants from Dongbei are laughing, as that only feeds the anger of the local xenophobes. ‘I think the Russians are prejudiced towards the Chinese,’ said Zhang Li Na, a thirty-five-year-old woman from Harbin. ‘Sometimes we are afraid to go out at night because the young Russian guys get drunk and beat the Chinese up. But the police don’t care if a Chinese person gets attacked.’

Zhang and her husband are typical of the Chinese in Blago, who are mostly small-time traders. Their business is selling clocks. ‘We buy the clocks in southern China, in Guangzhou and Yiwu, and then assemble them here using Chinese workers. Russians are no good at working hard. They drink too much and they’re lazy and inefficient,’ she said. ‘I don’t really like Russians, although the old people are friendly, and the Russians don’t like us being here. But they can’t live without us. The only real Russian industries are all heavy manufacturing. They can’t make clothes or clocks or anything like that cheaply.’

Most of the stall owners at the main market are Chinese and they were happy to put up with my tone-uncertain Mandarin, rather than having to communicate in the pidgin Russian they use normally. There are now around 10,000 full-time Chinese residents of Blago, with another 10,000 or so coming to work on a seasonal basis on farms and building sites. In total, the Chinese make up about 10 per cent of the population. That is more than enough to confirm the greatest fear of the locals, which is that China wants to reclaim Outer Manchuria and is colonising the Far East by stealth.

Beijing’s ambitions in the region are the subject of TV documentaries and newspaper columns in Russia, and are the subtext to every conversation about the Chinese in Blago. ‘Here in the Far East, people feel neglected by Moscow and we are detached from the rest of Russia. You can’t be sure it won’t happen in the future because the Russian population is declining and the Chinese need room because there are so many of them,’ said Sergei the student.

It is the dwindling number of Russians in the Far East that truly alarms the politicians in Moscow. There are around six and a half million people in an area that covers six and a half million square kilometres, down from just over eight million in 1991 when the Soviet Union expired. Across the Amur, over 100 million Chinese live in far smaller Dongbei alone. Faced with such an overwhelming numerical superiority, the paranoia of Blago’s residents is understandable. Many are convinced the arrival of Chinese workers in the Far East over the last decade is the first step in China’s plan to extend its boundaries in the north-east.

Adding to the temptation for Beijing are the region’s abundant natural resources. Rich in everything from coal to timber, as well as untapped minerals and a huge salmon-fishing industry, China is already buying up as many local companies as it can. And every Russian with even a tenuous grasp of history knows that the Far East was once Manchu territory. For the conspiracy theorists, resurrecting the Manchurian Empire would allow China to solve some of its energy needs and give its people access to a fresh supply of both land and jobs.

Arresting the decline in the Far East’s population is probably an impossible task. In the days of the USSR, many of the country’s cleverest citizens were encouraged to move east by higher salaries and subsidised flights back to European Russia. Now those incentives are gone and their descendants are leaving in their droves. Just as bright as their parents and grandparents were, they are unwilling to put up with low wages and living so far from the centre of the country.

So expensive is the eight-hour flight to Moscow that it is cheaper for Blago’s residents to cross the Amur and hop on a plane to the beaches of Sanya on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost point, for a holiday in the sun. Many of the young people in the Far East have never even been to western Russia. Instead of looking for jobs in the capital or St Petersburg, more and more of them are now migrating south. Almost all of Elena and Anastasia’s students wanted out of Blago, and China is increasingly their destination of choice.

They grow up visiting Heihe as often as twice a month. Moving to the country they know already is the logical next step. ‘I used to want to go to America or the UK and that’s why I worked so hard at my English. But then I started to study Chinese and now I’ve decided my future lies in China. It’s much easier for me to get to China than it is to get a visa for America,’ said Eugenya, a smart and tall twenty-one-year-old with flaming red hair. Her Mandarin is already almost fluent. ‘Some people in Russia think being so close to China is dangerous because of the history, but I think it’s an opportunity for me.’

Despite the Russians fleeing the Far East, and the ominous pronouncements from Moscow about China’s intentions, it is improbable that Beijing will literally retake the territory it lost to Russia. But, as North Korea already is, the region is set to become an economic colony of Dongbei. ‘In ten years’ time there’ll be far more Russian resources owned by China,’ said Nikolay Kukharenko, the most rational of the Russians I met in Blago when it came to their neighbour. ‘What reason is there for the Chinese to come physically if they can just take our resources?’

Some of the people of Blago will be absorbed into the Chinese realm too, like the Manchu, Oroqen and Hezhen before them. It is the nature of empires to contract and expand, to attract and repel. Eugenya’s determination to travel south and find a future in China is simply part of a natural process, just the latest wave of migration in Outer Manchuria – a land so vast that maps are automatically arbitrary.

China’s borderlands mutate constantly. They are permanently restless, forever in flux. Different peoples have always moved in both directions between China and its neighbours. All that changes are the reasons that pull or push them beyond the frontiers. In Blago, especially late at night, the contrast with the opposite bank of the Amur is so great that is enough to make anyone want to move on. Standing on the riverfront with the darkened buildings of the tsar’s Russia at my back, even I could feel the neon lights of Heihe calling me towards China.

Further Reading

Bailey F. M.
Mission to Tashkent
(Oxford University Press, 1946)

Bailey F. M.
No Passport to Tibet
(Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957)

Becker Jasper
Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine
(Simon & Schuster, 1997)

Bickers Robert
The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire 1832–1914
(Allen Lane, 2011)

Cha Victor
The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future
(The Bodley Head, 2012)

Chang Jung and Jon Halliday
Mao: The Unknown Story
(Jonathan Cape, 2005)

Chang Leslie T.
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
(Spiegel & Grau, 2008)

Colquhoun Archibald Ross
Amongst the Shans
(Field & Tuer, 1885)

Colquhoun Archibald Ross
The ‘Overland’ to China
(Harper & Brothers, 1900)

Crossley Pamela Kyle, Helen F. Siu and Donald S. Sutton (eds),
Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China
(University of California Press, 2006)

Davis Sara L. M.
Song and Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders
(Columbia University Press, 2005)

Demick Barbara
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea
(Granta Books, 2010)

Dikötter Frank
The Discourse of Race in Modern China
(C. Hurst, 1992)

Evans Grant, Christopher Hutton and Kuah Kung Eng (eds),
Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social and Cultural Change in the Borderlands
(Palgrave, 2000)

Fleming Peter
News from Tartary
(Jonathan Cape, 1936)

Fleming Peter
One’s Company
(Jonathan Cape, 1934)

French Patrick
Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land
(HarperCollins, 2003)

Gifford Rob
China Road: One Man’s Journey into the Heart of Modern China
(Bloomsbury, 2007)

Goullart Peter
Forgotten Kingdom
(John Murray, 1957)

Hopkirk Peter
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
(Kodansha Amer, 1992)

Johnston Reginald Fleming
From Peking to Mandalay
(John Murray, 1908)

Kynge James
China Shakes the World: The Rise of a Hungry Nation
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006)

Ma Jian
Red Dust: A Path through China
(Chatto & Windus, 2001)

Pomfret John
Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
(Henry Holt, 2006)

Scott James C.
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
(Yale University Press, 2009)

Shakya Tsering
The Dragon in the Land of the Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947
(Pimlico, 1999)

Spence Jonathan D.
The Search for Modern China
(Hutchinson, 1990)

Thubron Colin
To a Mountain in Tibet
(Chatto & Windus, 2011)

Tyler Christian
Wild West China: The Untold Story of a Frontier Land
(John Murray, 2003)

Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya
The Struggle for Tibet
(Verso, 2009)

Acknowledgements

All travellers are reliant on the kindness of strangers. A travel writer is even more so. I owe a great debt to the many people who spoke to me about their lives and assisted with introductions. Aba, Angelina, Billy, Christina, Julia, Li Qingmei, Mr Kim, Nang, Paul, Pemba, Piao, Rayila, Samphel, Tenzin and Yu Shumei were especially central to the writing of this book. Sadly, given the sensitivity of the subject matter, I am unable to print their real names. I wish I could.

My agent Ben Mason has been a huge support over the years. The excellent advice of Michael Fishwick, Anna Simpson and Peter James at Bloomsbury was crucial in turning a mere manuscript into a book worthy of publication. Needless to say, any mistakes, or shortcomings, are all mine. My family and friends have been an ongoing source of encouragement.

The following people aided me in different but vital ways in my seven and a half years in China, during my research and travels and as I wrote this book – thanks to you all: Anastasia Arkharova, Paul Atherley, Jasper Becker, Natalie Behring, Andrew Chant, Rayhan Demytrie, Laurent Dupin, Peter Foster, Colin Hinshelwood, Jiang Feng, Jin Guangzhu, Jin Ni, Kakharman Khozhamberdi, Justin Kiersky, Nikolay Kukharenko, Eva Li, Lily Li, Zoe Li, Elena Mezhakova, Malcolm Moore, Peter Simpson, Richard Spencer, Chris Taylor, Piero Vio, Samara Yawnghwe, Sean Yu and Xiao Yu.

Copyright © 2014 by David Eimer

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