Giant dolls, an empty theme park and semi-trailers: The tourist trap that’s now a lifeline for Russia

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Manzhouli: Visiting the Chinese border town of Manzhouli, on the remote fringe of the country’s northeastern Inner Mongolia region, is like stepping into a “made in China” Russian outpost.

On the highway linking the small airport to the city, two enormous Matryoshka nesting dolls tower over the horizon, rising almost absurdly out of nothing but the vast, flat steppe that sweeps across the border into Russia.

Trucks from Russia and Belarus wait for custom clearance at a parking lot in Manzhouli, a Chinese town on the border of Russia. Credit: Sanghee Liu

The dolls are actually hotels and connected to a Russian-themed amusement park featuring Kremlinesque buildings topped with brightly coloured onion domes and spires in a pastiche of Moscow’s Red Square.

Arriving at night, as my translator and I did earlier this month on a flight from Beijing, is to be treated to a glittering vision of the city, its skyline of Russian gothic and European-style buildings lit by golden lights after sundown each evening.

The mystique abruptly ends about 9.30pm, when the town’s facade plunges into darkness, as though a city official has pulled the cord on a giant electrical plug.

Manzhouli in the harsh light of day is a hustling township on the 4209-kilometre border between China and Russia, near the juncture with Mongolia. Its identity is split between being a Russian-themed tourist trap for Chinese travellers, and its foremost purpose as China’s largest land port and economic lifeline to Russia.

The best place to witness this stark juxtaposition is in a dusty carpark near the border checkpoint, where dozens of Russian and Belarusian trucks are stationed each day waiting for customs clearance under the gaze of the Matryoshkas looming in the distance.

It was this story I was here to explore for a forthcoming report – the strengthening China-Russia relationship and the record surge in cross-border trade since the Ukraine invasion, much of it passing through Manzhouli and headed north to help sustain its neighbour through the noose of western sanctions. And what impact United States President Donald Trump might have on this alignment.

“Trump is different. He is more pro-Russian,” one Belarusian driver told me, gleefully rubbing his two index fingers together to suggest a closeness.

“He and [Vladimir] Putin might be friends. And [Belarusian President] Aleksandr Lukashenko.”

We were here midweek, a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping would meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow and declare their countries “friends of steel” who must “decisively counter” US efforts to contain them. It’s a bromance that now extends beyond 45 meetings between the pair.

It was the mid-spring low tourism season, but there were clear signs the two countries’ sputtering economies, one ravaged by war and the other by the long drag of a property market collapse, were having an impact on local businesses.

Only a smattering of people were perusing Manzhouli’s main strip, the China-Soviet Golden Street, where a statue of a polar bear and panda bear holding hands stands in tribute to the friendship. The strip is usually a drawcard for Russian tourists wanting cheap Chinese goods. Most of the shops spruiking faded Sino-Soviet souvenirs or clothes were empty but for their owners, and there was a sparse lunchtime audience at a nearby Russian restaurant where meals are served with a live show of traditional dancing.

Russian dancers perform for mostly Chinese audiences at a Russian restaurant in Manzhouli.Credit: Sanghee Liu

The Russian theme park was a ghost town where bored attendants manned empty rides. We were the only visitors, except for a group of five local Chinese, who had popped in for the day from a nearby town.

All of this added to the conspicuousness of our arrival in Manzhouli, which was immediately on the radar of the local authorities. When police materialised behind the check-in desk at the Matryoshka hotel, which was grand yet also eerily empty (and intricately committed to the doll theme, down to the light bulbs and the teapots), there was no mistaking that they were here for us.

They flipped through my passport and left. But sure enough, we were reacquainted again the next morning when we set out to speak with the truck drivers near the border.

We were still in the weeds of small talk with two Belarusian men when a police van pulled up. Five or six officers surrounded us just as one of the drivers was proudly showing me photos of his wife with their prize-winning shih tzu that had placed second at a dog competition in the Czech Republic.

Few tourists were spotted at the Russian themed amusement park in Manzhouli. Credit: Sanghee Liu

The police were cordial, checked our identification, and told us we were free to continue our interviews. But as soon as they disappeared, we acquired two government minders. One of them, a man from the local foreign ministry office, would be our Russian translator, we were told.

It was not an offer we could refuse, and so pressed for time, we carried on with our interviews under their surveillance. They didn’t obstruct any of our questions, but it was not ideal. All translations were later independently checked.

They stuck with us for several hours, but lost interest after we ducked into a Russian supermarket in the town’s centre, and lingered among the imported wares. Think Lenin and Stalin-branded chocolate, vodka, fermented horse milk, a wall of Matryoshka dolls (made in China), and an aisle dedicated to Russian honey of differing flower varietals.

We’d bump into our minder/translator friend again later that day, seemingly keeping an eye on us as we photographed containers of Russian coal sitting on train tracks near Manzhouli station.

A Russian-style theme park in Manzhouli, a town on the Chinese-Russian border, which also serves as China’s largest land port. Credit: Sanghee Liu

Souvenir vendors at the China-Russia border tourist area in Manzhouli.Credit: Sanghee Liu

Meanwhile, our day was marked by other curious coincidences. We were denied access to one of the main tourist attractions – a sightseeing tower equipped with telescopes to peer across the border into the neighbouring Russian town of Zabaikalsk and, in the other direction, Mongolia. The booking system for foreigners was malfunctioning, we were told.

The town’s museum and a former tsarist-era Russian prison, located next to each other, were both shut, one for maintenance and the other for water damage. With comedic timing, a museum worker hung the “closed” sign in the window as we approached. I wasn’t the only reporter hoping to visit. Outside the museum, we ran into journalists from The Economist, and remarked at our apparent poor luck.

As a North Asia correspondent based in Singapore and limited to covering China in short bursts on temporary visas, this was the first time I’ve run into such reporting strictures. But old China hands will tell you this is a common experience for foreign reporters, especially when trying to cover stories outside the major cities and in politically sensitive areas.

It highlights the challenge of reporting in this vast country, which is both open and closed depending on the doors you press against. But when those doors do open, what lies behind them is often a fascinating, richer and more complex picture of China than we’re used to seeing.

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