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Monday, July 24 Manzhuli to Hulunbuir road trip
Driving from Manzhuli back to Hulunbuir. I think I’m done with road trips for another few years now. What is the point of driving and not spending much time anywhere? I never understood it.
Still, morning in Manzhou-li. We grabbed a coffee in KFC because all the other places only offered instant coffee. They say "coffee" on the menu; we ask what coffee; they say Nescafe – we keep going. All signs were doubled in Russian and everyone spoke a bit of Russian too, and no English at all, so my second language was finally useful for something. The architecture in the city looked like a parody of Russian architecture: Orthodox domes on top of mixed commercial and housing buildings; I explained it’s alike putting a Buddhist temple on top of a housing complex and calling it Chinese architecture.
GQ complained about coffee in China – no one cares about good coffee. I say it's fine, locals don't drink coffee here – in the US, trying to find good tea and not a piece of crap in a tea bag is a doomed adventure too.
Looking at all the Russian souvenirs and matryoshkas sold everywhere around, one might think that Manzhou-li is a very popular tourist destination for Chinese who want to learn more about Russia, buy Russian souvenirs. In fact, it's far from what is going on there. Certainly, there are many domestic tourists, especially in the summer, but the town's primary industry is the wholesale to Russian entrepreneurs, who come here to find products, checkout quality in person, then order in bulk and sell those matryoshkas in Russia in tourist spots. About 70% of all Chinese exports to Russia flow through this town.
We finished our KFC breakfast with good espresso coffee and youtiao – which is just deep-fried dough – delicous! By 10:30am we were on the way leaving the city.
We drove along the Russian border: to the right, Mongolian steppes and hills, with sheeps and cows; to the left – the neutral land with uncultivated high grass, blooming flowers, then Russian villages in the distance. Дурой, Забайкальский край – an interesting looking settlement on a hill, population 668 people, founded in 1745, according to Wikipedia; it made me curious about the other side of the border; who are those people living out there far away from any big city – Chita is 500 km away; but across the border, there stands this neon-lit trade city. Then, on the Chinese side, Mongolian yurts are built for tourists, and many Chinese tourists were taking pictures in the steppes; many cars drove along the border – a popular thing to do here in the summer.
Finally, we got away from the border road. The steppes changed to pleasant-looking landscapes with a river on the left and many trees across the river, in contrast to all grass steppes to the right. It reminded me of Russian classic paintings, not sure exactly which. We stopped; we waded the river, and I got my feet wet. Horses were gazing in the distance.
Our stay was planned in a yurt that night, the one that we couldn’t stay the other night because it was leaking from the rain. Now it was dry, but, quickly, we realized the yurt was full of bugs inside – from moths to grass bugs on the bed sheets. Then a toad was quacking on the carpet. First, me and GQ freaked out, but B calmed us down saying it was fine: Mongolian yurts always have grass bugs, but they are harmless and won’t move in the dark. The hosts made the mistake of turning on the lights in the yurt before our arrival, and now all the bugs got to the light, attracted to the white bedsheets, B said.
Then, after my ingenious thought that a single mosquito can ruin sleep, B started freaking out too, while I and GQ calmed down after B asurred us those bugs were harmless. It took us a bit longer to convince B to sleep and not try to find another place so late at night. I sat outside of the yurt for a while and looked at the Milky Way – what a great dark night in Mongolian steppes. When was I able to see the Milky Way so clearly? There, outside, I drank a can of Mongol beer called Сэнгур, and went to bed after 1am.
(written in July, edited in December)
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Thank you so much! A pretty rare kind of trip... at least for the sources I read.