Prisoners on the Amur
title: Prisoners by the Amur River
excerpt: We crossed the river, thinking we were running toward freedom.
translation_key: posts/amur-river
Chapter One | The Seed
Russia.
Ru-ss-ia.
Before the sound has even faded,
the Siberian cold wind has already pierced the air,
tearing through the gaps between my teeth.
The frost-entwined wind
churns and howls over the frozen earth,
howls across the tundra like something that bites.
Carrying the scent of rust and hard liquor,
the wind slides past birch after lonely birch,
rips through the leaping melody of Swan Lake,
passes through the woods, and the wooden houses shudder and creak in the wind’s roar.
I remember in middle school,
when I opened the geography atlas,
what always drew my eyes
was the north of the Eurasian continent —
that great expanse, that seemingly boundless green.
Four square pictures,
on that yellowed textbook page,
gave off a faint scent of ink.
What they showed
was a faraway place I might never reach.
As for the content —
nothing more than Red Square, the Kremlin;
ballet, onion-domed churches.
My fingers brushed the slightly rough paper,
I narrowed my eyes and leaned closer.
Once, and once again.
And then —
they also appeared in exercise books and exam papers,
once, and once again.
I grew truly tired of it.
Gradually,
those pictures faded in my heart.
Along with the weariness came this:
I looked forward to that class even more —
until at last,
the teacher coughed, clicked the mouse,
and those four pictures, like a prank,
appeared on the projection screen.
Geography class,
like bait, briefly satisfied me,
then just as quickly cast me aside.
It tempted me to believe the world was vast,
yet again and again, with the exam syllabus,
pulled me back into the classroom,
leaving only the north that could not be seen outside the window.
After class, in the evening,
I opened the atlas and sank into thought.
What caught my eye was —
a place name with parentheses.
“Vladivostok (Haishenwai)”
And so my gaze wandered along those rows of tongue-twisting names —
Irkutsk,
Ulan-Ude,
Chita,
Birobidzhan,
Khabarovsk,
Blagoveshchensk,
Ussuriysk.
Some had parentheses,
some did not.
The history teacher once mentioned
their Chinese names.
Having thought this, I turned to the next page.
But what truly shook my chest was one day, wandering aimlessly on Wikipedia,
when I clicked into the entry for “Heihe”
and discovered —
Heihetun was once called Hailanpao,
and “Hailanpao” —
means exactly “Heihe.”
I suddenly remembered that pair of twin cities —
Buda-Pest.
And Hailanpao?
Like a rubber band pulled hard,
by guns, by documents,
and by rubber stamps,
torn forcibly apart.
Stretched thin and long,
until at last it snapped — “pa” — at a node of history.
I put down the atlas, inexplicably hollow inside,
and a question suddenly welled up:
would the people living in these twin cities
occasionally stand by the river in a daze,
gazing at the lights on the opposite bank;
would they wonder whose land
the ground beneath their feet belongs to?
Would they, like me,
be unable to say where their roots are?
Those names were printed again and again in atlases,
in textbooks, in visa application forms,
in identity documents;
they were printed into soldiers’ passwords.
Yet on the river’s surface where the wind blows,
they simply drift quietly away,
never to be fished back.
I began frantically researching,
reading the few scant lines of introduction on Wikipedia;
looking at the crisscrossing streets of those cities on Google Maps;
watching vlogs by Russian uploaders on bilibili.
I even registered a HelloTalk account,
using Google Translate to ask questions of Russian netizens.
Suddenly I longed for it.
Longed to set foot on that land,
to walk down streets with Russian signs.
Longed to see the people on the other side of that border,
their lives,
their names,
and how much they resembled mine.
Wanted to drink a mouthful of borscht,
wanted to see Lenin’s statue,
wanted to be in —
yes, even if only to be in;
that land.
—— That was enough.
That was the beginning of this journey.
Chapter Two | The Fugitives
The idea of setting out came
on a late night in Jeju Island.
The zopiclone had not yet worn off,
blissful blood surging in my chest.
I had no sleepiness at all.
My hand gripped the phone tightly.
In the top-left corner of the screen, an avatar flickered —
a picture she had drawn herself.
We had known each other for quite a while.
She was a few years older than me; we met on social media.
Born in Blagoveshchensk, her mother Chinese.
Later we started voice calls,
talking about small everyday things, social media topics…
She often complained that school was boring:
“Really just killing time, you know.”
Some nights,
we simply left the voice call on,
neither of us speaking,
only the tapping of keyboards coming through.
She once told me
that apart from accompanying her mom to Heihe for shopping,
she had never left her city.
Her father and stepfather were both gone;
her mom had long tried to control her in her own way,
but as time passed, she began to break free —
she took Russian citizenship, served in the military,
and her mom gradually let go, no longer forcing her will on her.
Yet that letting go
was still some kind of exchange,
like a brick about to fall from a corner of the wall.
We once discussed the Russo-Ukrainian war;
I just wanted to know what she thought.
She was silent for a long time, and her voice dropped:
“That topic… don’t talk about it. It’s not safe.”
I suddenly understood:
many words cannot be spoken there.
In that moment the night turned bitterly cold,
the air as if coated in ice.
She added one more line:
“You know, my phone was once inspected by the FSB.”
I froze,
unable to speak,
despair, fear, and grievance jammed in my throat.
She said softly: “That’s why I want to escape.”
The night sank down; only her breathing remained on the line.
I suddenly understood:
in this world,
she was just like me —
only looking for a place to set foot,
a place unwatched, where one could breathe.
We were really all the same.
I asked her:
“Where do you think your homeland is?”
She was silent for a long time, and finally said:
“Nowhere, I suppose.”
Neither of us is a “person with roots.”
While preparing for the trip, quarrels with my parents were expected.
During that period, because Russia was under sanctions, many payment methods didn’t work.
I wanted to send her money via Alipay
so she could prepare for expenses on the road,
but she had no Chinese bank card, so her mom had to receive it for her.
She said, “Let me discuss it with my mom.”
And then came —
the sound of her and her mom arguing on the other end of the call.
Separated by the screen and thousands of kilometers,
my body couldn’t stop trembling,
but I could no longer cry;
my throat was hoarse as if something were blocking it.
My own mom wouldn’t let it go either:
“How can you trust her? Her mother is exactly that kind of schemer!”
The storm gradually subsided.
When the quarrel stopped, the other end of the phone suddenly went quiet,
only each other’s breathing left.
She was silent for a long time, as if trying hard to swallow her emotions.
I opened my mouth, wanting to say something,
but only a faint sob came out.
No sound from her side;
the two of us, across the screen,
both seemed to have our throats stopped with water.
Another stretch of silence.
Even the sound of the wind could be heard.
Suddenly — no one knew who started first —
a tear fell,
nasal and choked, low sobbing mixing into the call.
Then, as if we had agreed,
neither of us could hold back,
and we cried together across the screen.
Crying in fits and starts,
neither daring to let the emotions out too loudly,
only whispering again and again in the dark:
“It’s okay… it will pass.”
“We can always escape, right?”
She suddenly said softly:
“I want so much to pat your head, Ame… what a shame I can’t reach…”
Her voice was low, carrying a trace of grievance and weakness,
and after saying it she choked up.
I froze; tears rolled down my face.
She cried in fits and starts; I could only comfort her over and over.
“We can always escape, it’s okay…”
“Really, one day we’ll meet…”
Amid Jeju’s wind and the drug’s effects,
I gripped my phone, palms full of sweat.
I am not brave —
I’ve simply been cornered by reality with no way back.
Every door in the world is shut,
the road never ends,
there is no exit anywhere,
yet I still longed for freedom,
even if only for a brief moment —
even if only to breathe in the darkness together with her,
to feel together that freedom we had never had.
Only one thought repeated in my heart:
if I really couldn’t get out,
if the whole world sealed us off,
then I only wanted to be a little closer,
no matter what,
only wanting, in the course of this escape,
to be myself again.
Even if only for an instant.
Chapter Three | The Small City
Heihe is a small city.
That was all I thought at first —
but a small city’s “small” —
what exactly does that refer to?
First of all — the airport is small.
No jet bridges, don’t even think about shuttle buses.
That day it was raining in Heihe;
I walked down the aircraft stairs
and ran through the drizzle toward that two-story shed —
the “arrivals hall.”
The houses are small too.
Low five- or six-story buildings,
curtained, shabby storefronts,
red and blue rooftops lying bare,
like illustrations from childhood textbooks.
Quiet, square.
The streets are small too.
What could be called a “street” —
mostly two lanes, four at the widest;
even the main road was only six lanes.
One side of the road always seemed to be under repair,
workers busy, clanging sounds filling the air.
At the center of the streets was a roundabout; traffic formed a ring,
went around it, then headed onto the main roads on either side.
All of this was so much like
the Jinan in my memory,
before it grew wild into what it is today —
it too once had such roundabouts, such storefronts,
and these neither-tall-nor-short little buildings.
Only later
were they all replaced by crossroads,
leveled, swapped for taller, brighter new buildings.
But Heihe
seems to have had its time jammed by someone.
Everything has stayed
in that era when it had just learned “urbanization,”
never intending to take one more step forward.
This has nothing to do with north or south;
Jinan, Qingdao, Dalian…
those northern cities also had their era of “growing wild,”
giant towers hundreds of meters high rising from the ground.
But here,
if only Heihe could also…
Thinking this,
I suddenly felt a little ashamed,
and silently scolded myself in my heart:
all you think about is development,
and you still claim to stand with the people.
Scrolling, I saw it would rain again tomorrow.
Thinking I should buy an umbrella,
I opened a shopping app only to find —
even JD.com would take two or three days to deliver,
and by then I would already be on the other side of the river.
I remembered in Jinan
there was a JD warehouse in Dezhou;
“next-day delivery,” even “same-day delivery,”
was already routine,
and you could buy whatever you wanted in one breath.
But here,
time and distance suddenly became real and slow.
And I discovered
that umbrellas on the delivery app
were actually several times more expensive than online shopping.
I was stunned.
Big companies designed convenient delivery networks for the cities,
and small cities, as a matter of course, became the last stop.
My hotel was near the customs building,
its sign written in Russian,
declaring its identity as a border city.
……
Wait,
this hotel actually has a supermarket!
Carrying the drink and umbrella I’d just bought,
I suddenly felt I wasn’t so helpless after all.
I took off my black mask,
set down the things in my hands,
opened the door with the key card,
dropped my backpack,
and fell backward onto the bed with a thump.
Ame nuzzled the pillow like a kitten
and casually posted a business-as-usual update on Twitter.
Ame, oh Ame,
another hard day of work.
Getting up, I walked to the mirror,
straightened the bangs nearly covering my eyes,
looked at my slightly bedraggled self,
and suddenly couldn’t help laughing.
Some people say hotels and rented rooms don’t count as “home,”
but right now I felt
this place was safe;
no one was coming to catch me;
there were drug-induced illusions,
and the pleasures inside the screen waiting for me —
this place is home.
I don’t know why, but I cried.
After who knows how long,
the rain outside the window stopped,
the supermarket downstairs closed,
and the lights on the street grew sparse.
A small city is small —
just small enough to hold tonight’s me.
Chapter Four | The Escape
Early in the morning,
seven o’clock sharp.
The sky was overcast,
yet there was an abnormally dazzling sunlight.
Like a picture whose curves were pulled wrong in Photoshop,
the city’s foreground and background seemed to split apart.
It came so suddenly, like a prank.
I packed my luggage and called a car.
The car wasn’t fast.
Outside the window swept tree after tree, house after house;
faded billboards swept past;
intersections and roundabouts that were beginning to feel familiar swept past.
And then —
the customs building,
and that Ferris wheel appeared at the end of my line of sight.
It stood there quietly,
all alone;
in my memory I had never seen it turn.
I had noticed it very early,
and had even planned to watch the sunset from it —
but the guides on Xiaohongshu told me
it had long since stopped operating.
Not the “temporarily out of service” kind,
but with no announcement, no notice,
simply vanished —
not even an obituary.
And so it just —
stands there,
fading bit by bit,
rusting,
creaking in the wind.
Just like that —
it fell,
shattered,
died young.
I watched it in silence,
like watching a forced-ripe fruit drop to the ground —
smashed to pulp.
Crossing the bridge,
the car stopped in front of the small border-inspection building.
I dragged my luggage into the building.
And then — I froze.
People.
A dense mass of people.
Backs pressed to backs, shoulders squeezing shoulders, skin brushing skin.
Layer upon layer, people surging in like a tide.
People shoving forward,
shouting, gasping, squeezing ahead with numb eyes.
Two or three bulging plastic bags,
ropes fixed to home goods cutting red marks into hands,
people carrying tables, chairs, and stools.
Some cursed, some wept,
some tried to cut in line,
some shoved, yelled, and trampled like mad.
I stood where I was.
This was not the “port” I had imagined.
No smooth tile floors, no air conditioning,
no electronic gates with prompt tones.
Still,
management went on all the same —
the loudspeakers blared, signs were posted, police stood watch.
But all of it seemed like
a basin of water trying to plug a crack —
still dripping and leaking through the fingers.
The crowd slowly squeezed onto the boat.
A 9:30 boat,
and at 9:40 it still hadn’t departed.
When the hull began to sway gently,
a northeastern auntie behind me reminded me in a low voice:
“Grab a stool and sit down.”
I thanked her, pulled over a little stool, and sat.
Before me was a row of grilled sausages and bottled water on a counter;
I glanced at the prices —
almost three times what they cost on shore.
The boat rocked gently.
I looked up. Beyond the glass window
was her city.
Blagoveshchensk.
She was born here;
hidden here are
her laughter, her tears,
her grievances and her resistance.
I gazed over there,
gazed at that low, silent city.
I knew she was over there,
but I couldn’t see her.
And I,
adrift on this stretch of water,
was drawing closer and closer to her.
We were both adrift on it,
rootless, nameless, soundless.
—— So let’s escape across, just like this.
Like a kitten leaving home,
never to return.
Chapter Five | Her City
After that treaty and that decree divided the river’s surface,
the name Hailanpao
was given to the town the Russians built on the north bank:
Blagoveshchensk.
Yes. I saw her; we got off the boat.
The moment I stepped onto this city’s soil, my heart raced abnormally fast; I could hardly breathe.
We called a taxi, and she sat beside me.
Outside the window was a street wide beyond reason —
I had never seen a street so wide.
Neatly planted trees lined both sides,
lush and green like a garden;
the houses were low, two or three stories.
I couldn’t help murmuring:
“So… the streets here are this wide…”
She laughed softly: “Here… they’re all like this.”
She said it frankly and calmly.
I turned sharply to look at her;
her expression showed no ripple at all,
as if it were something said a thousand times.
Yes. She was born in Blagoveshchensk
and had never truly left.
She grew up here, went to school here,
went through quarrel after quarrel, cry after cry.
She had never ridden a high-speed train, never even taken a plane,
much less had the chance to see the big cities that belonged to her —
Vladivostok, Moscow, Saint Petersburg.
She said she had been to China too —
but only to Heihe.
That little city which in my eyes was merely a brief stop on a journey,
which occupied only one page of my itinerary,
was to her already “a foreign land.”
I suddenly felt suffocated, wanted to cry…
Because I had been to too many places.
I had ridden the Shinkansen, been to Tokyo, been to Osaka,
and had wandered aimlessly through the streets of Jeju.
In a Tokyo café,
watching planes streak across the sky,
I had even found those scenes ordinary to the point of boredom.
Yet now, sitting beside her,
I suddenly felt an unprecedented guilt.
She had never blamed me for anything,
had never even mentioned this,
but still I dimly felt:
Was I showing off?
Did every casual description of mine
sting her?
Did I, in the depths of my heart,
also carry some self-righteous pity and sense of superiority —
I can leave whenever I want, go where I want,
while she can only stay here —
even at this very moment… meeting me.
I wanted so much to ask her: do you hate me?
Do you find me detestable?
Do you think I’m just a hypocritical,
superiority-soaked outsider?
But I couldn’t open my mouth; I couldn’t say these words.
The car moved slowly through the streets.
We passed that familiar-yet-strange sign — Rostics.
She told me it was Russia’s KFC;
ever since the Russo-Ukrainian war,
this city’s KFC had become Rostics.
I stared blankly at that sign
and suddenly remembered that saying:
“People take the world as it was when they were born as the default settings.”
She at least had seen a Russia that had KFC.
At least… at least?
I began to feel an inexpressible pain.
I looked at her profile,
her eyelashes stirred gently by the wind,
her gaze on the familiar scenery outside the window,
calm and soft.
While I could only sit beside her,
harboring a secret guilt,
trying to conceal what I thought of as my aloofness and hypocrisy,
trying to cover up that “condescending sympathy.”
I truly didn’t know how to atone.
Or rather — perhaps this “sin” doesn’t exist at all?
Maybe she never minded at all,
and all my so-called guilt
was nothing but a performance of self-indulgence?
But still I couldn’t help the pain.
And that pain made me understand:
the only thing that could ease my guilt at this moment
was to keep her company.
I just wanted to stay by her side,
to draw near her world,
even if only a little,
even if in a way I wasn’t sure was sincere.
She suddenly turned to look at me and smiled,
a smile gentle and unguarded.
“Where do you want to go today?”
Perhaps this was the only atonement I could make:
to quietly keep her company like this,
no more words needed,
just follow her,
stroll the streets she knew by heart,
eat the food she was used to,
listen to her tell the most ordinary little things.
Perhaps this kind of company
could slightly soothe my heart, torn apart by self-awareness.
Perhaps I would discover
that she had never needed my pity or my so-called “rescue.”
She was simply here, in her city, on her land,
gently waiting for me to come.
On the first day we didn’t do much.
I went out on my own, heading south along the road,
past Khrushchevkas and broad lawns,
through puddles and muddy pavement.
That shopping mall just appeared at the intersection,
a standard big-box mall oriented toward car users.
Rather, it itself represented this city’s respectability —
a kind of “all-Russia unified modern life.”
After lingering in front of the entrance a while,
like a kitten that had done something wrong,
I slipped in while no one was looking.
—— After all, I wasn’t even sure where the entrance was.
……
Russian supermarkets actually have this many kinds of energy drinks…
According to what she said later,
these drinks actually require a passport.
But like many such “restrictions,”
in reality they are lightly bypassed.
—— No one questioned me; I easily bought a few cans.
I put several silver cans of Adrenaline into the basket
and grabbed some peanut snacks too.
After leaving the supermarket I went to Rostics.
I tried to order myself but couldn’t use cash,
so I grabbed a passerby nearby.
Took out my phone, opened a translation app.
He read it at a glance, nodded,
and quickly paid with his own card.
Without hesitation, I produced 500 rubles.
Just as I was about to leave,
he called out to stop me.
I turned; he exchanged a few quiet words with the clerk
and handed me back 100 rubles — my change.
So touching…
What a good person…
I silently thanked him in my heart.
Carrying these snacks and drinks,
I returned to the hotel.
I quietly set the things on the table
and slowly approached the bed.
She was sleeping peacefully.
I stared at her face for a while, took off my coat, and gently lay down beside her.
Outside the window the sky faded little by little,
and the streetlights gradually came on.
Many things happened this day.
So I closed my eyes,
digesting this newly felt part of the world.
Just like that, the first day quietly passed.
Chapter Six | Dislocation
In the early morning, Blagoveshchensk’s sunlight came through the gap in the curtains
and lit the room bright.
Just past five, and the sun had already risen high,
as if impatient to wake the city.
I opened my map app and found my location.
A red pin sat firmly in the center of Blagoveshchensk.
I took a screenshot, hesitating whether to send it to friends.
I’d even thought of the caption: I’m in Russia!
Yet my finger hovered over the send button, never pressing it.
The Russia we usually talk about — what is it like?
What comes to mind is always Moscow’s Red Square,
the solemn, majestic sight of the Kremlin,
at most with the classical splendor of Saint Petersburg’s Winter Palace added.
These are the Russia carved out by media and textbooks,
the entirety of most people’s knowledge of this country.
But Blagoveshchensk?
I recalled the scene in the supermarket yesterday:
on the signs for product categories,
Chinese translations were prominently printed.
That would be unimaginable in Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
This city had a subtle sense of dislocation
from the “Russia” in my impression.
Does it really belong to the Russia most people know?
It is more like a unique cultural melting pot on the Sino-Russian border
than that distant, grand imperial heart.
Lying on the hotel bed, sleepless, I let my thoughts wander like this.
Since sleep was gone, why not take a walk in the cool of the early morning.
She woke early too; we tidied up quickly.
“Shall we go?” she asked softly.
I nodded and picked up the room key on the table.
Oh right — a key;
an object I hadn’t seen in China for years.
Whether home doors, offices, or hotels,
now it’s mostly electronic locks, electronic access,
even just tapping a phone’s NFC to get through.
Physical keys seem to have become antiques,
like young people seeing a floppy disk
and curiously asking if it’s a figurine of the “save” icon.
Kids born after 2010 have never seen a landline, only mobile phones;
even their gesture for “making a phone call” is a flat palm held to the ear.
And so,
we pushed open the door into Blagoveshchensk’s early morning.
We walked forward along the broad street.
On both sides were neatly trimmed lawns, full of green.
Ahead, a park quietly came into view.
At the park’s center, a tall statue stood majestically.
A flock of pigeons frolicked beside it,
now lowering their heads to peck, now spreading their wings to fly,
their feathers glinting in the morning light.
Seeing this scene, scenes from the old Soviet films I’d watched as a child
instantly struck my heart —
that imagery, carrying the imprint of history, was so vivid.
I hurried to photograph the pigeons with my phone,
and the lens also caught the bright flowers
someone had laid beside the soldiers’ memorial statue.
On the street, early risers walked in twos and threes,
carrying the particular unhurriedness of a small border town.
Following the street, we walked without noticing all the way to Lenin Square.
Just as nearly every Chinese city has a Zhongshan Road or a Zhongshan Park,
Russian cities, too, all seem to have a Lenin Square —
or at least a statue of Lenin.
Where is Grandpa Lenin?
Right in the middle of the square,
on a tall stone plinth, looking down at the people passing by,
one arm firmly extended forward, pointing into the distance.
I suddenly remembered the lyrics of the Russian song Ilyich:
He (Lenin) is still standing, waving at us
already painted with a hundred coats of paint
The pigeons come cooing over
and shit on Ilyich’s bald head
He is still standing…
He is still standing…
Chapter Seven | The Riverbank
The sun gradually climbed higher.
We walked east along an east-west avenue.
We kept walking.
The road gradually narrowed;
the grass on both sides went from neatly trimmed to unkempt,
then to bare cement and mud pits.
We just kept walking like this,
until a section of brick wall appeared ahead.
On the brick wall
was that kind of street letter-graffiti;
looking closely,
it had been covered over in several layers.
There were also some letters whose meaning was unclear.
To our right was a stretch of railway track —
oh, so this was a level crossing.
I remembered the level crossings I’d seen in Japan.
Alarm bells, warning lights, barriers —
everything to keep people from being run over by trains.
But here,
so unkempt,
so Russian.
(A stereotype, I know.)
Beside the level crossing,
a low wooden house came into view,
its walls mottled,
its wooden windows on the verge of falling apart.
Under the eaves hung a few strings of shriveled onions,
looking somewhat desolate.
A faint smell of coal smoke hung in the air,
mixed with the damp scent of earth.
This place was unlike the broad streets we’d passed before;
there were no neatly trimmed lawns either,
only unpolished roughness.
We stood before the crossing,
the rails glinting faintly in the sunlight.
Not far away
came the rumble of a slowly moving train.
Past the brick wall,
we finally saw the Heilongjiang — the Amur.
The river’s surface was extremely wide.
I had expected barbed wire or something,
but there were even people swimming in it.
I stuck out my tongue,
walked closer, closer,
until I reached the riverbank.
I reached out my hand —
the water was cool.
So,
this is the Heilongjiang.
Throughout history,
how many stories have been in the Heilongjiang’s surging waves.
From ancient times to now,
from ancient nomads to modern settlers,
everyone has had to deal with it.
A river so full of stories,
right now beneath my feet.
Suddenly it all felt a little unreal.
Just now,
I had, in a sense, touched
the “border” itself.
No barbed wire,
no soldiers standing guard,
only the river gently lapping the shore.
The river breeze blew softly, carrying a distinctive moist coolness,
caressing my cheeks.
Those ancient boat songs, the hoofbeats of nomadic tribes,
the cries of passing caravans, the shouts of border struggles —
all had melted into this surging water.
The sand underfoot was soft and fine, bearing the river’s wash marks.
Here and there a few round pebbles lay quietly.
I picked one up — ice-cold and smooth.
I don’t know why,
but I took a photo of it.
Chapter Eight | The Cradle
Back in the city, she and I first found a coffee shop,
an iced latte each.
The price was reasonable enough —
this is Europe after all, I thought to myself,
a world where coffee is a necessity.
Not much farther on, we came to a shopping mall.
It was a square little building,
three stories, not large,
with only two or three shops per floor.
We started browsing from the first floor;
only one “goods store” was open.
Wait, a goods store?
I shouldn’t have been surprised;
after all, I knew anime culture had spread widely in Eastern Europe.
I glanced over —
most of the merchandise bore Chinese rather than Japanese,
like Naruto doujin magazines,
and an entire wall of Russian-language manga.
Continuing up, the second floor was an Uzbek restaurant.
We ordered fried rice;
she said this kind of Central Asian fried rice was a great deal in Russia,
like kebabs —
a fine choice for filling your stomach.
Soon we would be leaving the city,
headed for a small town called Birobidzhan.
For such a short distance,
the train would actually take a whole night,
arriving only the next morning.
After checking out of the hotel,
we sat in the café a while longer,
then set off for the train station to wait.
The station was tiny,
with no platform —
we climbed the stairs up into the train straight from the ground.
Truly “Russian” style.
We walked to the track where the train stood;
it was already waiting for us.
With experience riding sleeper trains in China,
we had bought snacks and drinks in advance,
just waiting to board and feast.
Entering the carriage, I was a bit shocked.
Two levels of bunks!
Two!
In China there are three.
And I peeked at the toilet:
clean and tidy, with a proper toilet bowl.
I couldn’t help envying this setup.
This is Europe after all:
Europe’s floor is
Asia’s ceiling.
That’s how I consoled myself.
Once aboard, I opened a drink
and started eating sunflower seeds —
Russians especially love sunflower seeds;
no wonder the Northeast calls them “maoke,”
meaning “what the Russkies crack.”
When bedtime came,
I climbed into my bunk,
took the sleeping pill I take every night,
and pulled the thin quilt over me.
The carriage was very quiet.
No one made loud noise,
no one played videos out loud;
someone read quietly,
someone sipped coffee.
How nice —
so much like home.
I curled up on the bunk,
smiling.
Slowly,
amid the clatter-clatter,
I fell asleep.
Chapter Nine | City of the Conqueror · One
After a night of lullaby,
the green-skinned train delivered us to a brand-new morning.
Khabarovsk.
This is the UTC+10 time zone;
the sun rises two hours earlier than back home,
as if in a hurry to show off
how different this city is.
We dragged our suitcases
through the faint morning light
and found the hotel we had booked.
Once everything was settled,
on the following day
our exploration of the city
officially began.
Unlike Blagoveshchensk’s
time-frozen stillness,
everything in Khabarovsk
exuded the air of a “big city.”
We walked into a park;
almost all its facilities
were brand new.
Orange benches
gleamed brightly in the sunlight,
like seats prepared
especially for us at this moment.
In the flowerbeds,
buds ready to bloom
crowded together in swathes,
awaiting the order to blossom.
Meticulously trimmed lawns,
carefully designed shrubbery…
everything
carried a planned,
modern refinement.
Coming out of a little supermarket with a “Минимаркет” sign,
I clutched my empty drink bottle,
instinctively looking for a trash can.
Back home,
this often requires me
to walk quite a stretch.
Yet
after only a few steps,
I saw one.
A few more steps,
another.
They were everywhere,
standing quietly by the roadside,
like this city’s
most faithful servants.
“As expected of Soviet heritage.”
I couldn’t help sighing softly.
This kind of ubiquitous public facility,
with its bold, rough-and-ready convenience,
makes one feel at ease.
We crossed the park,
the view opened up ahead,
and there was another square.
Like all the Russian squares we’d seen,
this was a kingdom of pigeons.
They cooed,
strolled swaggeringly on the ground,
utterly unafraid of people.
A man in a tracksuit
jogged past
leading a huge Alaskan Malamute.
The dog excitedly lolled its tongue,
its tail wagging like a propeller.
Wuwu…
I truly love so much
every blade of grass and every tree here.
Whether Blagoveshchensk’s unpolished roughness
or Khabarovsk’s modern tidiness,
both made my heart
pound.
At the end of the square,
we met again that
familiar old friend —
Lenin.
We took a photo from afar
and didn’t go closer.
After all,
Lenin Squares all look about the same.
And… hehe,
Ame secretly thought to herself,
the Lenin statue here
somehow doesn’t look
as imposing as the one in her city!
In the center of the square stood a huge fountain;
though it wasn’t running,
the ground around it
was inscribed with this city’s history.
My gaze
fell upon that name —
Khabarov.
Yes,
Khabarovsk
is named after the explorer Yerofey Pavlovich Khabarov.
My heart
was suddenly
gripped by something.
One nation’s hero
is another nation’s invader.
This name,
to the Russians standing on this land,
represents pioneering,
courage,
and glory.
But to us on the other side of the river,
it is bound tightly to blood and tears,
to cession,
and to humiliation.
I turned my head
to look at her.
She too was gazing at the inscriptions,
her eyes calm,
no ripple to be seen.
All these names,
boundaries,
stories,
cold and heat,
seep along the flagstones beneath our feet
into this once-contested land.
And the distant Amur River (Heilongjiang)
simply surges on in silence,
witnessing everything,
and washing everything away.
We stood in this conqueror’s city,
two tiny,
rootless girls,
feeling the
complicated echoes history left behind.
The wind blew across the square,
bringing the cooing of pigeons.
Gently,
quietly,
I took her hand.
Chapter Ten | City of the Conqueror · Two
We walked on and on
along a street
full of European charm.
The road wasn’t wide;
on both sides were compact, elegant European-style buildings,
the sunlight casting
pretty light and shadow on the walls.
I couldn’t help
photographing
as I walked.
This place looked
exactly like
the European cities of my imagination.
Tired from walking,
we decided to have a meal of
the most common people’s Russian food.
That place was rather like
a Chinese university canteen.
We took trays
and moved along with the line.
First side dishes,
then the staple —
a few slices of dark, hard bread.
Then soup,
and finally a cutlet.
Looking at the food on my plate,
I suddenly remembered
the Tom and Jerry cartoons I watched as a child.
When Tom feasted,
on his plate was exactly that kind of
cutlet-and-rice doused in thick sauce.
Full of anticipation,
I took a bite.
As for the taste —
I wouldn’t call it bad,
but…
if I had to eat this every day,
I might rather die.
In the following days,
we tried a few more times.
But each time
deepened my despair.
In the end,
whenever the two of us saw such a canteen,
we took a detour.
I even began letting my thoughts wander:
the people exiled to Siberia back then
probably ate…
more or less this…
After finishing this “exile meal,”
we continued strolling
along the riverbank.
We checked in at that
church seen countless times on postcards,
its golden onion domes
glittering in the sunlight.
We also checked in at the statue
belonging to this city —
Khabarov.
He sits on horseback,
gazing firmly into the distance.
Passing a tea-drink shop,
we ducked in.
Ordered a sweet strawberry drink,
and only then felt
ourselves come back to life.
Next door was a souvenir shop;
we went in and browsed.
I picked up a fridge magnet,
exquisitely made,
just my taste.
Happily I took it to the register.
And then…
it actually cost me
nearly sixty yuan.
Profiteer.
What a profiteer.
Indignant,
I stuck it on the fridge in our hotel room.
Hmph,
just consider it
the “IQ tax”
paid for this journey.
Chapter Eleven | City of the Conqueror · Three
She suddenly proposed
taking me to see
the most modern MALL here.
I gladly agreed.
We called a car
and drove toward the suburbs.
That mall was huge,
so huge it made me a little dazed.
It was no different
from those gleaming shopping centers
in any Chinese city of the same tier.
In that instant
I even wondered
whether I had gone home.
An Apple store,
a Xiaomi store,
all kinds of clothing brands,
chain coffee shops,
even a Burger King!
Everything glittered.
If
“Russian modern life” needed a showroom,
this would surely be it.
She scratched her head
and said softly
that in her hometown Blagoveshchensk
there was no mall this new, this big.
We walked in
and wandered aimlessly,
finally sitting down in a coffee shop
and ordering an Americano each.
Sitting across from us
was an elderly lady with white-streaked blonde hair.
She looked elegant,
quietly drinking her coffee.
I took out my laptop
and started writing my blog.
The tapping of the keyboard
sounded especially clear
against the café’s background noise.
Perhaps my focus
aroused her curiosity.
The old lady’s gaze
fell upon my screen.
A little embarrassed,
I nonetheless explained to her
that I was writing a travelogue of this trip to Russia.
I turned on the webpage’s translation feature,
converted the page to Russian,
and turned the laptop toward her.
She leaned in a bit
and read earnestly.
Her finger
slowly slid across the screen.
When she finished reading,
she raised her head,
a gentle smile on her face.
She praised my writing.
My heart
was suddenly filled by a warm current.
Even though these words
had passed through machine translation
and lost their original flavor,
that feeling,
that sentiment,
could actually cross the barrier of language
and be understood and affirmed
by a stranger from a foreign land.
I was really…
so moved.
Chapter Twelve | The City in the Forest
The train started again,
carrying us
toward the next destination.
After a day and a night,
we arrived at
Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
When I first saw this name
on the map of Russia,
a seed of curiosity was planted in my heart.
Komsomolsk —
a city built
by Komsomol members, right?
Sure enough,
the moment I got off the train,
I felt that
grandeur and desolation
of something risen out of the forest.
Desolate,
because before the station
there were almost no tall buildings;
it looked empty and forlorn.
Grand,
because the station’s own scale,
and the Soviet state emblem atop it,
still bright red,
silently told of
the fanfare of its construction back then.
Then came our traditional reserved program —
going to the square to watch pigeons.
After watching pigeons
and killing some time,
we dragged our luggage
and checked into the hotel.
It was a hotel converted
from a Soviet-era resort.
The room was big,
big to the point of emptiness,
and the decor retained
that era’s distinctive style.
Once settled in,
a wave of boredom hit.
So
we decided to order delivery.
Russia’s delivery app is called Yandex Go,
integrating errands, taxis, food delivery, and more.
We ordered a meat-sauce pizza.
When ordering, we worried
one wouldn’t be enough.
But when the delivery arrived —
Goodness.
The thickness of that meat sauce
was beyond anything imaginable in China.
So generous.
As expected of Russia —
this was truly… so Russian.
We continued out for a stroll.
You could clearly feel
this was a city wrapped in forest.
The pedestrian roads were built wide,
and on both sides
were great stretches of weeds and freely growing shrubs.
They say
an eighth of this city’s area
is parkland.
Though rather than parks,
it’s more like preserved
primeval woods and dirt paths.
We wandered aimlessly through the woods.
Sunlight came through layer upon layer of leaves,
scattering dappled spots of light.
All around was quiet,
only wind and birdsong.
Coming to an empty clearing,
she stopped
and turned to look at me.
And then,
secretly,
we kissed.
Russian little supermarkets
aren’t like convenience stores;
they’re more like the corner shops of our childhood.
Maps label them “Минимаркет.”
We walked into a random one
and found grain and oil, daily necessities, snacks and drinks —
everything.
Like a full-category
miniature supermarket.
We grabbed a few bottles of drinks
and went back to the hotel.
You ask me
what we did back at the hotel?
Mm…
probably…
sex,
or,
scrolling on our phones.
Chapter Thirteen | White
At noon the next day,
I broke down.
My emotions were like a burst flood,
smashing through all my reason.
I swallowed
more than fifty Guaifenesin-Dextromethorphan tablets
and ten Stilnox.
Memory breaks off here.
I only remember
walking crookedly out of the hotel.
When I woke again,
I was lying in a hospital.
Naked,
with all kinds of tubes stuck in me.
So terrifying.
Really.
No common language;
nurses shouted something at me loudly.
The way the doctor looked at me
had thorns in it.
It was a nightmare.
A nightmare you can never break free of.
I had even already forgotten
why I did it,
forgotten who
had angered me.
Those triggers
were all told to me afterward by others.
So hard to endure.
I looked out the window
as the sky went from pitch-black early morning,
to the faint light of dawn,
to a bright morning.
Time passed so slowly.
Finally,
a doctor came over,
handed me a sheet of paper,
and motioned for me to sign.
I couldn’t read what it said.
But I had no choice.
My personal freedom
was confined to this hospital bed.
Ha.
Thinking of it now, I suddenly feel…
it’s kind of erotic.
Bondage, doctor play…
the feeling of being unable to resist
is the best, right?
Numbly, I signed.
Soon,
I was wheeled out of the ward
and transferred into a vehicle.
She waited anxiously for me outside.
Her face was full of worry.
I didn’t cry.
Or rather,
part of my emotions
had sunk to a depth
even I could no longer reach.
In the interval of being carried onto the vehicle,
out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed this hospital.
A plain three-story building.
As expected of the Soviet Union.
I couldn’t help marveling in my heart.
Even lying on a hospital bed,
treated as a nuisance,
I still couldn’t help
appreciating this rough-hewn beauty.
What happened afterward
I’ve told others too many times;
I don’t much want to tell it again.
I was transferred to another children’s hospital,
then processed for discharge.
She stayed with me the whole time,
negotiating with everyone in Russian for me.
I had wanted to pick a fight with her,
to vent all my resentment on her.
But watching her bustling figure,
my heart
softened again.
I finally changed back into my own clothes.
We called a car and returned to the hotel.
Not long after,
the police knocked on our door,
saying they needed to take a statement.
Once again she stood in front of me,
explaining to them
in a language I couldn’t understand.
When the negotiation ended,
the officer looked at me
and said a sentence she translated for me:
“You’re a minor — how did you enter Russia?”
“You must have your friend prove she has guardianship capacity, or we cannot let you continue traveling.”
A bolt from the blue.
But my brain
no longer had the strength to think.
I just wanted to take pills.
Just wanted to sleep.
What tomorrow would bring —
who cares.
Chapter Fourteen | “Legal”
“Temporary guardianship certificate.”
Those few words
were like a heavy shackle.
In that instant,
we were travelers no longer,
but had become
prisoners by the Amur River.
That night,
I had insomnia.
I didn’t sleep at all.
The next morning, past nine,
she woke up.
My parents’ phone call
came right on time.
She began bustling about,
contacting the notary office,
handling the tedious paperwork.
Watching her exhausted profile,
at some moment
I finally couldn’t hold on
and sank into heavy sleep.
In my fitful sleep
I heard she needed me to photograph my passport,
photograph my birth certificate…
She sighed and said to me:
“That’s Russia for you. Bureaucracy.”
In my heart
I echoed with a sigh:
as expected of the Soviet Union —
so Soviet.
And then
came the endless running of errands.
The police station.
The hospital.
The hotel.
The hotel feared we
would keep causing trouble,
and tactfully indicated
they’d rather we didn’t stay on.
But they agreed
to help us contact a new one.
We dragged our luggage
from one place to another.
We were both so tired
we were about to fall apart.
Yet the notarization business
still wasn’t finished.
She forced her body to keep going,
kept making phone calls.
I handed her an energy drink,
hoping to give her a little bit of strength.
I don’t know how much time passed.
In the middle of her negotiations with the police,
a phone call
suddenly came in.
She listened for a while,
hung up,
turned to look at me,
her expression complicated.
She said
they had discussed it internally,
and that certificate
was no longer needed.
That invisible shackle,
with this phone call,
with a “click,”
was opened again.
The prisoners by the Amur River
had been, with the powerful’s casual stroke of the pen,
pardoned.
Sigh.
Sigh…
Sigh…
What we felt in that moment
is hard to put into words.
Like being flung high by a giant wave,
then slammed back down.
Absurd, exhausted, and slightly relieved.
But thankfully,
it was fine now.
We were “legal” again.
Only at this moment
did I truly, viscerally experience
the tyranny of state power.
A single sentence from it
can make a person
lose their freedom, fall into a desperate situation.
How terrifying.
But thankfully,
we were still together.
We could embrace,
we could still kiss.
We were really,
so tired.
We fell onto the bed together
and sank into deep sleep.
When we woke,
the sunlight outside the window
had already slanted west.
It was noon.
Neither of us had the heart to go out for food.
We ordered sushi delivery.
Before long,
the courier brought the box.
Opening it,
sure enough, it was that kind of
California roll piled with mayo and fish roe.
It suddenly occurred to me
that Russians seem to especially love sushi.
This is probably the result
of Japanese culture’s forceful influx
in the nineties,
when the Soviet Union collapsed.
So strange.
The tides of history
just like that, silently,
change people’s dinner plates.
I also noticed
that many Russian delivery couriers
deliver on foot.
Even their app’s icon
is a person walking
with a delivery box on their back.
Perhaps this
has to do with the scale of Russian cities.
Looking back,
all the places we’d rushed between these past days —
the police station, the hospital, the hotels —
were actually all within a three-kilometer radius.
A city,
just like that,
had enclosed our rushing and struggling
within a range
reachable on foot.
Chapter Fifteen | The Big City
Neither of us had any heart
to continue the journey.
We just wanted to get home quickly,
to get back quickly to a place
where I could act “legally.”
Ha.
Thinking of it,
a sentence suddenly popped into my head:
Asia’s ceiling,
Europe’s floor.
Yet on the oppression of minors,
the two agree so perfectly.
In Japan it’s illegal for a minor to stay out overnight;
in Russia energy drinks require you to be 18.
The state,
the organs of violence —
how laughable.
Another day and night of train.
We arrived in Vladivostok.
Haishenwai.
Walking this city’s streets,
the deepest impression was —
internationalization.
This place
truly deserves to be called the “capital of the Far East.”
In a single Burger King
you can simultaneously see
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, English —
five languages.
At a street corner
we saw a stone stele.
Looking closer,
it was a monument to
the ethnic Koreans who settled here.
My heart
instantly grew heavy.
I thought again of
that small town north of Blagoveshchensk
called “Svobodny” — the Free City.
Its name,
it’s said, was given by Koreans exiled here.
Thinking of the peninsula still divided to this day,
I couldn’t help but sigh.
Everywhere on the streets,
besides the many languages,
were Japanese and Korean restaurants.
Though according to her,
the Japanese food here isn’t very authentic;
it’s “Russian-style Japanese food”
full of mayo and cheese.
As we walked,
we marveled.
Haishenwai really is a big city.
Elevated bridges,
trams,
everything a modern metropolis has —
all present and ready here.
The streets are narrow,
flanked by tall, ornate European-style buildings.
Some people say
Shenzhen is Beijing’s exclave in the south.
Then I’d say
this place is Moscow’s exclave in the Far East.
These buildings
might even be more “European”
than Moscow’s.
This is probably a kind of
convert’s zeal.
The bay here
is called the Golden Horn.
It is the home port of the Pacific Fleet.
This name
was given by Muravyov.
That figure printed on the 5,000-ruble banknote,
whom we call “the Butcher.”
He was paying homage
to Constantinople’s other Golden Horn.
We took a taxi along the bay
to the cape at its southernmost tip.
The sea wind was strong,
stinging my face.
We spread our arms wide,
meeting Haishenwai’s wind and waves,
watching the white lighthouse in the distance
standing quietly
between sea and sky.
Chapter Sixteen | Goodbye, Russia
The wind
was still strong.
Besides us,
most of those who came here
were Chinese tour groups carrying little flags.
How much would they know
of this place’s history?
And after coming,
what insights would they take away?
I couldn’t help a wry smile.
After all,
I am Ame —
a misfit,
a fugitive.
I didn’t linger any longer.
The next evening
I called a car
and went to the airport alone.
The airport was tiny,
and there was nothing much to buy in the duty-free shop.
Everything seemed so ordinary.
And so,
just like that,
I left Haishenwai,
left the Russia I love,
and left behind
the only accomplice in my escape —
the her who kept me company for fourteen days.
Yes,
I love Russia.
I love its culture,
love every blade of its grass and every tree.
I love its sea wind and mountain forests,
love in its literature and music
that deep, boundless soul.
What I love
is not Putin’s government,
nor the Tsar’s palaces.
Still less
the gendarmes and rifles.
I also love her.
Before parting at the airport,
we kissed one last kiss.
I turned around
and didn’t look back,
but I could feel
her gaze following me all the way,
until I disappeared
around the corner at the security checkpoint.
Only I remained,
still fleeing.
Boarding.
I sat by the window.
The plane taxied slowly,
then accelerated,
and rose into the air.
I watched out the window
as that stretch of Haishenwai’s lights
gradually shrank in the night,
became a blurred patch of light,
and finally
melted entirely into darkness.
Amid the roar of the engines,
I fell into a deep sleep.
In my dream
I was free,
no longer needing pardon.
We were simply by the Amur River,
in that empty stretch of woods,
over and over again,
secretly kissing.
Goodbye, Russia.
I will come again.
In the name of a traveler.