[The basin of the Amur River. Roughly speaking, the long middle stretch from Lake Hulun on the Argun (left) to the confluence of the Amur and the Ussuri (right) is most of the eastern border between Russia and China. With far eastern Russia now including huge tracts of land which once belonged to China]
[A very large statue of Genghis Khan in Mongolia, where he has something close to god-like status]
This being notice of an interesting book at reference 1 by a new-to-me octogenarian travel writer called Colin Thubron, bought to my attention by the NYRB at reference 2. The book of a trek from the source of the mighty Amur river, in the far eastern borderlands between Russia and China, to the sea. A trek which starts in Mongolia on the back of a horse and continues with cars, trains and boats.
Thubron is a well established travel writer – but was nearing eighty when he made this journey. Fit for his age, foolhardy or both! He must have a bit of money about him as even done with a rucksack, this sort of travelling is not cheap. Lots of beds, fares, taxis and guides to pay for. Wikipedia says nothing about his personal, family or private life, although at the very end we learn of what must be a long suffering wife.
About 275 pages of text arranged in ten roughly equal chapters. A useful map (not pull out) at the beginning. No pictures – despite the author explaining, at various points in the text, how many pictures he is taking. A pity – and this reader at least would not have minded paying a bit more for some. A more serious complaint is the lack of any kind of time-line, schematic or other diagram summarising this epic journey. A diagram which would have made is easier to keep one’s bearings as he crept across this strange land.
The border zone mentioned above is heavily fortified on the Russian side. And despite protestations of everlasting friendship, the Russians must be as nervous about the Chinese seeking to recover the land they lost to the Russians over the centuries as the much smaller countries to the west of Russia – places like the Ukraine – are nervous about the Russians. Despite these last not having any claim on these western lands at all. Notwithstanding, there is a lot of trade between the two countries, not least the export of Russian timber to China. And the export of clothes and such, a lot of it carrying fake western brands, from China to Russia. With a lot of the Russians that Thubron comes across being as touchy about the Chinese as, say, poor white males in this country are apt to be about people from parts not so far east.
Over these same centuries there has been a lot of death, probably a small number of millions. Some of this being Russian massacres of Chinese people. Some being deaths in captivity of Japanese prisoners after the second world war. But most being deaths in captivity of Tsarist and Soviet convicts, not least the victims of Stalin’s various campaigns of terror. These last are now memorialised, along with the dead of the Great Patriotic War.
Another big business was mining, with there being a number of gold rushes, being more or less contemporary with and sounding very much like the nineteenth century gold rushes of western North America.
[Yevgeny Vasin was a big cheese in the Russian far east, rating a very elaborate tomb]
And another was crime, with organised and violent crime flourishing between the end of the Soviet rule and the start of Putin’s. Now somewhat gentrified. See, for example, reference 3, from which the snap above is taken.
[The Cathedral of the Saviour's Transfiguration at Khabarovsk. Early 21st century. With what Wikipedia intriguingly calls Ukrainian onion domes]
One relic of the Soviet era is a wealth of libraries and museums, scattered over the land, now largely moribund. While Putin seems much keener on building huge churches, one of which, at 200 feet or so high, is snapped above. Between the two, at least in this part of Russia, was the time of the gangs.
Another is a chance encounter with the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of reference 4, set up by Stalin on a stretch of the Amur. One of just two Jewish states in the world.
The greater part of Russia visited on this trek is visible in Street View, with the Google camera vans only giving up after they got to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a city built on armaments factories – including here the important war planes made by Sukhoi. The last city on the right in the map above.
[The weather in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, according to Wikipedia]
Given that the river is frozen for six months of the year, it is not surprising that that is all sounds a bit dreary, Not helped by great tracts of dull looking block of flats – albeit practical in a cold climate. Some parts are also very hot in the summer. So good if you can take both hot and cold and like wilderness, hunting and fishing. Probably not that unlike the northern territories in Canada.
The journey ends at Nikolaevsk, top right in the opening map, by which time we have fallen off Street View but not off gmaps. A city which never really caught on as a river port, with the Amur being too shallow and too treacherous for serious boating. Vladivostok to the south, all things considered, seemed a much better bet.
Somewhere in the vicinity, Thubron manages a bit of fishing, which includes bagging a six foot Amur Sturgeon, with the river police turning up to give a hand with the net, despite fishing for these particular fish being strictly illegal. They don’t even ask for a share of the spoils.
BH quite likes travel books, so we will see what she makes of it. Then maybe I will have another go, having now got some idea of what is going on.
References
Reference 1: The Amur River: Between Russia and China – Colin Thubron – 2021.
Reference 2: Hugging the Shores: Colin Thubron’s latest travelogue takes him down the Amur River and through the borderlands between Russia and China – Neal Ascherson, NYRB – 2022.
Reference 3: https://willzuzak.ca/cl/corruption/Galeotti20180501VoryRussiaSuperMafia.pdf. The Vory: Russia's super mafia - Mark Galeotti – 2018. Yale University Press.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/11/jewish-autonomous-oblast.html.
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