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.
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.
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