Where northern China becomes Siberian and south-eastern Russia increasingly Chinese, the two authoritarian empires stand side by side. Until the Second World War, the Soviet Union and Japan fought for supremacy here. In his search for traces of history, Sören Urbansky has stumbled upon an astonishing Chinese-Russian present. In his wonderfully vivid book, he tells of thriving Chinese metropolises on one side of the river and ossified Russian towns on the other - just a few decades ago the divide was the other way round. He visits cities such as Harbin in northeast China, once the 'Moscow of the East', and Vladivostok, the dreamed-of Russian San Francisco, and is hosted by ordinary people who speak fluent Chinese and Russian and slurp their solyanka with chopsticks. His empathetic reportage gets close to the winners and losers on the border, providing an unusual insight into the state of the two superpowers and their tense relationship.
Copies bought on the spot or brought along will be signed by Sören Urbansky at the end of the talk.
