In the first part of our expedition, Volodya and Vitya received Chinese visas, and now they are already on the Amur River, along which the border with the Celestial Empire lies.
TWO POLES - ACROSS THE RIVER
The half-empty Boeing was dragging us from Moscow to Blagoveshchensk. Otherwise, crossing the border is stupid.
There, on the banks of the Amur, two civilizations stand face to face - Russian Blagoveshchensk and Chinese Heihe.
You seem to be ready for the anti-government shock that knocks down newcomers here. But damn it... It’s not for nothing that the appearance of these cities in Internet blogs is filled with poison.
While Huseynov is looking for words (this is always a long time), I will immediately warn the reader: on the Internet it is customary to mock the unfortunate Blagoveshchensk, and with offensive excess.
I even called my friend Sergei Dorenko, editor-in-chief of the radio “Moscow Speaks”, who once said on air:
“Blagoveshchensk is a place of rust, smelling of cat urine... But opposite there is Heihe. They are sitting in their miserable concrete kennels, Annunciation residents, but they come up to the window, and if you pick away the dirt from the window, you can see Heihe. And it becomes so happy.”
Dorenko, of course, was immediately and officially cursed by the Amur region.
What should I tell the city and the mayor? - I ask Sergei before departure, hoping for reconciliation.
Say hi,” he says. - Admiration and sympathy.
And here we are, in deathly silence, looking at the Chinese coast, which floated deliciously under the wing of the plane past us...
Back in the 80s, Heihe was a village with adobe houses. This knowledge deepens the pain. The Chinese mocked the Russian coast architecturally - skyscrapers, modern city lights and, like the icing on the cake, an embankment, a park and a Ferris wheel. It seemed that the Chinese had built this showcase not so much to decorate the facade of China, but to annoy us... Because on our shore...
I protest! - Huseynov protests. - Stop despondency, liberalism and “Dorenkovism”! On the other side, I agree, there is a small metropolis, but on this side I see a cozy, clean Amur town...
30 YEARS AGO WE LAUGHED AT THEM
With… the roads,” exploded the local driver, who had previously been silent behind the wheel (his face had been filled with furious blood since the airport, and I was still waiting for the brawl to begin). - Our town is cozy... Maybe. But when you go to China, you will go nuts! How they build roads! I remember how 30 years ago I went there to buy cheap tape recorders, which they riveted in their shacks right on the dirt floor. Back then they carried loads with carts on wooden wheels, we all laughed at them... Now they have built palaces, concrete highways. But we paved the way for Putin's visit last year.
This one,” he nods at the windshield.
Is she new?!
The road was normal in Russian - that is, the car was shaking all the time and only occasionally shook.
“I’m a former road engineer and I know: instead of five centimeters of asphalt here, there are at most two,” he says. - Moscow allocated money, but in a couple of years the road will no longer exist. And so it is in everything - there is almost no production left. The gas pipeline runs through us, it seems like a salvation for us - but local men are not hired for construction. Only as unskilled workers, and even then without registration, in order to deceive with wages... In China they would shoot everyone to hell for such a thing, there they think about the country, but here we all just stuff money into our pockets...
“Well, well, the familiar song of the trains started,” Guseynov whispered. - Now the cry about the Chinese threat will begin...
And in twenty years who will come here?! Who?! Don't you know? - the driver breaks down.
Are the really scary whales?! - we screamed in horror.
Muscovites just laugh. Remember my words...
On the embankment of Blagoveshchensk there is a monument to the armored boat of the Amur flotilla. In 1945, a similar warship landed troops on the Chinese coast, beginning its liberation from Japan. Now that shore, to the envy of Blagoveshchensk, shines with the lights of skyscrapers. Photo: Victor GUSEINOV
EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN ROAD?
The local mayor, Valentina Kalita, reassured us. She gave us tea at the city hall and said:
The Chinese themselves say: “Your embankment is better.” We don't need to look at China. They have a federal program to develop their north, which is why government money is sent to cities like Heihe. And then the Russian does not need to repeat the Chinese. Each has their own rich experience and history. Everyone has their own path.
Yes, about the roads... - I perked up.
Do you know that the road from Heihe to Harbin is a concrete road on which a bomber can land? - one of the officials grumbled in the corner and sighed heavily.
SENSE OF BOUNDARIES
Blagoveshchensk and Heihe look as if a Soviet pensioner had lived there, dilapidated like an old man, and suddenly in front of his windows - bang! - the mansion of a young millionaire. With illumination, garden, amusement park. And the neighbor seems to smile benignly and invite you to visit. They say, relax, neighbor, to each his own.
But Blagoveshchensk is silent. Tolerates. You can’t exchange living space here, you can’t move out. The couple is nailed to Cupid forever...
Guseinov inserts himself into the text:
We haven’t crossed over to the Chinese coast yet, and we’re already mourning the Russian one?! We're already pouring ashes, right?! Here it is, the handwriting of the intelligentsia: just having sensed a foreign country and not yet really understanding anything, you already blaspheme the Motherland. Maybe there is only scenery on the other side? The residents of Blagoveshchensk grumble: Heihe is a Potemkin village. The Chinese built the shore with skyscrapers to throw dust in the eyes of the Russians, and behind them - shacks! What is there, Volodya, we don’t know, but here everything is ours and real...
Yes, Vitya, yes... (I take away the computer from Guseinov.)
I always forget about the feelings of believers...
OK. Patriotic is so patriotic. Not bad on our side. There are jewelry shops at every turn (the Chinese love our gold), confectionery shops (the Chinese love our “Alenka”), many grocery stores (the Chinese love our milk and sour cream).
And most importantly, a subtle balance is felt, incomprehensible to strangers.
Date of publication: 09.11.2016
From Moscow to Vladivostok by train.
To get to know our vast Motherland better, KP special correspondents chose an extreme form of domestic tourism [KP poll: will they make it there or not?]
Nobody forced them, they wanted it themselves! On November 3, Vladimir Vorsobin and Viktor Huseynov went on a trip around the country. Whole month they will spend on trains. Most likely, the guys will come to Vladivostok as completely different people: thoughtful, thin, maybe even slightly grey. After all, such a trip is a lifetime. By the way, none of the journalists have ever traveled like this before. At least I didn’t travel from Moscow to Vladivostok by train. So we wish our brave special correspondents good luck and peaceful fellow travelers.
Why is all this needed?
We at the editorial office have not yet fully understood why. Vladimir Vorsobin tried to answer this question:
“When I said that photo reporter Vitya Guseinov and I would travel by train to Vladivostok, people were simply silent and looked at me. During this time, I managed to say that the task was to get to the ends of the earth in 25 days, describing the adventures in a blog. What in general, it’s a risky idea. But, probably, we’ll get there... And then usually, depending on their temperament, people began to smile or laugh, but more often they looked pityingly: they say, poor people, have they gone crazy?
58 trains. Fifty small Russian towns, stops. Small villages, in the names of which real Russia. Erofey Pavlovich, Winter, Taiga, Tulun, Yar, Shakhunya, Shalya... And thousands, thousands of kilometers. Why are we going? One common goal: to get to Vladik relatively alive.
Vitya Huseynov is typical crazy artist(sorry, Vit). No one else would have signed up for this. Guseinov hopes to enjoy Russian beauty, make an enchanting photo report about the Russian outback, and publish a book. Vitya is an intellectual from Kaliningrad, and in my opinion, he doesn’t really know where he’s going. This is Tulun, Vit! Listen - Taiga, Winter. Everything is real here. That is, don't plan anything. This is Mother Russia... “And at night Satan walks through the forest and collects fresh souls. Winter has received new blood and it will receive you...”
I also don’t really imagine what will happen in the end. Because journalists rarely cross the border between “Muscovy” and Russia, which is spread over a terrible territory between cities with a population of over a million. She's like Zone from Stalker. As physicists say, “dark matter.” They don't see her. Airplanes fly over it. People stare sleepily at her from the windows of fast trains. You can drive through it without noticing it.
But if you take the same train with Russia. And you will get off with her at an abandoned station... “They don’t have a coachman at the post office...”. So, off we went. “That means we have a way there, that means we have a way there!”
Preliminary route
Moscow - Vladimir - Vyazniki - Nizhny Novgorod- Vetluzhskaya - Shakhunya - Kotelnich - Kirov - Yar - Balezino - Vereshchagino - Perm - Shalya - Ekaterinburg - Oshchepkovo - Tyumen - Vagai - Ishim - Nazyvaevskaya - Omsk - Tatarskaya - Barabinsk- Chulimskaya - Novosibirsk - Bolotnoye - Taiga - Mariinsk - Chernorechenskaya - Krasnoyarsk - Uyar - Ilanskaya - Taishet - Nizhneudinsk - Tulun - Winter - Cheremkhovo - Irkutsk - Slyudyanka - Mysovaya - Ulan-ude - Petrovsky Plant - Khilok - Mogzon - Chita - Karymskaya - Shilka - Chernyshevsk - Zilovo - Ksenyevskaya - Mogocha - Erofey Pavlovich - Skovorodino - Taldan - Magdagachi - Arkhara - Obluchye - Birobidzhan - Khabarovsk - Vyazemskaya - Ussuriysk - Vladivostok
Kursk station. Train to Vladivostok. Let her actually go to Vladimir. Doesn't matter. Guseinov and I have nowhere to retreat. This is the first of 58 electric trains on our route across Russia. A couple of hours in Vladimir. Then - another “dog” to the great city of Vyazniki. And then...
Snowstorm as luck would have it.
Vitya hums for some reason good song: “Maybe we’ll come back, Lieutenant Golitsyn...”
Sings on the first kilometer of nine thousand.
It's late, Vitya. Late.
Huseynov demands to write in the expedition diary (he won this right - V.V.):
“This is probably wrong, but I thought that in my own country I partly feel like a foreigner. Volodya! But we have absolutely no idea what awaits us there, after Irkutsk (we still have to get to Perm - V.V.). There's a black hole there! There is no life!
But for now we are close to Moscow. This means: everything is normal - the train is crowded.
They grabbed a seat opposite a well-dressed citizen. Too good. It turns out that here, a couple of kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road, it catches your eye. And the look is not morning-gloomy, like that of everyone present here, going to serve with quiet disgust. And calm. “Employer,” I manage to think. And I fall asleep. I can fall asleep while sitting. This is my main trump card when traveling. Huseynov doesn't know how. And he sits angry.
The Christians woke up. Merchants with their lamps and food foil could not. And these...
“Happiness is not money or a house. Happiness is life with a loving Christ,” the young couple sang with a guitar. She sang well. And I was already reaching for the money. All the same, they are not happiness. But the Christians said: believe in God, people. He is merciful. And without taking a penny, we got off at the bus stop.
Then I finally woke up to look at the believers without ribs.
“Yes, this is amazing,” Guseynov agreed indifferently, staring gloomily out the window.
Apparently, having heard this, a man from the next row suddenly spoke up:
“But miracles do happen. I once went to the temple. And he put the icon in his back pocket along with his ID. And I feel something tickling there. I come home and have a burn on my thigh. Exactly the size of the icon. The saint was offended by me. But he gave a sign!”
“Amazing,” Vitya nodded calmly.
How can you not talk to your neighbor in four hours? You guessed right - a businessman. Igor. I just “dropped my business.” That is, I sold it. He says “my nerves couldn’t stand it.” Crisis. Demand in Vladimir has fallen so much that his businessman friends have no time for development - just to stay afloat. In Moscow, people are still buying something, but in Vladimir - “that’s it, we’ve arrived.” The people only have enough for food.
Igor is a determined patriot of his country. He often watches TV, and in foreign policy the authorities support him in everything. “They are crushing us,” he says. - “Not for Crimea, but for something else.”
But, he says, TV greatly embellishes Russian reality. I feel sorry for the pensioners. On the blue screens, their pensions are increased, but grandmothers are actually begging. 6-8 thousand. This is exactly a communal apartment in an ordinary Vladimir apartment.
But he has no intention of leaving. “We Russians are only real at home,” he says, “And if you leave...” (wrinkles).
He says he will not return to business. Become an employee. Or he will go to the authorities. It's calmer this way.
Then the whole carriage found out that we were going to Vladivostok. Some student overheard. And he yelled loudly: “Cool!” The neighbors smiled.
“Oh, I once dreamed about this,” they sighed behind them.
“Weirdos,” they said quietly from the left.
“I would also get out of here,” someone in the vestibule sadly remarked. - “And then every day for four hours back and forth, back and forth...”.
“Well, hold on!” - the inhabitants of the first of 58 electric trains wished us. And they even promised to follow us on kp.ru.
“Why do we need foreign land, lieutenant,” Huseynov nodded absently to them, and entered the city of Vladimir. Absolutely, categorically unaware that within an hour we would find ourselves in prison.
An interactive map of the route and information about why Vorsobin and Guseinov started all this in the first place - .
