Manzhouli
China'S Largest Land Port Of Entry, Founded 1901 On The Chinese Eastern Railway; Trilingual Border City On The Russian Frontier At The Edge Of The Hulunbuir Grassland · Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia
Manzhouli began in 1901 as a station on the Chinese Eastern Railway, the line Russia drove across Manchuria to shorten the route to Vladivostok, and it has been a border town ever since - today the largest land port in China, where freight trains from Europe cross into the Chinese network and Russian shoppers cross the other way. The effect is genuinely strange. Street signs are in three scripts, Chinese, Cyrillic and Mongolian; there are Russian restaurants, Russian-speaking traders and Soviet-era buildings from the railway years. And then there is what the city has built on top of that: an entire district of exuberant, oversized, onion-domed pastiche, culminating in a square dominated by a nesting doll more than thirty metres high with a hotel inside it. Very little of the flamboyance is old. Most visitors work that out within an hour and enjoy it anyway, because beyond the last street the Hulunbuir grassland begins.
Manzhouli, Hulunbuir, Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia, China
The city and its streets are open at all times and free to walk. Matryoshka Square and the NATIONAL BORDER GATE SCENIC AREA are separately ticketed and keep daytime hours, roughly 8:30-18:00 with shorter winter opening. THE PASTICHE DISTRICT IS BEST AFTER DARK, when it is floodlit. THIS IS A BORDER AREA: photography restrictions near the frontier are real and can change without notice - follow all signage and instructions. Winter temperatures below minus thirty are routine and limit outdoor time severely.