Helper 2. The war with the Chinese woman continues

Morning of the second day

In China, cities are organized into provinces. Suifenhe City belongs to Hailongjiang Province. This province includes many cities, and the main city is Harbin. I have already said that my journey to China began in 2006, and the city of Suifenhe was the first Chinese city that I saw. To say that the city amazed me is to say nothing. However, on that summer day I did not have time to fully examine the city of Suifenhe; our path lay in the city of Harbin, and Suifenhe was only the city from where the train to the former Russian city of Harbin departed. I can't describe the feeling that morning when we drove into Suifenhe. Too many years have passed, but for some reason I remember the feeling of peace and quiet. We probably crossed the border quite early then. Well, I won’t guess, I’ll just repeat, the city of Suifenhe amazed me. Then, later, I visited several more cities in this province - the city of Mishan, Mudanjian, Jixi, but of course the cherry on the cake was always the city of Harbin. I will describe this city, however, no, I can only describe a small part - the city center, because, of course, I have never seen the whole city, Harbin is a large city. If we look at history, we can read that the city of Harbin, like the city of Suifenhe, began to develop when the railway appeared. By the way, this impetus, I mean the foundation and emergence of the railway, was an impetus for the development of the city of Vladivostok.
But let's return to Harbin. The city of Harbin... Before it emerged in its current form, Harbin was only a small village. When it was decided to build a railway, Russian specialists began to come to Harbin - engineers, railway workers, and so on. Russian churches, theaters, and gymnasiums began to be built in the city. On the other bank of the Songhua River, merchants' dachas appeared, where they grew traditional vegetables - tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and other summer snacks for the table, so beloved by Russians.
Time has changed everything, now Russian people come to Harbin only on excursions. Just a few years ago there were old-timers alive, that is, Russian people who considered Harbin their hometown. But now there is no one left. Not far from the Buddhist temple and park there is a cemetery where Soviet soldiers are buried in the ground; they died when they liberated Harbin from Japanese invaders in 1945. The Chinese take care of the cemetery. Unfortunately, during the troubled times called the Cultural Revolution, many Russian churches in Harbin were destroyed. There are now only a couple of churches left in all of Harbin. One of the churches, the Temple of Sophia, is now the hallmark of Harbin. There are no services held in this temple; the temple has become a museum of Russian life. Inside the temple there are photographs from the past of this city. If you raise your head to the dome of the temple, you can see that the Chinese left it in its original form. The dome is not processed.
I repeat once again, I have never seen the entire city of Harbin, well, if only from a bird's eye view. I mean when the Vladivostok-Harbin plane was landing, and therefore I can only navigate the center of Harbin. The Chinese have lovingly preserved the past of this city. If you take a cable car or boat to Sunny Island, that is, swim or fly over the Sungari River, you can see a large area called the Russian village. In Harbin itself, on Central Street, which Russians unofficially call Arbat, you can try Russian beer, which is still made using Russian technologies, as well as try bread and sausage made according to old Russian recipes. Numerous cafes that preserve the memory of the past may also amaze you, because there used to be residential buildings of Russian people here. Now there are cafes or restaurants where the interior of an old Russian house has been carefully preserved.
Oh, sorry, I got distracted, I jumped so smoothly from the city of Suifenhe to Harbin that I didn’t even notice.
Well, what can I tell you about the morning of the second day in the city of Suifenhe? It was cold and dirty. Since in the evening I was unable to properly wash myself after the trip, due to the fact that the hotel room was deadly cold, I felt very dirty. Well, I already wrote about the cold. Since I slept dressed, all I had to do was throw on a jacket and go say good morning to the Chinese administrator Katya from the Long Shen Hotel. That's what I did! My story about how I was freezing all night did not impress the angry Chinese woman at all. At the moment when I was telling her, about 10 bottles of medicine were laid out in front of her. She tried to take all these medications, but I stopped her. However, I had no time for delicacy. I demanded that my number be changed. When I told Katya about this, it seemed to me that she would eat me alive. However, there was nowhere to retreat. As expected, Katya refused me. Then I said that I would sleep here, right next to her, fortunately, as I saw, next to her booth there was a room where Katya and other staff rested from such annoying hotel guests, like me. The room smelled of pleasant warmth and Chinese smells. It was also warm next to the administrator's booth. This is probably why Katya simply did not understand me. As our Russian proverb says: “A well-fed man does not understand the hungry.” I had to raise my voice to be heard. Katya hit the bottle of medicine on the surface of the booth, but had no intention of retreating. Several guests came out to hear the noise, and I explained the situation. Seeing that I was not going to retreat, Katya became even more angry. A grimace of hatred twisted her face. More than three weeks have passed since my trip to China, to the city of Suifenhe, but I still cannot understand why this evil Chinese woman, whom I met for the first time in this Long Shen hotel, hated me so much? Time passed, I stood near the booth, behind which the Chinese administrator Katya was trying to take all the medicine. Finally, Katya chirped something. I could not understand the powerful Russian language that flowed from the lips of this woman. To still understand what she was saying, I had to ask again three or four times. On the fourth or fifth time, I finally understood that they would not change my room, since there were no rooms available, but they would give me a second blanket and try to add heat to the radiator. This is all!
I won’t say that I was proud of the victory, but I realized that there was nothing more for me here, and I had to finally go have breakfast, because my stomach had been hinting for a long time that I needed to give up these battles of local significance and urgently go to where I'll be fed.
You could go to a cafe where there was a buffet and for 20 yuan you could eat whatever your heart desired and drink, by the way, too. There were many such cafes, they were arranged as a buffet specifically for Russian tourists, and were in every alley. However, after the verbal battles, I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone else today, so I just went to the Chinese dumpling shop. For the modest sum of 10 yuan, I received a huge portion of dumplings, which was to become not only breakfast for me today, but also lunch. When I left the dumpling shop, I remembered that I needed to buy a jacket for my son - this was the main and only big purchase that I wanted to make in Suifenhe. I don’t like going to small shops and stores in this city, sometimes it’s simply life-threatening. Here they are trying to sell you goods that you don’t need, and if you refuse, they can beat you, so I went to the Red Fox fixed goods store. I bought a jacket in this store and hurried out. I had a lot of things I wanted to do on this short November day.
The morning smoothly turned into midday.