On the banks of the Amur

Where North of China is becoming Siberian and Southeast of Russia increasingly Chinese, the two authoritarian empires stand back to back to eachother. Until the Second World War, the Soviet Union and Japan fought for supremacy here. In his search for traces of history, Sören Urbansky has come across an astonishing Sino-Russian present. In his vividly narrated book, he tells of prospering Chinese metropolises and torbid Russian places on the other side of the river - a few decades ago it was the other way around. He visits cities like Harbin in north-eastern China, once "Moscow of the East", and Vladivostok, the Russian San Francisco and is a guest of ordinary people who speak fluent Chinese and Russian and sip their solyanka with chopsticks. His empathetic report comes very close to the profiteers and losers of the border and allows unusual insights into the two great powers and their tense relationship.