China’s Russian Town Has Log Cabins and Cyrillic Signs, but No Russians
The New York Times • • world
Key Points:
- President Vladimir Putin has been engaged in a nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking citizens with cultural and familial ties to Russia.
- Far to the east, Russia has lost a historic cultural foothold in northern China, where a remote ethnic Russian township exists more in name than in population.
- The Enhe township in Inner Mongolia, China, was established to preserve the traditions of China's small Russian minority but now lacks actual ethnic Russians.
- The township features Russian cultural elements like birch trees, log cabins, Cyrillic script, and vodka, yet its residents are mostly descendants of Russians rather than ethnic Russians themselves.
