Buildings with Russian-style decorative features aimed at attracting tourists in Ergun, China. Enhe was once home to thousands of ethnic Russians. — Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times
RUSSIAN culture survives in a remote patch of northern China entombed in ice and snow.
In the township of Enhe, birch trees, log cabins, Cyrillic script and even vodka hint at a Russian past – but the people themselves have long lost touch with the language and traditions of their forebears.
Set up by the Chinese government to protect the folk identity of its small Russian minority, Enhe is more museum than living community.
The closest it comes to actual Russians are descendants of settlers who arrived from the 17th century onwards, often intermarrying with Chinese, Mongolians and other locals.
“In a few years, we will be just like every other place,” said Li Peng, the township chief, himself a distant descendant of early Russian settlers.
Today, Enhe has 2,895 residents. More than 40% are officially registered as ethnic Russians, but few speak anything other than Chinese.
Enhe was once home to thousands of ethnic Russians. Under Xi Jinping’s push for ethnic unity, little remains beyond nostalgia and props for tourists.
Russian culture survives largely as a tourist attraction: a local museum displays samovars, nesting dolls, Soviet-era memorabilia and plastic replicas of Russian cuisine.
A guide showed off an old vinyl album with Cyrillic lettering, describing it as a work of a “famous Russian musician”. In fact, it was a Soviet-era bootleg of an Elton John record.
Li speaks only a few words of Russian.
At home, he uses Chinese with his wife and son, both also of mixed Russian descent.
They mark Orthodox Easter, he said, “only as a cultural holiday” with no religious meaning.
Li Peng, the chief of the township, in Ergun. — Gilles Sabrié/The New York Times
Zhou Yong, a cowherd shovelling coal to heat his home, is registered as an ethnic Russian but speaks only Chinese.
He had barely heard of contemporary Russia or its leaders.
The township’s primary school does not teach Russian.
Buildings along the streets are mostly Chinese, though some have been styled in faux-Russian fashion for tourists: painted Easter eggs, wooden cabins and even a Dutch windmill add to the European illusion.
In winter, when temperatures plunge far below freezing, Enhe is nearly deserted. Only officials and a few cattle and sheep herders remain.
In summer, older ethnic Russians who still speak the language sometimes return, and tens of thousands of Chinese tourists arrive, drawn by a taste of Russia without leaving the country.
The township’s past is a tale of migration and settlement.
Russians first arrived in the 19th century, drawn by gold deposits. They ran mines and railways while Chinese labourers worked alongside them, many eventually marrying Russian women.
More came after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, including anti-communist “white Russians” who hoped to return home once the Soviet regime collapsed.
Generations later, however, intermarriage and cultural assimilation have almost entirely erased the language and customs of Enhe’s Russian founders.
Local historian Zou Yu in nearby Ergun says the change has been gradual and inevitable.
“If a woman marries a chicken, she follows the chicken; if she marries a dog, she follows the dog,” he said, quoting a local idiom to explain how Russian women traditionally adapted to the households of their husbands.
The township’s chief echoed the sentiment. “We’ve merged into the broader community,” Li said.
Even Enhe’s few remaining Russian-style buildings and decorative features serve more as props than as living heritage.
Wax figures in traditional dress, wooden saunas and faux Russian cuisine fill museums, while streets are lined with buildings designed to evoke a “foreign flavour” for visitors.
At the Enhe Folklore Museum in Ergun, a wax figure representing a Russian seamstress and traditional Russian clothes are on display. — Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times
Despite its frozen history, Enhe remains a point of fascination for tourists.
Painted Easter eggs, log cabins and Russian-style signage provide photo opportunities, while local guides spin tales of the township’s long-lost Russian roots.
Cultural memory persists in fragments: a few elderly residents speak Russian, some festivals are celebrated symbolically and Cyrillic letters appear on signs.
But the township is slowly blending into the Chinese landscape, its heritage preserved more in kitsch than in practice.
For now, Enhe survives as a curiosity, a northern enclave of imagined Russia frozen in snow and time. Its traditions are fading, but for tourists and the occasional returning descendant, it offers a rare glimpse of a long-vanished world. — 2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
