CHINESE emigrants have established communities all over the world, but few ever settled in the vast Siberian territory just north of their border. The Sino Russian border was closed for centuries. It is now open in places and hundreds of Chinese have arrived in cities like Krasnoyarsk in eastern Siberia to engage in trade.
However, one of the barriers to the movement of people in the vast, northern land mass of Asia remains the difficulty of travel, even in this modern age. So I discovered when we set out for Krasnoyarsk from Beijing on Christmas Eve for a family holiday.
We took Aeroflot's Beijing Moscow plane to Novosibirsk, the nearest Siberian city, not knowing how we would make the remaining 700 km as the Aeroflot officials in the Chinese capital - who sell tickets for American dollars only - give out no information on connecting flights.
Sparkling new airports are being built all over southern Asia, but the Novosibirsk terminal was like - an old bus station, with a cockroach infested waiting room lined with old Las Vegas poker machines. There was no connecting flight to Krasnoyarsk for 24 hours.
We went to Novosibirsk railway station, where homeless people slept on the floor to escape the driving snow and bitter cold. Here time has also stood still. A statue of Lenin dominates the main concourse and, in Soviet style, officials demand passports to issue tickets and board carriages.
We caught the 3 a.m. train on Christmas morning and for 13 hours travelled through silver birch woods and villages of wooden houses before reaching our destination.
Russia has had a market economy for five years but there are many remnants of the old regime in Krasnoyarsk. A slogan, "Long Live Soviet Youth", on a typical five storey cityblock, look down on streets which have changed little.
Provincial cities in China - which opened up to foreign investment 15 years ago - have thrust glass and steel buildings high into the sky, but Krasnoyarsk still looks as it did under Brezhnev. There are Hyundais and Mercedes now among the traffic, stores have western goods and people are dressed in the latest western fashions, but there are no new office blocks or shopping malls or luxury hotels.
The newest buildings are banks and million dollar red brick mansions built by the nouveau riche on the banks of the Yenisei River.
In some ways life has got worse. In the apartment blocks the hall lights and rubbish chutes and often the lifts do not work properly. The council cannot pay maintenance staff. Crime is on the increase, from murders to petty theft like stealing fur hats off people's heads leaving them exposed to the temperatures which dipped to -38 Celsius while we were there.
In common with Chinese cities Krasnoyarsk has, however, succumbed to an invasion of English consumer words on shop shelves and billboards. A shop called Diamond had "Open" written in English. On TV a humorist joked "I'm studying English so I can read the Russian dictionary."
The Chinese traders made a significant impact on Krasnoyarsk in the first two or three years after the collapse of Soviet communism. They brought cheap, western style clothing to a city of a million people starved of consumer goods. Their wares are less in demand now as people have come to appreciate quality.
"My friends would prefer to buy a fur coat from Greece than from Beijing," said a teacher, as we walked along a street with the snow squeaking underfoot.
The paradox of Krasnoyarsk is that most people have little money to enjoy the higher quality goods. Salaries are not being paid by the state. In China, provincial teachers sometimes go months without pay, but here whole sections of society have been impoverished.
In an apartment one evening, I found myself sitting around a table with a theatre designer who had received no pay since March, a music teacher not paid since May (she was offered men's socks in lieu of money), a police captain with no salary since September, and an Aeroflot pilot paid in department store credits.
A marked differences between China and Russia is in the attitude of the people to the changes which have overtaken their lives. Krasnoyarsk citizens are deeply cynical and feel hopeless, believing that elected leaders have joined the all powerful mafias. A construction worker on the train said despairingly: "The strongest Mafia is the government."
They also feel deceived at every turn. Many goods are produced by fly by night entrepreneurs. People have died by drinking industrial spirit from expensive vodka bottles. A tin of caviar we bought was empty.
China has its share of corruption but there is an assumption that the people at the top are "clean", especially since 1989 when the communist government was shaken by students demonstrating against high level corruption. Most Chinese seem to live now by Deng Xiaoping's maxim: it is glorious to be rich.
There is also a fundamental psychological difference between the two peoples. In China, communism was always seen as a tool to make China great, a Russian diplomat told me once. The Russians made the mistake of believing in communism and making it a goal. Many look back with nostalgia to the Soviet era. A personnel director at a Krasnoyarsk factory said: "We still think Lenin had a good idea."
In these hard times, people exist the way Russians always do, using home grown food, taking extra jobs, helping each other. The poorest sell their belongings by the kerbside. Few can dream of travel or holidays. A Soviet style anecdote is still current in Krasnoyarsk. A man says, "I'm thinking of going to Paris again."
"I didn't know you were in Paris before," replied his friend. "I wasn't. I thought of going to Paris before."
When we returned to Novosibirsk, we found that apart from an immigrant Chinese doctor and his wife, there were no other passengers for our dawn Moscow to Beijing flight. An Aeroflot official told us it might not stop because there were so few of us.
We were lucky. Spare a thought for a young Russian waiting with us to fly to Ulan Bator. His flight was also due to stop in Novosibirsk en route to the Mongolian capital. But the crew decided he was not worth the trouble. He was told he had to wait for the next flight in four days.