Almost all the 350 seats in the Ilyushin-86 jumbo had been stripped out, leaving only a few rows at the rear. For two hours, trucks ferried bales of clothing to the aircraft in bright winter sunshine. A conveyor belt lifted the loads up to the passenger door where they were manhandled inside and secured under netting for the 3 1/2-hour flight from China to Russia.
We watched, shivering, through the windows of the unheated airport terminal at Tianjin, the city near Beijing which was until recently the hub of a thriving trade with Russia. Only an occasional flight connects the two countries now, following the collapse of the Russian economy, which forced the Russian cargo carriers East Line, Atlant-Soyuz, Il-Avia, Domodedovo and Sibir Airlines to cut back service drastically.
This chartered Sibir Airlines aircraft, preparing to carry a group of Russian fur traders back to the city of Novosibirsk, was the last plane to Russia before the Chinese New Year holiday. I had managed to secure a seat as the only way of getting from China to Siberia by air, scheduled flights being non-existent between these two great regions of Asia.
My fellow-passengers were typical of the post-Soviet breed of "chelnoki", or itinerant Russian dealers, men and women in their 30s and 40s, smoking and endlessly discussing prices. "Trade is terrible these days," said blond-haired Igor as we entered the plane through the luggage hold and climbed a staircase to the tail section. "Since August, people in Russia can't afford anything but food." Irina, a Siberian with a gash of red lipstick on a chalk-white face, added gloomily: "A year ago we were doing seven times as much."
The interior of the plane was also freezing cold and everyone sat huddled in coats and fur hats as its Kuznetsov engines strained to lift the cargo of furs, leather jackets, track suits, duck-down coats, underwear, sports shoes and toys. Otherwise, Sibir Airlines looked after the fur traders reasonably well. A steward handed out bottles of Comrade Bender beer inscribed with the slogan "Don't be miserly", and offered us lunch of noodles or meat, with black bread and cheese and an orange.
After we landed in Novosibirsk, one of my new friends warned me about an attractive young customs officer in gray mini-skirt. "She takes bribes if your load is overweight," he said, "but only if she likes you, otherwise she won't let you through." He added with a laugh: "She only robs her friends."
Not being a trader I had no problems. In the terminal building unsmiling men in bulky black leather jackets hustled for taxi fares. I hired a middle-aged Armenian called Zhora to take me to the railway station for a train to my ultimate destination of Krasnoyarsk, 1,000 kilometres away.
There were no flights between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk that day, the inter-city service having been cut from three flights a day to three a week since the rouble collapsed last summer. On the drive into town we passed policemen extracting fines from motorists (a bad habit from Soviet times) which prompted Zhora to grumble that in Novosibirsk "there are more police than dead dogs".
Zhora hadn't let me change money at the airport, and drove me instead to a shopping mall for a better rate. "Come with me," he said, parking the taxi. Inside I did the business with his cousin, a freelance money-changer who operated openly with other dealers outside the doors of a bank.
Novosibirsk railway station was crowded and full of menace, with hollow-cheeked men eyeing strangers and being eyed in turn by armed police. But, as in Soviet times, Russia still provides some sanctuaries for travelling foreigners, in this case an empty booking hall of marble floors and black leather couches.
Train travel is risky in crime-ridden Siberia but when I eventually boarded Train No 54 en route from Kiev to Vladivostok, a Ukrainian steward arranged a private compartment for me (at a price of course). From Novosibirsk the train creaked and groaned through the night, arriving at the blackened ice of Krasnoyarsk railway station 14 hours later.
Getting back home from Krasnoyarsk a few days later posed a whole new set of problems. With no charter planes available, I faced a four-day train journey or a 24-hour ordeal by air, flying to Beijing via Moscow, a journey of four hours west and seven hours east. I opted for the latter.
In today's devalued Russia, air travel for foreigners is very cheap. The ticket from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow on Kras-Air - a distance equal to that between Baghdad and Dublin - cost £34, and that from Moscow to Beijing as little as £200 for business class. On the flight to Moscow, in another Ilyushin 86, I found that air travel also can be risky for personal security. My camera case disappeared from my feet as I stowed a bag before take-off, but it reappeared mysteriously - in a different section - when the stewardess announced loudly her intention of fetching the police.
At Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport a helpful Aeroflot official (no, not an oxymoron) explained to me that business class tickets purchased in roubles in Russia actually cost less than economy class tickets prepaid outside the country for the same flight. There was more to come from what was once the world's rudest airline. The cabin crew on the Boeing plied passengers with prawns, salmon, trout, steak, wines, cheese and charm, and woke us for breakfast over the Gobi Desert with hot pancakes and creme de Norman- die. I arrived back in Beijing in a mild state of shock. "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," said Robert Louis Stevenson, and if Aeroflot makes it even more pleasant, then something truly revolutionary has happened in Russia.