Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia (AFP)—As Chinese pop music blared out of a cassette recorder, a middle-aged woman bent over a steaming bowl of noodles while keeping an eye on her wares.
In a bustling clothes market in the capital of Russia”s Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan, Chinese and ethnic Korean traders sell cheap goods from China that are just the cure for cash-strapped Russians.
Some make enough money in this remote outpost of Russia’s Far East – whose 710,000 inhabitants are sunk in deprivation despite immense oil and mineral wealth to pay others to tend their stalls under rain and snow.
Ira Vinogradova, 33, a university-educated woman who used to work as a geologist, gets paid l,600 rubles ($58, 64 euros) a month to sell t-shirts, jeans, jackets and footwear imported from China.
“Here at least you can make some sort of a living. I’ve got mouths to feed,” she explained.
Sveta, 30, a former office secretary, smiled cheerfully as she bent down to pick out a pair of shoes for a customer on a busy Saturday afternoon.
“We get along well. They know what they’re doing” she said, asked about the Asian traders, adding that her uncle was now learning Korean.
Xiao Bing, his eyes darting about suspiciously at first like many Chinese in Russia, he is living there illegally relaxed as he recounted how he came to Sakhalin five years earlier looking for a better life.
“There are too many of us in China,” said the youthful-looking 30-year-old. “I don’t say that it’s easy here but our goods are affordable and you can prosper if you work hard.”
In a nearby food market, traders were unloading crates covered with Chinese characters.
Vye Sin, 46, immigrated from the northern Chinese city of Harbin in l997, leaving his wife and children behind.
“As long as they don’t kick me out, I will stay on. I have my business here,” he said proudly pointing to the display of tinned goods, fruits, sugar, rice and other food items crammed into his tiny shop.
Alongside hundreds of Chinese immigrants, offspring of Koreans deported here during World War II by Japan—which controlled Sakhalin from l905 to l945—dominate market trade in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Olya, 35, who uses a Russian name and has forgotten how to speak Korean, told the story of her father who was brought to the island to work in the coal mines, paid in food by the Japanese authorities.
After Soviet troops occupied Sakhalin in the final days of the war, he and her mother stayed on.
Today, the Korean community is thriving.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk’s premier entertainment spot, a complex housing a casino and pricy Japanese and Korean restaurants, is owned by an ethnic Korean.
Meanwhile, from across the sea in Japan, investors have rushed here since the collapse of the Soviet Union in l99l, as oil and gas majors vie to extract the island’s oil riches.
The top two hotels in the city are Japanese joint ventures. And even the local mafia has felt the winds of change.
Law enforcement officials say that in l997 the owner of a top Japanese restaurant was bludgeoned to death by criminals who stole thousands of dollars in cash from his home.
But within a short time, yakuza—feared Japanese mafia—came looking for the culprits and killed them in cold blood.