Although Wan Feng did not believe in the Soviets' ability to get things done, he welcomed Shamilov's decision to send a few more people to Komsomolsk-on-Amur with him.
There is strength in numbers. There is safety and security in numbers.
In case anything happens, there are a few locals to take the blame.
Shamilov also sent five people, led by Alexei, and Babulev brought three people who looked very similar.
Of the 100,000 rubles that Shamilov prepared for Wanfeng, Wanfeng kept 10,000 in his pocket and gave the remaining 90,000 to Alexei.
At that time, the Soviet Union was still using the 1961 edition of the ruble, and the largest denomination was the 100-ruble note with Lenin's profile printed on the front.
There are 100 rubles in denominations, and 100,000 yuan is just ten bundles, which is not a lot of stuff at all and it won't be noticeable if you carry it on your body.
Han Guangjia and Han Meng each carried a backpack filled with small wine bottles.
Shamilov took them to the Bu train station.
It was only when he entered the Blagoveshchensk railway station that Wan Feng realized he had made a mistake.
He originally thought that this railway was the Baikal-Amur Railway, but now he knows he was wrong.
This railway is the Trans-Siberian Railway, which was built during the Tsarist period, and the Baikal-Amur Railway is hundreds of kilometers north of this railway line.
The Baikal-Amur Railway was a reserve railway built by the Soviet Union to prevent the Trans-Siberian Railway from being cut off in the event of a dispute with China.
When getting on the car, Shamilov reminded Wan Feng to be careful along the way, but he did not say what to pay attention to.
Wan Feng could understand what Shamilov meant.
The Soviets have always been seriously wary of the Chinese. Many countries in the world have Chinatowns, but the Soviet Union did not, and even the Russians later did not have them.
If Chinese people live in groups in a certain area, the police in that area will feel like they are facing a great enemy, and no one knows what they are afraid of.
Wan Feng's explanation was that their ancestors had occupied a large area of Chinese territory, and they were probably afraid deep down that the Chinese would one day settle accounts with them.
After all, compared with China, which has stood among the world's top countries for five thousand years, they are really nothing.
If China is a surging ocean, then these can only be regarded as small ditches at best. Perhaps they will become rivers one day, but they will also become dry beaches at a certain period of time.
The Soviet people's character can be seen from the ticket checking when boarding the train. Even though Shamilov and others were seeing them off, the ticket inspector at the ticket gate still repeatedly checked the tickets of Wan Feng and others.
Wan Feng was puzzled. How could he make fake tickets? Just look at the ticket. It was printed by you Soviets. It's worth a few cents.
Soviet trains look almost the same as Chinese trains, and most of them are green-skinned.
But most of the compartments inside are soft sleeper compartments, which are quite comfortable to sit in.
There were ten of them in total, in two connected boxes.
The Soviet Union had a land area of 22 million square kilometers, but a population of less than 300 million. Over 80% of these 300 million people were concentrated in Europe, while the entire Far East had a population of only around 10 million.
What does it mean that the Far East has a base of 7 million square kilometers and a population of 10 million?
The result was that there was not a single village to be seen for dozens of miles.
There are forests and small areas of cultivated land everywhere.
More than an hour after the train left Bu City, Wan Feng saw a village about the same size as Dalinzi Brigade.
This is right next to the Longjiang River and the railway. Wan Feng suspects that there may not be a village within hundreds of miles.
On the other hand, there is a Chinese village on the other side of the river every few miles.
Buildings can be seen several miles away on the Soviet side. They are those steel-framed watchtowers. Almost every village along the Chinese river has a watchtower.
The Chinese border checkpoints were all replaced with reinforced concrete watchtowers, while the Soviet Union still had steel watchtowers that could freeze people to death in the winter.
Wan Feng suspected that these watchtowers still had a surveillance function in the summer, but they might just be for show in the winter, as there were no soldiers on duty there in the winter.
The forest resources here are really rich. There are large birch forests next to the railway, which are lush and graceful.
Unfortunately, the birch tree can probably only be used as firewood besides extracting birch sap. I have never seen anyone use it to make furniture.
After the train passed a station that seemed to be called Legaha, two people in conductor uniforms appeared at the door of Wan Feng's compartment, followed by a police officer with a gun.
"Passport!" A conductor who came in first said these two words expressionlessly.
Is this a mid-trip ticket check? Did the Soviet Union also have mid-trip ticket checks?
Wan Feng's box is full of Wan Feng's people, and Alexi is in the box next door.
The first person to hand over his passport was Chen Dao.
But what shocked Wan Feng and his companions was that the conductor took Chen Dao's passport and put it in his pocket without even looking at it.
"Passport!" Still these two words.
Zhang Zhiyuan thought he wanted the passports of everyone in the box, so he handed over his own passport.
Zhang Zhiyuan's passport ended up in the same place as Chen Dao's, ending up in the conductor's pocket.
"Passport!" These two words again.
When Han Meng's passport suffered the same fate, Wan Feng felt something was wrong.
This is someone asking for money.
Wan Feng took out his passport, put a hundred-yuan ruble note in it and handed it over.
This time the conductor did not put the passport in his pocket, but opened it and took the hundred-yuan ruble note away.
"Passport!" Again this sentence!
Damn, one hundred rubles is not enough!
These bastards are too greedy. The purchasing power of a hundred-yuan ruble during the Soviet era is not comparable to the ruble that depreciated after the disintegration.
One hundred rubles can buy countless things nowadays.
At least you could buy 200 cartons of Bulgarian imported cigarettes, 45 kilograms of the best sausages, 20 bottles of vodka (if the store has it), 10 bottles of Samsung brandy, and round-trip tickets from south to north within the Soviet Union.
This is already a huge sum of money, and these guys think it’s too little?
There was also a note in Han Guangjia's passport.
If the other party continues to talk about passports, Wan Feng will find Alexi next door and ask them to deal with these guys.
Fortunately, this time the conductor did not ask for passports. He glanced at Wan Feng and his friends' passports and returned them to the people in the compartment and left.
Zhang Zhiyuan was puzzled: "Is this considered robbery?"
Although there are some unhealthy trends emerging in China now, there has never been such blatant behavior.
"It's because we look different from them. They can tell we're Chinese at a glance and are bullying us. But this isn't considered robbery, it's just asking for it. If it were robbery, it wouldn't be like this."
As soon as Wan Feng finished speaking, Babulev stuck his head in from the car door.
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