Russian Street (Russian Lu), or as it is sometimes rendered, Russian Style Street or Russian Custom Street, is a lingering reminder of the days the city of Dalian was an outpost of Moscow. Today the connexion to an erstwhile Russia is most visually embodied in this single street to the north of Shengli Qiào (Shengli Bridge), near Dalian’s Xigang district.

The start of the street is marked by (what I imagine was once a very grand but what is these days) a large, aged Russian mansion. A sign in front of it proclaims the Russian heritage, русский. Russian Street is a longish, commercial street (with a short side lane appended to it) near the city ports. Rows of stalls line up on the inside of the street in front of the bricks and mortar shop buildings. It’s a street restricted to pedestrian traffic, although this in no way hinders the bike and scooter riders and the odd delivery van with its Russian goods.

Virtually all of Russian Street’s gift shops sell more or less identical merchandise – moon cakes in highly decorative boxes, inexpensive bars of Russian chocolate (going at 10CN¥)✺, jewellery and opals, decorative lighters, toy weapons, tanks and missile launchers❂, and above all, rows and rows of the famous Matryoshka dolls (also commonly called Babushka dolls), so many that they they were almost spilling out into the street. I noticed that China’s Matryoshka dolls are more orthodox than the kind I found in Moscow, where the vendors with unbridled commercial zeal were fast at it selling all manner of variations on the dolls-within-dolls theme (Vladimir Putin dolls, Barack Obama dolls, Lady Gaga dolls, Elvis dolls, and so on ad nauseam).

Half-way down there’s a authentic Russian pectopaH (restaurant)…a lot of visitors don’t venture much further than this point and it’s a good deal less busy than than the Shengli bridge end. Russian Custom Street ends at a roundabout with a large official-looking building of state, there are a couple of small coffee shops and a number of food outlets spread out along the thoroughfare.

Russian Street in 2019 conveys what is at best a superficial nod of recognition of the Russian presence in Dalian that was at its influential height some 120 years ago. Like that other (northern) Chinese town Harbin, Russian Street, Dalian, retains a Russian feel with bi-lingual street signage, but it doesn’t quite match the sense of “Russification” which Harbin leaves visitors with.

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✺ in Dalian’s summer swelter, they are definitely of the “eat them before they melt” kind

❂ toys of a military orientation are extremely popular throughout Dongbei, a fixation I imagine which extends countrywide (a very 1960s-1970s echo of Western predilections)