Suifenhe - End of the Line
- Chan Roberts
- Aug 8, 2019
- 3 min read
Suifenhe, China is in the southeastern part of Heilongjiang Province along the border with Russia. It’s also the end of the line for the Harbin-Suifenhe high speed train route. The city is located where the former Chinese Eastern Railway crosses the border with into the Russian town of Pogranichny, Primorsky Krai. The area was the sight of battles between Russia and Japan in 1945 when Russia invaded Japan-occupied Manchuria, thereby helping to bring the occupation to an end. In so many ways, it’s the end of the line.
So, what’s there to see here? Well, not much, really. The border area featuring the national gates is off limits to laowais (worthless foreigner dogs) like me. There’s a so-called “tourist area” and “scenic spot” nearby that was disappointing to say the least; though, if you’re interested in buying products from Russia, there’s a large building with several shops.
What there is to see in Suifenhe is in what I would consider the downtown area. There’s a nice park on a body of water that features a lit fountain show of sorts at night and has carnival rides for the kids. There’s a Buddhist temple that, like a lot of temples in China, is atop a mountain. (Suifenhe is mostly surrounded by mountains.) If you like to hike a bit, the climb to get up to the temple is worth it. Then there’s what Tripadvisor called the White Building: it’s an old mansion of sorts, presumably built around the turn of the 20th century, that now houses a museum. It’s listed as 10 of 10 things to do in Suifenhe, but I think it should be much higher on the list. The architecture alone is reason enough to do a walk-through, but the displays (everything’s in Chinese and Russian) give a local history in which the railroad and the Communist Party seem prominent.
If you’re a shopper, then Suifenhe is one place where you can - as the expression goes - “shop ’til you drop”. In addition to a pedestrian market street (which is also on Tripadvisor’s list of things to do), there’s a large plaza lined with individual shops and multi-story buildings with several floors of shopping. The plaza itself is a popular place with the locals and is filled at night with the cacophony of different pieces of music playing for the different groups of people dancing.
Restaurants abound in Suifenhe - little family-owned eateries featuring Dongbei food (northeast China cuisine), fast food joints like KFC, other Chinese restaurants, as well as Russo-European restaurants. Tripadvisor lists a Sino-Russo-European restaurant called Maxim as a top restaurant to visit. The food was good and was reasonably priced; but its location at the end of a long, dingy, narrow street was a disappointment.
But, for me, the best of Suifenhe isn’t the plaza or the things on Tripadvisor’s list of things to do; it’s a little place not far from the White Building. It’s an old-style Russian bread bakery and the bread was wonderful!
I should warn you about the taxis in Suifenhe. They all seem to have just one fare in mind regardless of where you go: 20 RMB. There is actually nowhere in Suifenhe that should cost you 20 RMB if they use the meter like they’re supposed to. You should be able to go pretty much anywhere in Suifenhe for 10 RMB or less. So, be really insistent on them using the meter.
Suifenhe is worth spending a few days if you’re interested in going somewhere that is not a major tourist destination. I chose it simply because it was the last stop on a train route from Harbin (where I currently live). I was annoyed that I was not allowed access to the border gate area simply because I’m a laowai (worthless foreigner dog), but some of the other things I got to see - especially the old-style Russian bread bakery - made up for it.
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