How do Russians experience the virus near the very border with China? "New" sent a special commander to Blagoveshchensk

Due to the threat of coronavirus spread, boundaries closing and moving restrictions, Chinese cities are in animation. Over Russian cities, whose economy is directly related to China, is also hung with a threat of isolation. The Novosti correspondent went to Blagoveshchensk and found out what the border for the capital of the Amur region means and why most Annunciations are not afraid to become infected.

Meanwhile
At the time of publication of the text, the number of cases of coronavirus reached 20,704 people, of which 20504 cases were recorded in China, and more than 200 cases in the territories of the PRC (autonomous region of the internal Mongolia, the province of Heilongjiang and Jilin). The current data on infected are currently considered the Bot of Novaya Gazeta: subscribe to it here.

I was already traveling to Sheremetyevo when I found out that in the Chinese city district of Heihe, which was separated only by a frozen Amur (two countries are located at a distance of 750 meters from each other), they recorded the first case of coronavirus. In fact, Koronavirus was found quite far from the border, in the County of Sun, that is part of the Heihe, but still somehow he wanted Aeroexpress to just get up without reaching the airport.

But Aeroexpress did not stand up, the plane took off and landed safely. And so, after almost eight hours of flight, I stand on the embankment of Blagoveshchensk.

In front of me, across the river, - the two -hundredth urban district of Aihui, which is part of the Heihe (his Annunciation for simplicity and call Heihe, although Heihe is almost a two -millionth district, which includes several settlements located from each other at a distance of tens of kilometers. Well, Hayhe, so Heihe). From here, Heihe is a gray wheel of the review, a factory with a huge pipe belolding into the sky, clubs of thick white smoke, and dozens of different-eating high-rise highways, located as if in one row and because of this resembling a strip of equalizer.

To the left of me are two useless pontoon crossings now, cargo and passenger, stretching with two thick black snakes on the ice of the Amur. In winter, these crossings are the only way to move to the other side (in the offseason there are a ship on an air cushion, and in the summer a ferry crossing works). Until recently, on pontoon bridges between Blagoveshchensk and Heihe every 30 minutes from morning to evening, buses full of tourists and shuttles ran (shuttleness here is still alive, despite the fact that every year the amount of goods that can be imported from China is reduced every year). More recently, Chinese and Russian truckers stood on the border in line. We drove the soil to China, honey, forest, milk, flour, vegetable oil, sweets. And from there - vegetables, fruits, clothes. The Chinese came to us for gold, for the same honey, ice cream. Life was in full swing. At first, only a temporary corridor remained from that life, it worked on February 1 and 2, and during this time 205 Russians returned to Russia, and 99 Chinese left for China. And now the temporary corridor has stopped his work until February 5. By local standards - this is a lot ...

And now Heihe in Anabiosis because of the virus. From February 2, by decision of the authorities, kindergartens, schools and universities, entertainment centers, cinemas, beauty salons, museums and halls for playing Majong were closed there - in general, almost all, except for supermarkets, pharmacies, agricultural markets and several largest hotels. Any mass events are prohibited in Heihe, including weddings, travel agencies are discontinued, city buses do not go there, residents are advised to communicate with each other on video links, and pharmacists are required to record the names of all who buy antipyretic drugs and cough medicines in pharmacies.

***

In Blagoveshchensk, at first glance, everything is as usual. Goods (this is how the city is called), it seems, is trying to ignore what all the world media have been talking about for a month now. And it turns out well.

Children in multi -colored overalls ride on a wooden slide, pensioners walk, warming their hands in the pockets of the fur coats. Yellow buses full of people walk around the city, young people chatting in coffee houses (and all - without masks, despite the fact that at the end of January the Annunciation authorities introduced a “mask regime”), and from the columns the only Black Star Burger runway with a huge stretch of smiling Timati at the entrance, for the whole street about love and ransom Egor Creed sings.

The first man in a mask that met me in Blagoveshchensk is the cashier of this very burger Lena.

“The leadership told this to wear it,” Lena smiles only with her eyes because of the black, to match the uniform, masks on her face. - But in general there is no fear. You with beef or turkey?

According to Lena, from the closure of the border, their burger will not lose anything - "mainly local youth still walks."

Larisa, the administrator of the Prague hostel, hidden between the burger and the winery store, is also optimistic.

“I'm not afraid of the virus,” the woman says, standing in a twenty -degree frost in shales on the barefoot leg with a cigarette in her hand. - And in terms of business - we are not particularly connected with China. We have populism in the hotel of Chinese citizens were ten percent. Right now they will not be, but this will not affect-mainly, athletes, the boys-sportsmen come from the region for the competition. Well, those who come to the doctors sit down: teeth or something else to treat there.

In the pavilions of a shopping center with the symbolic name “Heavenly”, located on one of the main streets of Blagoveshchensk, the 50th anniversary of October, sellers say about the same thing.

“I have everything, it was,” says Tatyana Alekseevna, the hostess of the Pavilion of Fabrics for the Home, taking off her glasses and raising her eyes from the sewing machine. - Because I order with Ivanovo, not from China. - The woman looks around towels with the image of Russian hockey players and a tablecloth with bears. - I wait a long time, but I am a patriot. The Chinese used to go to me - they bought a crest. They are suitable for a towel and chew it. "Why are you chewing?" - I ask. The translator explains to me: "They check the material on the tooth, because synthetics on the teeth creaks, but there is no cotton." And then the Chinese were fed up, stopped walking - right now, grandmothers will receive a pension to me, they go for scarves and chintz, well, pregnant women at the frauds went and go.

Despite the fact that of the buyers in the giant “heavenly” only I and the two women (“No, we are not afraid of infection. There are already infected in Germany in other countries. What are - do not run away from that. And the masks are worn by those who are already sick. What is the point in them - nothing depends on us - sitting at home now, or by the chorus, that neither with the closure of the border, nor with the closing of the border, nor with fear of fear of fear This is not connected by the coronavirus - Monday, they say, here is nobody.

Most of them, by the way, do no prevention. Only one woman selling shoes told me that "there was a garlic."

And all in the “Heavenly” advised me to go to talk with the sellers of jewelry - according to the general opinion, it is they who could suffer from the closure of the border.

- Yes, everything is focused on China! People constantly come from Heihe - they love our gold. Now look-everything is empty, ”the dyed blonde Galina, the saleswoman of one of the many (I counted about ten) jeweler on the street of the 50th anniversary of October. Her three colleagues at that moment with smiles to the ears surround the only and, it seems, random visitor to the store-some kind of grandmother in an old fur coat.

In the neighboring empty jewelry store "Almaz" (jewelry go right after another, and on each two signs are hanging - in Russian and in Chinese) the Chinese are remembered with a smile and already with nostalgia.

-They come in constantly funny, turn on the camera on the phone and begin to demonstrate the goods to someone. And what they are told to take, they buy and take them, ”says the young saleswoman Lyudmila. And then he explains: not ordinary tourists from China often come to the Annunciation jewelry, but resellers who are welded, selling jewelry from Russia in their homeland. In addition, according to Lyudmila, it often happens that when the Chinese goes to Blagoveshchensk, numerous acquaintances order him to buy “stones, chains”, and he buys.

“Of course, we are not only working for the Chinese, for our buyer too,” Lyudmila assures me to nostalgia. - But in general, we have 80–90 percent of customers - the Chinese. We do not feel losses yet, but in general the decrease is ongoing. In general, there was already a period when there were also problems with the border, but nothing, they worked as usual.

Even more jewelry stores, apparently, carry travel agencies.

In the office of the Vell travel agency, located in the two-story brick-glass shopping center "Elegant" right under the second-hand, not a single client. The brunette in a yellow-black dress with a bored look looks at the phone.

“We incur losses are colossal,” says the manager Irina. - We have only three directions from Blagoveshchensk: Vietnam, Thailand and China. On average, somewhere around 35% of all rounds go to China.

There are people who fly two or three times a year only in Hainan ( a province in southern China, which is known for its resorts. - A. R. ) and nowhere else. And, accordingly, to everyone whose tours were bought for February, now tour operators are returning the full cost of the tour. For example, the Far Eastern Phoenix Tourbure. They rented a whole plane from the Yakutia airline, which flew from Blagoveshchensk to Hainan. As a result, on January 30, they took people out of there, and that’s it ... ”Irina spreads his hands.

According to the girl, due to the closure of the border with China, people began to “worry hard” about Vietnam with Thailand (by the way, the cost of burning tours to these countries “has already increased by 30 percent”): “Tourists have already called me today, they fly to Vietnam on February 20. They asked if they closed, would they fly away at all? "

After my question about what she thinks about coronavirus, Irina boils:

- Many acquaintances from Moscow write to me and are very superior to me: “And how are you there? And what do you have there - everything? " I am so tired of it that I say: "If anything, I will send you the address where to send a wreath."

We have panic, you see, there is no. Some go masked. And on the Internet, if you read comments, there is not enough pleasant. There was a post about a temporary corridor about the fact that such and such a number of Russians returned along it. So they write there in the comments: "Leave them in China, do not let them go to us."

After the travel agency, I decided to go to the famous Blagoveshchensk shopping center “Three Whales”, opened on the eve of the 2008 difficult business and designed for Chinese sellers. “Three whales” (it is noteworthy that “whales” in the good are called the Chinese) and another such store - XL - opened in addition to the Annunciation market: there were a lot of Chinese who wanted to trade in Blagoveshchensk at that time.

On the way I meet a girl in a blue medical mask. The ninth grader Natasha confusedly admits that "she simply did not take off the mask by inertia, they are forced to wear at school." During the day, I will meet many schoolchildren in masks, many of them will tell that they even drink antiviral drugs for prevention.

- Come in, inexpensive, sale today. A jacket, windbreaker, glasses, ”the saleswoman-Armenian calls me at one of the“ three whales ”pavilions. There are no buyers in the shopping center, some sellers: pavilions breaking from Chinese clothing, several bored merchants of different nationalities are sticking in phones, drinking tea from plastic cups and chatting about something with each other. Among the sellers are several male Chinese, they are all in masks (in general in many Annunciation shopping centers, sellers are now wearing masks at the request of the leadership). Any comments are amended by any comments: “We do not give, we do not give. You are not the first to ask. " Some pavilions are empty without sellers: the Chinese who traded here went home for the Chinese New Year, and because of the closure of the border, they could not return to work.

In tents near the shopping center, trade is also going on. More precisely, it is also worth it. In the boxes, placed along the road, Chinese pineapples are full, steam emanates from trays with hot Chinese corn. The unclaimed corn cooles quickly in the cold.

“Yes, there were more people before,” says the low Kyrgyz Maria, similar to a cloud because of a huge black down jacket. She has her own tent with clothes and shoes. - Basically, the “crown” affects, just people say to each other: “Do not go to the market, everyone closed there.” Do we already have patients? - Suddenly insinuatingly asks me a woman.

- In Chita, I heard, eat. And there a man died there? Well, he will die anyway? I am watching the Internet - in the video, everyone faints from the "crown", scary.

The trading in a tent with clothes near the newspaper refuses to introduce himself to the newspaper, but he says that “the border does not feel”: “We have many things, for a month there is definitely enough.”

What may not be enough in Blagoveshchensk for a month is the vegetables that were taken from China. They are no longer enough.

“Yes, the vegetables are over,” the manager of the Avoska supermarket, Tatyana, showing me peremptorly, pointing to wooden trays clogged with apples, carrots and onions. - Previously, instead of apples here, tomatoes and cucumbers lay. The bow has not ended yet, but the price rose to it by two and a half rubles per kilogram. We have a local “greenhouse” plant, but it does not cope, they do not have time to grow vegetables. In Novosibirsk there is a huge greenhouse, if they conclude an agreement with it, then maybe they will carry it from there. But, of course, three times more expensive than from China.

There are many buyers in the Frash fruit and vegetable kiosks, but there are still some sad buyers. According to the seller of one of the Fras, a gloomy young Tajik with a short haircut, "vegetables are now taken from Tomsk." The price for Tomsk greenhouse cucumbers is 450 rubles per kilogram (Chinese cost in the region of 130, their remains are now sold for 280 rubles). The Chinese tomatoes are very flying here for 200 rubles, and fresh (from the same Annunciation greenhouse) - for 250. Sweet pepper (origin is not indicated) costs 350 rubles per kilo.

If the prospects of a vegetable crisis exist, then with medicines and masks, according to the assurances of local pharmacists, things are somewhat different.

“The masks have already ended several times because the“ mask regime, ”Sofia admits good -naturedly, standing behind the pharmacy counter. “But they are immediately imported.” Antiviral people buy, but as usual: now the SARS season is still.

However, the pharmacist of Evgeny from the pharmacy nearby, told me that she “had only two sets of masks of 50 rubles left” (before such a set of 5 masks cost 20 rubles). But, according to the woman, "masks are already on the way, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow will be."

Instead of comments
With a request to comment on the situation in Blagoveshchensk, I turned to the regional Rospotrebnadzor. They refused comments there, citing the fact that "all information is on the site." On their website I found the report “On the epidemiological situation”, published on February 3. It follows from it that everything is okay.

All the Russians who returned to the country on February 1 and 2 through temporary corridors passed “double -and -imaginary control” and physical examination, which did not reveal signs of coronavirus infection. Now, a dormant Rospotrebnadzor monitors each of their sneezing. The agency also encourages the fact that the incidence of SARS last week "below the indicators of the same period last year." At the end of the report, tips are given: not to allow sick children for lessons, do not self -medicate, use masks in public places and all in this spirit.

The mayor of the city of Blagoveshchensk Valentina Sergeevna Kalita, an official request from Novaya Gazeta for an interview ignored.