After the contract was signed, Bart proceeded to arrange the logging processing. It takes more than a week for timber to be cut and processed and transported to the special road line, and the domestic goods will have to wait for a while to arrive in Novosibirsk, and the chemical raw materials of Varoga have been sent, for the time being, we have nothing to do in Novosibirsk, Ulan-Ude is not far from Manchuria, and I and Chao Ge have multi-year round-trip visas, so Chao Ge decided to take me to Manchuria to learn about the specific links of vegetables and fruits being shipped from Manchuria, and then come back to Ulan-Ude to supervise the loading of timber. Sasha didn't have a passport with him, so he waited for us in Ulan-Ude, supervising the progress of timber cutting and processing. I asked Brother Chao, the weather is not very cold now, why don't you ship it directly from a container? The cost is also much less than that of shipping from Manchuria by truck. Chao Ge said that the container in Manchuria and Zabaikal have to wait in line, and vegetables and fruits need to be quarantined, the Russian customs is very **, if you don't do well, you will be detained, vegetables and fruits in a closed state in the container, it will rot after a long time, if the container is refrigerated at a constant temperature, the cost will be very high. When the car is cleared, as long as you give enough benefits, you will have a green light all the way, you must know that time is money in the vegetable and fruit business.

After saying hello to the Novosibirsk company and calling Tanya again, we bought a train ticket to Chita that night. There is no direct train from Ulan-Ud to Zabaikal, we need to transfer through Chita and then cross the border to Manchuria on the Zabaikal Tongguò highway. There are no hard seats in long-distance trains in Russia, only intercity short-distance electric trains are full hard seats, and there are three types of sleepers on long-distance trains, an open hard sleeper, a four-person soft sleeper box, and a two-person high-end soft sleeper box. Brother Chao and I bought tickets for the four-person soft sleeper box.

It was a train from Ulan-Oud to Chita, and when I got on the train, I found that there were only two of us in the box, and when I was about to drive, I didn't see anyone coming up, so I said, "It looks like this box is going to be a premium box for the two of us." Brother Chao smiled and said, "Don't be happy too early, you can only count when you drive." The car was about to start, and suddenly there was a Chinese conversation with a thick northeast accent in the corridor, and an older voice said, "It's so hanging, we almost can't catch the train." Another younger voice said: "If TMD hadn't encountered the police to check the passport, there would have been no time at all, this is all running, out of my stinky sweat, we have arrived, this box." While speaking, two Chinese in their thirties and forties carrying large bags dressed as peasants entered our box.

It was very unexpected to meet Chinese on the train in Russia, and we were all northeastern fellows, and we were all very excited. We introduced ourselves to each other, Lao Wang in his forties, we called him Brother Wang, and Dayong in his thirties. After the car started, the box door was closed, I took out the beer sausages I had brought with me, Dayong took out the marinated pig's trotters and beef, and we started chatting while drinking.

Lao Wang and Dayong are from a village in Daxinganling in the northeast, came to Buryatia the year before last, and worked in a sawmill cooperated by Chinese and Russians, Lao Wang is a master who repairs chainsaws, Dayong is his apprentice, usually Dayong helps Lao Wang repair chainsaws and also follows the loggers to cut wood. This time, the visas of the two people were about to expire, and they had to return to China to reapply for visas, but they did not expect to encounter the police at the train station to check their passports, and the two people were extorted 100,000 rubles to get out, and they almost missed the train.

Lao Wang is well-informed and talkative, and told us about what they have seen and heard during the more than two years they have been working in the Buryatia countryside. Wang said that Buryatia is the region with the largest timber reserves in Russia, and four-fifths of the area of the Republic of Buryatia is covered by forests, and the tree species are mainly pine and fir forests, with timber reserves of more than 2 billion cubic meters. Pine and fir are not absent in China, but mining is rarely allowed, expensive, and the quality of the boards of the Far East red pine fir is the best in the world, so in the past two years, Chinese have come here to cooperate with the Russians in logging and processing, and then through the guò mafia forces to transfer back to China, although the Russian government strictly prohibits the export of red pine, but many are smuggled to China. Working in Russia requires a part-time work card, but the Russian government does not welcome Chinese to work, Russian part-time work card is difficult to get, like Lao Wang, who came to work with business visas, when they came from Manchuria, did not dare to stay after arriving in Zabaikal, took a Russian taxi to Chita, and then took a train to Ulan-Ude. The police in Zabaikal and Chita have very poisonous and black eyes, and they can recognize these people who come to work at a glance, and they can only pay for them when they are stopped and inspected by the police, otherwise they will be repatriated to their home countries and have to have a black stamp on their passports, and they will not be able to enter Russia for several years.

I wondered why the police could recognize these migrant workers at a glance. There are many Chinese who come with business visas, and many of them come to do business like us, so I asked Lao Wang. Lao Wang said that they are farmers, no matter how they look at it, they don't look like they came to do business, and those who really do business will not come for a long time, they are all received by Russians, they don't carry too much luggage, and they are very decently dressed, so the Russian police will see at a glance which farmers are farmers who come to work with business visas. I thought to myself that if this was the case, Lao Wang and Dayong could tell at a glance that they were peasants.

Lao Wang went on to say that at the Chita Railway Station, you can see some Chinese waiting for the train, all dressed as peasants like them, most of them are carrying luggage and carrying large bags, the Russian police see these people, come and check your passport, and then without saying a word, take the passport and turn away, no way to honestly follow the police, wait until the police find a place where no one stands, give tens of thousands of rubles, in order to get back the passport. Russian police officers are paid little money, so blackmailing illegal workers like them is the best way for them to make extra money. The train from Chita to Ulan-Ude will be better, there are basically no police checks, and they would rather spend more money to take the box than do a hard sleeper, and the box will be relatively safer. Even if it is inspected by the railway police, it is easy to deal with, and the money for the bottle of wine will be sent away.

I asked, "Isn't there any police harassment in the sawmill?" Lao Wang said that they are all in the deep mountains and old forests, and it is rare for the police and the immigration bureau to go to check, and occasionally the police will come to check, and the boss will come forward to settle the matter. I asked, are they lonely in the deep mountains and old forests? Dayong took over at this time and said, we won't be lonely, we usually get some delicious food to drink when we get off work, Lao Maozi doesn't eat those water and pig's trotters or something, we have to come back to eat it differently. And every day the sawmill does not stop, there are old hairmen in the village to the sawmill, some are thieves who steal wood in the mountains, take the wood to the sawmill in the middle of the night to sell, the most annoying is the drunkard, go to the sawmill to ask for wine, and then some are the widows and single mothers in the village, come to the sawmill to find the lumberjack happy. After taking a sip of beer, Lao Wang pointed to Dayong and said, this kid has a few friends in the village, where will he have time to be lonely. Dayong said with a smile, Lao Wang is not a fuel-efficient lamp, and he had a mixed-race child with a single mother in the village, and the little girl is more than a year old, and she looks beautiful. Brother Chao asked Lao Wang, do you want to bring the child back to China? Lao Wang said that if they can't take it back, Russian women don't care who they have children with, and they don't value their husbands, but children are their lives, so they won't give up their children. In Russia, a woman is pregnant, and men are not held responsible. As long as the child is pregnant, the child will be born, and the country will provide for the child. I asked Lao Wang, would the child's mother ask him for money? Lao Wang said that he would not usually ask him for money, but he would give some money to the child's mother every month. There are many children with Russian women like him in the rural areas of the Far East, some farmers who came to the bag with tourist visas, did not make money, simply did not return to China, ran to the countryside to find a Russian woman to live with, farmed and raised pigs, after giving birth, even the police could not take them, if they were arrested by the police, the woman took the child to the police station and cried and made trouble, and the police had to release people, anyway, the Chinese are more diligent than Lao Maozi, and these people are also living well. Lao Wang, there is such a northeasterner in the village near the sawmill, he has no passport and no identity, he has been living there for three or four years, and his children are more than two years old, and he has a good life by farming and selling goods, and he does not plan to return to China. Listening to Lao Wang's talk about this, I suddenly thought, will I marry Tanya? Will they live in Russia?

The train arrived at Chita early the next morning, probably because it was still early and there were few Chinese on the train, and there was no police inspection at the train station. According to Lao Wang's experience, we did not wait for the train from Chita to Zabaikal in the evening, but found a Volga car at the station to solicit passengers to Zabaikal, negotiated the price, and went straight to Zabaikal. The journey was very smooth, there was no police interception, and before three o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at the Zabaikal crossing. A few of us did not care about hunger, so we hurried to get on a transit minibus driven by Chinese, and after waiting in line at the Russian border for more than half an hour, we passed through the border with us. Lao Wang said that today is not the weekend, and there are no Russians to pass the customs at this time, otherwise, it will be the turn of the Chinese to pass the customs until the Russians have passed. If you take the train from Chita to Zabaikal in the evening and arrive early the next morning, there will be so many people crossing the border that you will have to wait in line for three or four hours. Although the distance from the Baikal port to the Manzhouli port is only a few hundred meters, it is not allowed to walk to Guò, and you must take a transport to get to Guò. As I waited in line to check my passport, I was thrilled to think that I was about to return to China.