The Amur River
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Average rating4
"A gripping read with fascinating political insight." (Sunday Times, London) "Elegant, elegiac and poignant...Thubron is an intrepid traveler, a shrewd observer and a lyrical guide... to the river, much of it along the border between these two powers at a time of rapid and tense reconfiguration of global geopolitics." (Washington Post) The most admired travel writer of our time—author of Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet—recounts an eye-opening, often perilous journey along a little known Far East Asian river that for over a thousand miles forms the highly contested border between Russia and China. The Amur River is almost unknown. Yet it is the tenth longest river in the world, rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific. For 1,100 miles it forms the tense border between Russia and China. Simmering with the memory of land-grabs and unequal treaties, this is the most densely fortified frontier on earth. In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic journey from the Amur’s secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles. Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, he makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores, starting out by Mongolian horse, then hitchhiking, sailing on poacher’s sloops or travelling the Trans-Siberian Express. Having revived his Russian and Mandarin, he talks to everyone he meets, from Chinese traders to Russian fishermen, from monks to indigenous peoples. By the time he reaches the river’s desolate end, where Russia’s nineteenth-century imperial dream petered out, a whole, pivotal world has come alive. The Amur River is a shining masterpiece by the acknowledged laureate of travel writing, an urgent lesson in history and the culmination of an astonishing career.
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To travel the length of the Amur River is quite some journey. Rising in the highly protected province of Khentii, in Mongolia, northeast of Ulan Baatar its course passes from Mongolia then between Russia and China forming the border, before turning northeast back into Russia to discharge into the Strait of Tartary, near Sakhalin Island. A length of 4,444 kilometres (2,763 miles).
For anyone this journey would be quite an undertaking, Colin Thubron carried this out in his 80th year. That seems genuinely incredible to me, although his intimate knowledge and experience from many years of travelling in both Russian and China certainly helped.
He makes reference to a certain point where he realises that the people he is with at the time (somewhere in the Russian wilderness, if I recall correctly) are seeing him as an elderly man, wondering why he is there, and why he is undertaking what to them seems like a pointless journey. I suppose at that point he wondered that himself. Each time he found a mirror Thubron found himself looking older that the last time, his clothing more disheveled and worn.
The Amur River - I had heard of it before picking up this book, I know it ran through Siberia and
Manchuria, I knew of the Amur Tiger (having read The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, by John Vaillant). I didn't know much more about the route and the history entwined around the locations, but once we got into the journey, I realised I did know a lot of what happened in this area, with Russia, Japan and China all taking control at one time or another.
There is certainly a lot told in this book, much more history, context, culture, people and peoples stories than the actual travel, which slowed down the reading significantly for me - not that this was a negative, but it did take me a really long time to get through it all. The indigenous groups feature heavily in this remote part of Russia and China, although on both sides of the river there has been much assimilation. Travelling by a mixture of means - lots of boat travel, bus and private vehicles, even horses, helps mix up the narrative.
We meet and learn much about Thubron's guides - he takes on a number, each of whom are familiar with the stretch of river that they accompany him on. Each has a deep history - family history, personal history and a knowledge of the wider local history. Many introduce him to other people who have more to contribute. His experience in Russia had made his wary of likely visa problems, police corruption, FSB interference and the like - he practically expected to be prevented from progressing at almost every turn, only for things to find a way of working out.
There is certainly a lot of depression and sadness to this book. These parts of Russia certainly, and less so China are in decline. There are many forgotten people, and aspects of society here. Many of the people he meets are depressed, alcoholic and unemployed. They eek out their survival, the poach fish out of season, they take endangered species. The winter is harsh and long, it wears people down, isolates and cuts them off in their small villages already in decline. Their children move to the cities for schooling and seldom return, certainly not to live. There are often only minor threads of positive to be found in the narrative. I understand that this has affected some other readers opinion of this book.
I have read many of Colin Thubron's books and enjoyed almost all of the nonfiction. The last two I have read (this and To a Mountain in Tibet) I have found slower going - but perhaps that was the case with his other books - I read them long ago. I know his fiction (for me at least) it to be avoided at all costs - I found it terrible).
While it contains only one map, it is a well executed one, although it could have been split over more pages. Surprisingly no photographs are provided - in the paperback edition anyway.
This was a slow but enjoyable read, and four stars reflects that adequately.
