Mohe is a small city in northeastern China, deadly quiet in winter. It has all the look of hardscrabble living, where side streets are lined with single-storey brick houses, and dogs skirt piles of snow. Scott Morrison would feel at home as coal heaps are sold off trucks, and smoke flutters from chimneys, leaving a burnt taste in the air.
In the minus 20 degree temperature the market enjoys natural refrigeration, and vendors hawk whole frozen fish, plucked chooks and pork slabs laid out on plastic and bits of cardboard. It gives the impression of being a tough town, where even the karaoke bar looks weary. Not surprisingly, the second-most remarkable thing about Mohe is that travellers who arrive there have already worked out how to leave it.
I was investigating vestiges of the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese nationalist sentiment, and thus was visiting places like Shenyang and Harbin, both of which had been occupied by Japanese troops. Many Australians know about the South China Sea debates, but the historical underpinnings of these issues, including the long-term effects of the bitter conflict with Japan, can still be seen throughout the northeast. As a result, chasing hints of Chinese patriotism and self-identity, I wanted to visit Mohe.
More than for its ordinariness, Mohe is primarily known for being literally the northernmost Chinese city, being further north than most of Europe. Here the Chinese province of Heilongjiang abuts one of China's 14 neighbours, Russia, and thus the point of intersection between Chinese nationalism and Mohe is not Japan but the fact that this provincial town is also a border town, and one which has exercised this role for centuries.
In fact in 1689 diplomats negotiated the Treaty of Nerchinsk. This saw the Russian czars and the Chinese emperor agree to delineate a formal boundary between their respective empires. Mohe lies just inside this boundary, which in some places is the river running between the two countries. On the Russian side, this is called the Amur, but the Chinese know it as the Black Dragon River, which gives the province its name: Heilongjiang.
And yet, in China, there is always some sort of catch. The city of Mohe is not in fact the northernmost point, as the city stretches for about 150km, south from the train station north to the border. I thus worked out a deal with a local driver who agreed to drive me up to