The Amur River: Between Russia and China

by Colin Thubron

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.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Russia, China, History, Asia, Adventure

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2021

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Geevee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Amur river is the tenth longest in the world. Prior to seeing reviews for the book I had not heard of it that I could recall. This was a hook for me to read, along with glowing reviews, and that the Amur forms the border between Russia and China for some 1100 miles.

Colin Thubron's book is a enjoyable journey along/on or near to the Amur river. His travelogue provides some fascinating insights into the people living along this immense river that runs for almost 1800 miles. The histories of the peoples, many small and numbering today just a few thousand, to the more well-known Mongols for example.

As Mr Thubron moves from the river's source, itself the not insignificant Argun that runs for a tad over 1000 miles, and travels through the lands to its three-miles' wide mouth into the Sea of Okhotsk.

The scenery is well-described, as is the weather, some of it unbelievably cold and inhospitable. The wildlife features and there are some insights into how people use land, trade and employ food management, as well as learning of grim and grey Russian shops, and in many areas populations moving away and villages dying. On the other side of the river, in many places huge Chinese cities and infrastructure has sprung up, proving or at least visibly showing, how modern, superior and comfortable life in China "is" compared to rural/forgotten Russia.

The simmering enmity between Chinese and Russians is also shown; something that has long links to both nations' prior military clashes, views on territorial ownership, settlement policies and trade plus the later political systems, notably the forms of communism that saw checkpoints, guards, various communities and individual's disappearances and, in the Russians' case, huge military garrisons and munitions and arms factories.

The people Mr Thubron travels with as guides and companions are a interesting bunch, as is the transport they use. It is with these few people that we see first hand the modern fears, worries, hopes and indeed their education and beliefs.

The journey we are taken on is interesting, readable and enjoyable but I felt there was much missing, especially the river itself and the tributaries that feed it. How has for example erosion, the wider country, weather systems and indeed previous human activity shaped it and the flora and fauna that live in and around it? I was also grumpy that for a hardback book about a huge river weaving through forests, in the shadow of mountains and across one of Earth's continents there was not a single photo.

The book's blurb and quoted hyperbole, suggests Mr Thubron, is the greatest travel writer of his generation or is most lyrical and observant or vivid that few contemporary authors can match? I don't know if he is any of that, but overall it is a book that was worth reading.

[Jifu · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

In The Amur River, travel writer Colin Thubron records his journey following the world’s tenth-largest river, starting from its origins in one of its tributaries in northeastern Mongolia and taken until its conclusion in the Sea of Okhotsk. Along the way, he is assisted by a large and eclectic cast of guides as he travels on a combination of horse, cab, bus, and boat all the way to the Pacific.

As someone who spent two years in northeastern China living in a city built around one of the Amur’s major tributaries, I still enjoy learning all that I can about the region that I once called home, and so I eagerly dived right into this book. There, inside the pages I encountered a world formerly inhabited by a range of indigenous peoples but in the last few hundred years has been a meeting point of far eastern Russia and northeastern China, and shaped heavily over the past two centuries by a range of traumas including gulags and convict settlements, forced Russification of its native population, massacres, and an array of wars. And in the present day, it has become a land still filled with tensions. It is a harsh land filled with near-virginal wilds, yet also a land that is recklessly plundered and poached. It’s a land where the governments of the opposing nations have declared friendship from their capitals thousands of miles away, while distrust festers along the river’s winding, fortified borders. It’s a place where there are dead and dying towns and villages aplenty, and the cities that do thrive both prosper yet feel isolated. And it’s a land that has long held a promise due to its resources and location, and said promised still continues to never be fully realized. And despite these modern-day conflicts, life along both sides continues on in the hardy women and men that the author meets along his way.

All of this from the Amur region’s past and present were opened to me, and much more in a fascinating reading experience that made me feel as if I were one of Thubron’s travel companions. If you too find yourself unfamiliar with this corner of the world and would like to encounter more, then this is not a trip to be missed, for it is travel writing at some of its very best.

[Richard Ranger · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Anthony Bourdain couldn't cook, but only write, you'd have Colin Thubron. Travel essay writing is for me what romances or murder mysteries or sci-fi novels are for others of my friends. Thubron is one of the best. He crafts sentences like a goldsmith. And he's often at his best writing about places I would never think of going. If my travel bucket list expanded to one thousand, the Amur River would still not be on it. The good thing about Colin Thubron is that if he goes there, you don't have to. But you will have seen it. He wrote a fascinating book about Cyprus, for heaven's sake. His 'Lost Heart of Asia' is a work of art worth chasing down to read, since whatever our attention spans may suggest to us, Central Asia is not going away. This is a fine book about a back-of-beyond region with more ghosts than it can consume internally, and a potential fault line in geopolitical plate tectonics. And having lived and worked for nearly 15 years in northern latitudes (Alaska), Thubron's writing captures the unique light and seasonality of the North in his landscapes. Thubron is eighty-something, and this is likely his last such book, but if so, he's going out with a flourish.

[Richard Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A melancholy time to read what is a melancholy book. Still a fabulous read. Thubron, based on his previous journeys, has always struck me as a little nuts. A good writer, and exciting traveller doing journeys few others would try - and in this case travelling by himself in difficult situations, as a man over 80 years old. In this trip he travels the Amur river from its origins in Mongolia all the way down until it enters the pacific. The first few chapters are set in Mongolia and the rest in the Amur’s boundary between Russia and China.

A timely read perhaps, as sadly, it is the second book I have looked at recently which predicted trouble between Russia and Ukraine.

The book covers familiar grounds for Thubron - the pleasure of meeting individuals in multiple countries with beautiful landscapes and rarely travelled remote locations, set in a backdrop of totalitarian politics, huge corruption and ruined environments. This is the melancholy, the balance between the sublime and unspoilt with the dirty and ruined. An extra layer of melancholy comes, as you also feel Thubron coming to terms with his own old age.

So, the tone is somewhat melancholy, but this is doubly so for me -someone fascinated by the terrain from Eastern Europe and through Central Asia. Many journeys through which will now no doubt be blocked for me for years to come given the horrendous war unleashed in Ukraine. (I don’t know of course, but I think the tone from Thubron’s book would be blame the Russian leaders and their system for the war rather than the ordinary individuals of the country who he shows great affection for).

As an aside, but an aside stimulated by this book - as a foreigner, it is hard not to wonder why Russia is so focused on Ukraine, when as the journey along the Amur shows - the far richer, more populous and more powerful China claims lots of Russian territory - over 1m square kilometres of Siberia they claim is really Chinese. I’m not commenting on the rights and wrongs of this claim, I’m no specialist. But whilst there is peace and exclamations of good will between China and Russia, it seems neither country really understands, trusts or likes the other. One cannot help but think this is more likely to be a bigger issue for Russia in the longer run than anything to do with Ukraine. Perhaps I'm wrong, but you can't help imagining such trouble brewing when you read this book.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sense of thwarted purpose pervades the port where its breakwaters move out ruined into the water.
I found my first measured taste of Thubron most solid and exhilarating, it provoked an electric nostalgia. While Xi Jinping makes rare mention the entire book is haunted by the flinty gaze of Putin. The account begins in Mongolia and proceeds apace east becoming the border between China and Russia. The paths crossed are of marginal people. The circumstances invariably humble. I loved descriptions of the weather and terrain. The testimony given was poignant.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Colin Thubron's The Amur River: Between Russia and China was published in 2021, I already regard it as a travel classic. Thubron is one of those Brits who have opened the world to us stay-at-homes with his great travel books. The Amur River is one of those little-known rivers which, though among the longest on earth, separate two empires that remain suspicious of each other: Russia and China.

At his 80s, Thubron traveled pretty much the entire length of the river, all the way from its source in Mongolia, over a period of two years. Toward the end of the book, he produces a stunning summary of his trip:

Far from being a riverine highway, the Amur was revealed as a labyrinth of shoals, shallows and dead ends, and for seven months of the year was sealed in ice or adrift with dangerous floes. Even cargo boats of low draught might not reach Khabarovsk, let alone Sretensk. And the river mouth offered no simple access. The straits between the mainland and the obstructing island of Sakhalin made for hazardous steering, especially from the tempestuous Okhotsk Sea. Ships sank even in the estuary. As for the Amur shores, for hundreds of miles they were peopled only by a sprinkling of Cossacks, natives and subsistence farmers, many forcibly settled on poor land, and open to the floods that still ravage it. For its inhabitants, this became a cursed river: not the "Little Father" of Russia's affection, wrote a dismayed naturalist, but her "sickly child." The structures of commerce that worked elsewhere—the trading houses, the shipping agents, the free zones—had been imposed on an indifferent wilderness. In the simple, brutal realization of those most disillusioned, there was nobody to trade with and nothing to trade.

What the summary leaves out is the time Thubron spent with his Mongolian, Chinese, and Siberian guides who themselves were rare treasures.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a big disappointment. I don't know why Colin Thubron is considered a great travel writer. The book did little for me in evoking the place or the people. It wasn't really about the river or about the natural setting. There is a lot about towns and people, but the places are bleak and the people are grim, angry, disillusioned and without hope. There is a complete absence of beauty and lyricism. Why bother to go to place and write a book about it if this is how you are going to feel? I have read other books about Siberia and Central Asia where the author sees the bleak parts, but also sees beauty, interesting culture and people who you want to get to know better. I am thinking in particular of Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier and Red Sands by Caroline Eden. You only want to run from most of the people who Mr. Thubron introduces in this book. It is entirely possible to be truthful about poverty and despair without abandoning hope and closing your eye to beauty.

If Mr. Thubron had managed to make himself an interesting character in the way that Bruce Chatwin does, that might have been a path to redemption for this book, but he only becomes briefly interesting when he discusses how some of his guides must see him as an old man and what that would mean to their perception of him. For most of the book, he feels like an old style member of a London Adventurers Club who goes to exotic lands mostly so that he can tell tales to his old titled friends while sitting in a wing chair and sipping a brandy back home. He is a stranger in a strange land unable to truly relate to people he meets, even when they strike up friendships with him.

[Chris Steeden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colin Thubron was in his 80th year when he sets out on this immense expedition. The Amur River is 2,826 miles long. He begins at the river’s source in the province of Khentii in the mountains of Mongolia. He has a guide and a couple of horsemen. Mongolia is a brutal terrain of swamps and peat bogs. The guide said, ‘This is the hardest journey I’ve ever done’. It is tough for Thubron. This type of travel, at his age, does not come without injury.

I had never heard of the Amur River before reading this book which made this all the more exciting. As he makes his was from Mongolia into Siberia he provides a history lesson of the Chinese and Russian conflicts along the Amur. He describes Siberian towns exactly as I have seen them in the travel programmes I have watched and from other books I’ve read. Run-down and, not to be very diplomatic, depressing.

Lots of other forms of transport are taken by Thubron including the Trans-Siberian Railway. He does go to the Chinese side of the Amur and the city of Heihe. In contrast to Russia’s run-down Siberian towns this place is booming. Well booming compared to those Russian towns at least. Ultimately, it is a poor city. Like the Russian cities the young leave as soon as they get a chance leaving an elderly population with no jobs. I did need Google Maps to pinpoint where he was on the journey.

I wanted more travel observations from this book but that was lacking somewhat. I guess I was expecting something like a Levison Wood ‘Walking the Nile’, so I was a little disappointed. I did not really get a sense of the river as his focus was more on Russia / China relations in the past and at present. This does not take away the fact that this was an epic journey.

[David Canford · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his eighties, the author undertakes a gruelling expedition from the source of the Amur to its end in the Pacific.
I found the first part the most enthralling when he was following the river on horseback through Mongolia. It then becomes the border between Russia and China before veering off deeper into Russia.
He travels both in Russia and China observing the contrast between the two. China is highly populated and economically powerful. In only a generation modern cities have sprung up.
Siberia's population, which was already small, is declining. Most things are falling apart and the infrastructure is poor. The land is vast and wild and most of the inhabitants seem to be alcoholics or keen to get away.
Putin may think China is his friend, but given that in the 1800s Russia took advantage of a then weak China and reneged on a treaty and moved the border down to the Amur, China may well want to revert to the previous arrangement and reassert its claim to eastern Siberia which was once part of Manchuria.
An intriguing read about a part of the world few of us in the West will ever see.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find Thubron's writing so evocative; he's incredibly perceptive and is a master of nuance and subtlety. His books aren't in the least solipsistic which, in these times of self-obsession, is quite rare.I was saddened to reach the end of this - admittedly bleak - journey which begins in the wilds of Mongolia and reaches its conclusion on a bleak outpost overlooking the Okhotsk Sea.

[Peter Tillman]

WSJ review 10/2/21, by Tunku Varadarajan:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-amur...
(Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
...the world’s 10th longest river forms the border between Russia and China—“a fault-line,” Mr. Thubron writes, “shrouded in old mistrust.” With ruminative gracefulness, he describes his eastward journey from the Amur’s “sacred” source in Mongolia to the near-dead port of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur on Russia’s Eastern Coast. It is here that the river decants into the Sea of Okhotsk with a “sense of thwarted purpose”—as if “all human life dwindled away at its colossal estuary.”

Exceptionally good review, as one expects of Mr. Varadarajan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunku_V...

[Kazen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

I have many problems with this book, most of which boil down to the author failing to grasp his upper class white dude privilege. Full thoughts, including a rant, in my Booktube Prize vlog.

[Keith W · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I would enjoy this book more than I did. Colin Thubron is a renowned and highly acclaimed travel writer with a particular interest in Central and Northern Asia. The area depicted in this book, the Amur River and its surroundings, is right in his wheelhouse. And I have always been curious about it. So what was wrong?

The problem is not with Colin Thubron, who writes brilliantly and has a keen eye. The problem is that most of the villages, towns and cities by which the Amur River passes, primarily on the Russian side, are in serious decline. Factories have closed, population has declined as young people have left, houses are falling down and there seems little reason for some of these towns to stay alive -- and, sadly, the residents Thubron talked with know it. There is no future in most of these places, with the result that the present is very sad.

There is energy on the Chinese side but Heihe, the largest city he visited there, seems very contrived and artificial, with little if any history or tradition.

While Thubron's descriptions of landscapes and the river are exquisite, I most enjoyed his descriptions and analyses of the people he met along the way, especially the guides he hired and to whom he became close. He likes most of these people and you can tell they like him too and all of that shows in the way he writes about them.

In the final chapter, Thubron quotes from a novel about the area and we read the phrase “austere country.” Later in the same chapter, we find the word “desolation.” It is not surprising to read these things because they are apt descriptions of what Thubron has been describing. The area drained by the Amur seems forsaken and forlorn. I have always wondered what it was like and now I know. It seems there is little reason to go there and, in all honesty, I wonder why he did.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise and evocative, this travel memoir of life along the amur river is rich in detail and sad to contemplate as one looks at the conditions of the river, the land (deforested illegally), and the state of its inhabitants.

Colin Thubron was about 80 years old when he undertook tracking the amur from its source as the onon river in mongolia to the area where it empties into the okhotsk sea (part of the pacific ocean), several hundred miles north of vladivostok. Along the way he meets police, poachers, museum personnel, hotel operators, the poor, the religious, the deluded, and the adventurous who take him through various parts of mongolia, china, and russia. He sees himself at one point as he thinks these people see him: a pensioner. He breaks bones early on, but Thubron never stops hiking or exploring abandoned mines shafts and villages. Highly recommended, as is his In Siberia, which came out twenty years before this book.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colin Thubron's The Amur River between Russia and China came out in 2021 and chronicles the author's trip he revealed as his next 'adventure' in an interview in The Guardian back in 2016, a year after the appearance of Dominic Ziegler's Black Dragon River: A Journey down the Amur River between Russia and China, so the two almost command comparison.

Although both books were written by foreigners (Europeans to boot) and basically cover the same route from the Onon River to the Amur's final emergence into the strait separating the Asian mainland from Sakhalin Island, which you will rate above the other will be a matter of personal preference. Most reviewers tore their hair out over the lack of a good map in Ziegler's whereas Thubron's cartographer (Bill Donohoe) deserves the special call-out he is given. You can read neither book without a proper map and Donohoe's map is scrupulous in identifying every stop made, enabling a fingernail trailing of Thubron's route--a 'must' for proper armchair travel.

Thubron was born in 1939; Ziegler in 1961. Thubron mentions his age at several points both openly (and indirectly, through a painful accounting of the various aches and injuries suffered enroute) while I had to compute Ziegler's birthdate based on the fact that he joined the Economist as a reporter in 1986. I raise this difference because I think readers can detect a certain weariness in Thubron that held him back at times from digging a bit deeper into an event or an encounter. Impatient readers, such as me, might also find his long descriptive sentences too much of a 'good' thing (although they are perhaps the reason why he is widely acclaimed as one of Britain's top travel writers): "For miles our bus winds upward through corridors of burnished undergrowth, then levels at last into plateaus where distance dims the forest to purple-grey, as if a great fire were burning out on the farther mountains" (p. 172). Thubron's journey is covered in 275 pages in a fairly large font (for older readers?); Ziegler's 334 pages cover the same ground, but are in a much smaller font enabling a more detailed journey told in terser sentences : "We set off across bald hills" (p. 163)

Both authors include the histories of the regions they cover, but whereas Thubron reduces most events to key moments, Ziegler is clearly a history-lover and while (understandably) much is simplified (and at times over-simplified, which has caused some concern by the Russian and Chinese historians amongst its readers, myself included), it was his more extensive historical notes plus the inclusion of little details and diverting anecdotes that will make me recommend Ziegler's journey to other readers.

Both works, however, are to be praised for highlighting histories that remain buried and unknown to many--not just the stories of the nomads and armies and their heroes and villains that have throughout history coloured this huge track of land that remains caught between east and west, but also those of the farmers, traders, fishermen, miners, foresters, drunks and other dreamers whose dreams remain, for the time being at least, just dreams.

China, Russia, Mongolia? Whose land will this be in ten or twenty or thirty years? Will migrating cranes still fill its skies? Will the animosity between the various nationalities ever be resolved? Will the sturgeon return? Will there still be that stretch of swampy coniferous land we know today as taiga? Forget the bears, ticks, tigers, leeches and mosquitoes--I'm pretty sure one of the feelings I was left with wasn't the intention of either author, but I left both books with the distinct impression that people also belong on the list of the world's real predators to fear.

[Cropredy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a personal connection to the Amur River which is why I read this book. Way back in 2000, my wife and I traveled to Birobidjian to adopt our son, arriving and departing via Khabarovsk, a major city in the Russian Far East on the banks of the Amur. So, I have actually seen the Amur (for what that is worth)

The author set out at around 80 (!) to travel from the headwaters of the Amur in Mongolia to its mouth at the Sea of Okhotsk. This involved traveling on horseback (Mongolia), then various forms of motor transport, and a few times, on the actual river itself. As the Amur demarcates the border between China and Russia for a large segment, there were all sorts of low grade tensions to navigate, as it were.

The author is an outstanding writer, able to lyrically paint pictures of both the scenery and the inhabitants. As he spoke Russian and some weak Mandarin, he was able to converse with his guides, drivers, innkeepers, and the like. The trip took place just before COVID halted all forms of tourism in this part of the world. By my standards, lodging and food were execrable - but Thubron never complains - if anything, these kind of trips is his reason for living.

As Thubron recounts his journey, he makes a point of visiting spots of historical interest - all but unknown to Americans. And, at each site, you get a mini-history lesson over the competing claims for this territory - where, in the 1850s, the weak Manchu Empire lost its claim to the lands north of the river. The whole period between 1600 and 1900 is a period not too dissimilar from the westward push by Americans (except in this case, it was an eastward push by Russians). Fortunes were won and lost and there were promises of riches to be had by developing a port on the Pacific and linking the Amur basin with Pacific trade. Sadly, the Amur wasn't easily navigable and, of course, in the winter, it froze solidly.

There are whole bunches of atrocities, mostly committed by the Russians against the Chinese over the decades (none of which I was aware of). There is a simmering sense amongst the Russians that their land is being exploited by Chinese timber and mineral companies in league with corrupt Russian magnates. Oh, right - and then there was an extensive legacy of gulags in both Czarist and Soviet times.

Thubron makes a point of seeking out indigenous communities, where the original language is all-but-forgotten.

All in all, a fascinating story and compellingly written. You'll learn a lot and get a good geography lesson while doing so. As I read this during month two of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one-on-one conversations Thubron had with ordinary Russians helped illuminate the hold that Putin has on the mindset of the population - especially the feeling of victimhood and inferiority versus the outside world. Not everyone, but often enough. Young people want to move and many communities are slowly dying out. Even the Chinese in their northern border cities would much rather be in Beijing or Shanghai. A strategic land, beautiful, but with a harsh climate.

An excellent map that pinpoints each location of note in the text. Sadly, no photos.

[Mario · Rating 1 out of 5]

Haré una comparación, y no me importa que alguien me diga que son géneros distintos: si quieren leer crónicas reales y magistrales, mejor lean a Ryszard Kapuscinski. Thubron es un típico hombre blanco privilegiado que recorre una región tercermundista, describe cada tropezón y maleza por las que camina pero no se adentra a los aspectos sociológicos de dicha región y población. Se limita a calificar de estúpido (sic) a un monje que lo ve "de manera desconcertante y tiene una risita peculiar". Eso fue suficiente para mí.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a travel book as I like them. Travelling along the Amur River, from its source in Mongolia through the Russia-China borderlands, to the river mouth on the Sea of Japan, Thubron paints a vivid picture of this troubled area's past and present. Even though the travel must have been quite adventurous, Thubron, mercifully, doesn't place himself at the centre of the book. Instead he talks about the tumultuous history of the region, scarred both by the brutal labour/political camps under Tsarist and Soviet rule as well as Russian and Chinese imperial ambitions. And through his encounters with Russian, Chinese, Mongol and indigenous populations inhabiting these borderlands he offers a peek into what life is like in this little known, remote, sometimes desolate and abandoned, area of present-day Russia and China. A truly fascinating read.

[Philip Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. People living out the history of what had gone before and the results of their simplified views of the country over the other side of the river made this a fascinating read

[Michał · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thubron w najlepszej formie, starzeje się jak dobre wino

[Michael Hassel Shearer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Amur River: Between Russian and China: by Colin Thubron
There are many books that tell stories of a traveler going from someplace to another. In some cases, the main part of the story is the epic adventure of reaching the finishing point with all the hardships that must be overcome. In other travel books the journey is smooth and perhaps the writer is detailing churches and wonderful meals.
Then you have writers like Mr. Thubron who is now 82 years old following the Amur River from its source to the Pacific Ocean. The Amur for over 1300 miles forms the border between Russia/Siberia and China/Mongolia. Part of this land he has been to before though over 20 to 30 years before in; Behind the Wall- A Journey through China (1987), The Lost Heart of Asia (1994 and, In Siberia (1999). He tells about people and places now changed with time. And I suppose he lets slip so has he changed. What I found interesting is the pressure that exists across the river border between China and Russia. On one side there are 2 million Russians in three provinces while on the Chinese side there are 110 million people.
As I read this book, I also pulled from the shelf the three books I mentioned above. None of those books along with The Amur River have any photographs so I found myself using google to get a physical image of these strange, unfamiliar places.
What Thubron does well is describe and meet people along the way. Not fluent but able to stumble in Chinese and Russian is a big help. These are in many cases people who live 1000’s of miles from metropolitan cities and only in some cases yearn for seeing the outside world. Not everyone is looking to expand their world. I found this quite interesting in its honesty.
I highly recommend this book to those who have read Thubron’s previous work.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Amur River, which forms a border between Russia and China that has been contested for centuries, is one of the longest rivers in the world, but most Westerners, including me, know little about it. This book is a travelogue describing Thubron's journey traversing the entire river from Mongolia to the Pacific Ocean. He talks to many people and visits many villages along the way, while positioning them within the context of an eventful, violent and tragic history of bloody conflicts, communist repression, environmental spoliation, decline and decay and modern tensions between Russia and China.

Thubron is a skilled writer and the history of the region is interesting, but the region itself is not that interesting. The book is one impoverished, hollowed-out Russian town after another (with a brief journey into commercialized and tacky Chinese towns). Everyone is angry, depressed, prematurely aged and drinking and smoking constantly. There's close to nothing of interest, as evidenced by the fact that the local authorities are constantly suspicious of Thubron's purposes, because there's no apparent reason why anyone from outside the area would want to tour the Amur River. This book was as close as I needed to come to the River, and the time it took to listen to the audiobook was longer than I wanted to spend here.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nonfiction travelogue from a British travel writer now in his 80s, about the Amur River--the 10th largest river in the world and yet no one knows much about it... it splits Siberia and China and is quite remote. I give the author major props for undertaking this 3000 mile journey along this river at his age, much of it on horseback (and he takes some spills and spends some part of the book with rib injuries).

Really though, you'd have to have a pretty strong interest in obscure either geography or history to enjoy this book. It is a lot of detail about a very obscure and depressed region. But, that is also in a way what makes it interesting. There's this whole region and this large river in the world and "we" (the general American public) don't know anything about it. I enjoyed the geographic information and less so the history stuff, just because it is so obscure.

Lots of info about small pockets of humanity speaking dying languages, what the Russians and Chinese think of each other (from opposite banks), and forgotten small villages, trades and peoples.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his latest, Thubron traces the route of the Amur River which lies on the border between Russia and China, and in some places, retraces his footsteps of 20 years before. He explores the tensions between China and Russia over this area from the very beginning to the present day. This book excels with the sometimes humorous and always thought-provoking interactions between Thurbron and the people he meets along the way.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting. I didn't even know the Amur was a river. I knew the name only in a wildlife context. Thubron made it come so vividly alive, both historically and today. Such a fascinating story, and a wonderfully written one. I'd never heard of Thubron before, and now I'm off to see what else he wrote.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colin Thubron was a superstar of the vibrant travel writing trend of the 1980s. I loved his Among the Russians, and also Behind the Wall: A Journey Through China. I haven't read anything of his for decades, but this intrigued me, given his deep knowledge of Russia and China.

I think if it was a disappointment, it was because the region is so difficult to access, and both socially and economically depressed. The security context makes it difficult too -- Thubron spends quite a bit of time worrying about being arrested, avoiding places where he might be arrested, and on a couple of occasions actually being arrested. All rather tough for a man travelling alone in his 80s. Especially after falling off a horse early in the trip, breaking ribs and also breaking an ankle ("Just a sprain" he tells himself, and carries on regardless).

So he doesn't make the many encounters with ordinary people that made his earlier books so compelling. Instead he tells us much about the history and ethnography of the region, which I don't find so interesting. Tellingly, the most interesting part of the book is his road trip with hunters/poachers Alexander, Igor, and Sergei, where they develop a real camaraderie..

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, well, well! Non-fiction books DO EXIST!
4.5 stars. Amazing Brit historian/travel writer taught me much about Russia and China and this huge river between; and between has a double meaning here. So much information, but I hung on, liking it more and more. Certainly not a journey I would contemplate as an octogenarian, however. Thank you, my local library that mentioned this as a new book (to broaden my horizons).

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, which describes in depth the journey and history of this river between Russia and China. It’s a bit depressing, not surprisingly, as well as interesting. I’d have liked to learn more about the ecology and perhaps a little bit more of the reasons for the author’s attraction to this tough travel in his 80th year.

[CJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only white people like this book.

The gorgeous environment and friendly people cannot overcome Colin Thubron’s racism, somehow feeling superior even though he cannot speak any of the languages or survive on his own in this climate.

I just DNF’d The Amur River by Colin Thubron because he’s a racist prick. It’s so disappointing because I’m very interested in the Mongolian steppe and I was so looking forward to reading more about it. Instead this is a diary of a self-important white man who describes everyone but himself as stupid or incompetent. He doesn’t even try to hide his racism: everyone Asian “looks like a child” or “has a childish face.” At one point he meets the last monk whose temple was destroyed by the USSR and all the monks viciously executed, and Colin’s own recount of the conversation with this traumatized monk is horrifically callous. He describes the monk—who laughs nervously (keep in mind Thubron only speaks English, so everyone else is working to accommodate him) and he says “it was this giggle that made me erroneously convinced he was stupid." THAT IS A DIRECT QUOTE

Words cannot express how much I hate Colin Thubron and my intense interest in the area of his exploration doesn’t even come close to making me read this book. If you want to read about a self important white man there are plenty to choose from who actually have a modicum of relevancy. This book will be the reason I make the trip to the steppe myself just so I can write about it in all it's glory and shove it in Colin Thubron's racist boomer face.

-50000/5 racist ass stars