A Very Orderly Friendship : The Sino-Soviet Border under the Alliance Regime, 1950-1960
Journal: Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers (Hokkaido University)
Year: 2012

On the icy morning of 9 December 1949, a special train from Beijing pulled into Manzhouli Station. As soon as the locomotive came to a complete stop, political cadres from Beijing, China’s Northeast, and a Soviet General who had been sent in advance to the last railway stop on Chinese soil, got on the coach to greet a very special passenger. After a short while, Mao Zedong, wearing a coat and an engine driver’s hat, stepped out of the train and rushed into the station building. The local residen