ONE of the oddest sights in Beijing is that of a bicycle cart being pedalled along a busy sidestreet with several large garment bales on the back and, sitting non chalantly beside them, a couple of dyed blond western women, most likely with heavy make up and dressed in glittering jumpers and skin tight pants. The women could be from Ekaterinburg or Novosibirsk or Moscow.
Such a scene is common during the day on the western side of Ritan Park, which has become a little Russia in the middle of Beijing.
The most common language along the bustling pavements and the kiosks which form narrow shopping corridors along Ritan Road is Russian. The bigger shops have names like "Marina" and "Beriozhka". The directions and advertisements are all in Russian.
Pedicab owners tout for business here by shouting at non Chinese people, "Payekhali!" (the Russian for "Let's go!") and local peasant women offer passers by sunflower seeds - a favourite with southern Russians - by asking "Nada?" ("Do you need any?") There are even graffiti in Cyrillic script.
At the end of the road there is a row of rather seedy restaurants, all with Russian names and menus, offering vodka and incredibly cheap caviar, and playing background music from pop videos made in Moscow. There are even a couple of hotels, the Ritan and the Guotai, which cater exclusively for Russians.
Ritan Park is where Russians started coming in large numbers after the collapse of the Soviet Union to buy cheap Chinese garments and bring them home in bulk for resale. The Europeans gliding endlessly by on loaded pedicarts are latter day traders on their way from the wholesalers to collection depots with consignments of every conceivable type of clothing, from leather jackets and fur coats to long johns and knickers.
Most Russian cities have special business flights to Beijing which allow the passengers three or four days to stock up and bring their consignments back to the aircraft.
"This market started in the 1980s with the Poles," said Grigory Razin, an engineer from Moscow. "Then the Russians started coming in 1991 when the system collapsed. It used to be that we came without a visa, but three years ago the Chinese started charging $25 for a visa.
"There are people here from all the former Republics and eastern Europe. I've just met buyers from Lithuania and Romania in a cafe. And you'll find Belarussians and Hungarians. But the people in the streets here are mostly Russians from Siberian cities."
A trader in a leather jacket from St Petersburg examined fur coats at a stall which took only bulk orders. He paused to complain that "Russia doesn't do much manufacturing these days, you understand, so we have to come to China to get cheap garments".
Compared to three or four years ago the atmosphere is more relaxed for trade, he said. "But the quality of clothing is getting worse. There are too many trying to make a profit. In fact, so much trading has gone on, the market in Russia is now saturated, especially in cities west of the Urals where people's tastes have become more expensive. They want good quality Italian and French clothes."
Many of the privately run Chinese wholesalers have their offices in a grey brick annex behind the flashy Ritan hotel. Here Russians prowl the gloomy cement corridors checking what is on offer in little exhibition rooms. The Feeling Tradition Company has a tiny room on the first floor with a big Chinese fan on the wall and Chinese made raincoats and jumpers on display bearing the label in English: "Superior Garments Italian Style."
A Chinese seller who has taken the Russian name "Natasha" for the convenience of customers, complained that business was tougher now than when they started up five years ago. "In Russia the market is already full of goods," Natasha said. "And there are now too many Chinese firms competing and the prices are getting cheaper and cheaper.
So the quality has declined, even in our own firm."
On the street, Marina Lebedyeva, who had arrived three days earlier on a charter flight from Novosibirsk, said: "Some of us are just ordinary people trying to make money." She had collected $4,000 from three friends at work and had bought a bale of children's clothing to take home.
"The problem is I now have to borrow $800 to pay excess baggage, charges on the return journey," she said. "I never thought of that before I came.