evidence: Away from the high-level rhetoric, 109 million ordinary Chinese citizens reside in China’s northeastern provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Inner Mongolia, separated from their Russian counterparts primarily by the Amur River, known in Chinese as the Heilongjiang (literally, black dragon river). The region is frequently the focus of a narrative claiming China poses a threat to Russia’s control over its Far East. While this rhetoric has cooled down recently, these regional dynamics remain integral to understanding overall cooperation between these two vast countries. [...] Another key disagreement during the border war was over the territory of Heixiazi (known in Russian as Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island) located near the Russian city of Khabarovsk. The island has been touristified on the Chinese side, attracting over 600,000 tourists a year. Understanding how this history is sold to tourists today will be of particular interest. [...] Tongjiang and Heihe are cities in China’s Heilongjiang province, sitting opposite their Russian counterparts, Nizhneleninskoe and Blagoveshchensk respectively, separated only by the River Amur. This year Russian and Chinese state media have relentlessly celebrated the completion of two cross-border bridges, both due to be operational this year: the Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye railway bridge and the Heihe-Blagoveshchensk Heilongjiang (Amur) Bridge, a highway bridge.