Zhang Xiaojun has completed nearly 2,000 round trips between China and Russia in the past 10 years, but he has never had the opportunity to travel around China’s vast neighbour to the north.
On each trip, Zhang and a colleague spend about 20 hours on an international railway linking Manzhouli, in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and Zabaikalsk, a small city in Russia’s Far East near the border, even though the railway is only 9.8 kilometres long.
“It takes only 20 minutes to run on the rail one way, but it takes lots of time to go through customs and reloading because the track gauge in Russia is wider than in China,” said Zhang, 50, who has been working for 28 years as a train driver at Manzhouli Railway Station.

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