How the Chinese are seizing the Irkutsk region for the sake of Lake Baikal. Chinese threat: tourists from the Middle Kingdom are killing Baikal? Chinese on Olkhon

In Olkhonsky district local residents continue to discuss the emergency that happened in late July 2017. At the same time, regional authorities, through law enforcement agencies, are taking all measures to ensure that information does not spread.

Let us remind you that on July 29, the third ferry to Olkhon, Semyon Batagaev, was out of order. The breakdown occurred at the height of tourist season, as a result of which the queue to the island instantly grew to 700-800 cars.

Considering that the Dorozhnik ferry transports only local residents and Shuttle Buses, only the Olkhon Gate ferry remains for tourists. Tourists, stuck in line for several days, in the heat and without any service, naturally became nervous and tried by any means necessary to get on the ferry.

Antonina Sizikova, the daughter of the captain of the Olkhon Gate ferry, helped the sailors arrange their cars on the ferry. According to the rules of ferry transportation, cars are arranged first, and only then passengers on foot are allowed on board. These are obvious safety requirements.

However, the moment the cars began to load onto the ferry, a huge crowd of Chinese tourists, arriving on several buses, literally began to storm the ferry.

Let us remind you that the Chinese hotels located on Olkhon did enough to convenient way transportation of tourists from the Middle Kingdom. Large buses bring them to the mainland part of the crossing, tourists cross the strait on their own, and on Olkhon they are met by minibuses belonging to hotels. As a result Chinese tourists There are practically no delays at the crossing, since there are no restrictions on the number of foot passengers on the ferry.

The crowd of Chinese who poured onto the ferry actually blocked the passage of cars. Antonina Sizikova ordered not to let the Chinese in until all the cars were loaded. In response, one of the Chinese began to beat her with a stick, after which the rest of the Chinese began to beat her with their fists.

The ferry captain, Sergei Sizikov, came down to help the girl. However, the Chinese beat him too.

The beating of the girl took place in front of a police patrol ensuring security on ferry crossing. Subsequently, when asked why they did not intervene in the fight, the police calmly replied that their task was to ensure order on the shore, and not on the ferry.

Immediately after the incident, Sergei Sizikov was fired without explanation. He worked on the ferry for 38 years, from the very first ferry designed for two cars, and is considered one of the most experienced captains on Lake Baikal.

All attempts by the Sizikov family to file a complaint with the police are blocked by the authorities. The family is also being intimidated by Chinese hotel owners who do not want publicity. The situation is completely incomprehensible, as are the actions of Chinese tourists on Lake Baikal in general.

The fact is that the Irkutsk region does not receive a penny from the influx of tourists to Olkhon. The hotels are owned by Chinese citizens and are designed like garden houses. Tourists pay for transportation, service and accommodation directly to the card of the hotel owner, thus the entire flow of money bypasses the Russian budget. Meanwhile, Chinese tourists feel like masters of Olkhon and regularly get into fights with local residents. By the way, the hotel charges about five million rubles from one group of Chinese. Not a penny is paid in taxes.

The situation is aggravated many times over by the fact that there is only one (!) local police officer on Olkhon. The island has an area of 730 square kilometers, a population of about two thousand people and hundreds of thousands of tourists a year.

The illegal construction of a hotel in a water protection zone did not in any way affect the overall problem of this once strong industrial settlement. This conclusion can be made by reading the Christmas photo report from the tourist “Mecca” of Irkutsk, prepared by the editors of the site babr24.com .

“The word “Mecca” is deliberately placed in quotation marks. Dirt, snow-covered sidewalks, illegal trade in omul, which is prohibited from catching and selling, drunken Chinese tourists, a complete lack of parking and normal roads - this is the portrait of modern Listvyanka. You can only “relax” here if you are very drunk. What do so-called tourists do? There are no police, no authorities - complete freedom." ,” explain Irkutsk colleagues.

Svetlana Shapovalova © IA REGNUM

Let us remember that until the beginning of the 20th century the village was called Listvennichnoe. It got its name from the larches growing on the nearby Larch Cape(it is also being actively mastered now), but simplified slang has done its job. Under his influence official name was replaced by Listvyanka. It is located on the right side of the source of the Angara River and extends to the northwest along Lake Baikal (Listvennichny Bay) for 5 km.

The year the settlement was founded is not known for certain. In local history literature there is a version that the first Russian hut of an industrialist Roman Kislitsyna was built there in 1725. Almost 300 years ago, the main occupations of the residents of Listvennichny were hunting and fishing. From there they went on scientific expeditions Benedict Dybowski And Bernhard Petri, Many people lived and worked here outstanding researchers Baikal. And the most important enterprise of Listvyanka was the shipyard (former ship repair shops of the Baikal ferry crossing). Many ships of the Baikal Fleet were built on it, as well as the famous ones built in England. icebreaker ferry "Baikal" And icebreaker "Angara". All these objects are now abandoned, but hotel of the former mayor of Listvyanka Tatyana Kazakova, in 2008, convicted of a number of serious economic crimes, is still the most prominent target.

“They say that according to the project it was supposed to be three-story. At the owner's command, the hotel was built on without changing the foundation design. It’s also not entirely clear where the sewage from this hotel flows.” ,” informs babr24.com.

However, over ten years there have been many more such objects. Even the head of the administration of Listvyanka doesn’t know how much exactly. Alexander Shamsudinov.

“We have nothing to do with the sale of private lands and cannot influence the owners. I know that on paper these are residential buildings, but in fact they are commercial properties that are not officially registered anywhere. And all because in Russia citizens of other states have the legal right to buy land (except for farmland).”

According to a local activist Yulia Ivanets, active buying began two or three years ago:

“I noticed the Chinese pillars. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Chinese, and I didn’t understand what the inscriptions were about. And when they began to transfer them, people were horrified. Guides also tell tourists that Baikal is the northern sea of the Chinese, on which their tribes used to live, and the territory temporarily belongs to Russia. Secondly, the Chinese are confident that by the end of 2020, the purchase of land on Lake Baikal will gain even greater momentum, since there is Federal Law 473 “On Territories of Rapid Socio-Economic Development of Russia (TOR).”

It’s not just social activists who are very concerned about this situation. Deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the inter-factional working group "Baikal" Sergey Ten reported that in 2018 the Chinese predict an increase in the number of their tourists to the Irkutsk region to a million people per year. The very fact of buying land on Lake Baikal by Chinese entrepreneurs in an interview irk.ru he called it “blatant” and noted that the State Duma had begun to discuss how to improve legislation for Chinese and Russian entrepreneurs.

Svetlana Shapovalova © IA REGNUM

« Let's put it this way, that is, using the example of Listvyanka alone. Today no one will answer the question of how many Chinese hotels operate on the territory of Listvyanka, but only three of them operate legally. (...) At the same time, the number of plots sold to Chinese citizens, which are actually located on the shore of Lake Baikal in Listvyanka, is about 37, I think, or 40» , said Sergei Ten.

But Irkutsk correspondents who recently visited Listvyanka testify:« Listvyanka has hundreds of hotels. Mostly illegal." " Chinese are everywhere. There are thousands of them. Thank you for not millions».

Mountains of omul were found in retail outlets. The caviar of this prohibited fish is also available for free sale. This means that the omul was caught during the spawning period.

Almost the entire territory around Lake Baikal is a protected area; nothing can be built there. “And in villages and towns, please, you can buy plots, for example in Bugulteyk or Khuzhir,” says travel blogger Anastasia Emelyanova. “No one is stopping you from buying land from local residents and building houses, even if not 20 meters from the water, but also very close. So, in fact, the Chinese ended up on the shores of Lake Baikal, to whom, however, local residents and tourists are quite tolerant and friendly.”

So far, the arithmetic is simple: the money of Chinese tourists, which could go to the Russian budget and work for Russian business, returns to China, and Baikal water, land and air Foreign citizens almost free to use.

Problems of tourist Baikal

In any case, the main problems tourism industry around Lake Baikal are not connected with guests from China. Yes, from time to time indignant comments appear on social networks about the fact that our compatriots refuse to check into hotels after Chinese tourists have rested there (they allegedly cook their own food there, the specific smell of which does not disappear from the wooden cottages). And the owners of Chinese “hotels” do not pay for garbage removal.

But the same garbage dumps appear in protected areas in much more precisely after Russian tourists, who are an order of magnitude more numerous than Chinese in these places.

For comparison: over the nine months of this year, about 120 thousand tourists from China visited the Irkutsk region. “This is 10% of the total number of tourist arrivals in the region,” the press service of the government of the Irkutsk region reported to RIA Novosti. “As for waste collection, this is now one of the most intractable problems. As noted at a meeting in the government of the Irkutsk region in June 2017, “the current situation remains extremely tense and requires immediate intervention and consolidation of all available forces and means. The only landfill in the Olkhon region is virtually unable to accommodate the accumulated volume of waste."

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited Baikal in August this year, “the lack of control of the so-called wild tourists leads to spontaneous landfills on the shore and garbage in water bodies,” and “the desire of entrepreneurs to make the most of the demand for Baikal travel often leads to their ignoring environmental standards."

The emergency happened back in July 2017, but the authorities are still trying to hide this information.

In the Olkhon district, local residents continue to discuss the emergency that happened in late July 2017. At the same time, regional authorities, through law enforcement agencies, are taking all measures to ensure that information does not spread.

Let us remind you that on July 29, the third ferry to Olkhon “Semyon Batagaev” was out of order. The breakdown occurred at the height of the tourist season, as a result of which the queue on the island instantly grew to 700-800 cars.

Considering that the Dorozhnik ferry transports only local residents and regular buses, only the Olkhon Gate ferry remains for tourists. Tourists, stuck in line for several days, in the heat and without any service, naturally became nervous and tried by any means necessary to get on the ferry.

However, the moment the cars began to load onto the ferry, a huge crowd of Chinese tourists, arriving on several buses, literally began to storm the ferry.

Let us remind you that Chinese hotels located on Olkhon, back in 2016, created a fairly convenient way to transport tourists from the Middle Kingdom. Large buses bring them to the mainland part of the crossing, tourists cross the strait on their own, and on Olkhon they are met by minibuses belonging to hotels. As a result, Chinese tourists practically do not linger at the crossing, since there are no restrictions on the number of foot passengers on the ferry.

The captain of the ferry, Sergei Sizikov, came down to help the girl. However, the Chinese beat him too.

The girl was beaten in front of a police patrol providing security at the ferry crossing. Subsequently, the police, when asked why they did not intervene in the fight, calmly replied that their task was to ensure order on the shore, and not on the ferry.

24 May 2017, 10:57

IN last years China has become the main supplier of tourists for Russia. Lake Baikal is their particular favorite: businessmen say that in hotels there is no free seats even in winter, tour operators complain that their Chinese colleagues are pushing them out of business, and local residents are unhappy with the way the Chinese behave. Taiga.info publishes an excerpt from a Meduza report about the Chinese invasion of the Irkutsk region.

Lake Baikal is covered in ice. People in colorful clothes walk along the ice one after another, in groups, in pairs and (occasionally) alone, rolling suitcases on wheels behind them. You can get to Olkhon Island from the mainland in summer only by water, in winter, when the lake freezes, by ice: for three minutes and four hundred rubles on a hovercraft or for free for fifteen to twenty minutes on foot. People with suitcases prefer to save money. They all came here from China.

“I felt like I was in Moscow Metro. Although no, in Beijing,” - wrote In the winter of 2017, Karina Pronina, a resident of Irkutsk, saw this picture on Facebook and added: a year ago this did not happen. This is confirmed by representatives of the local tourism industry: according to them, up to 90% of all tourists on the lake this winter came from China; and during the Chinese New Year (this year it fell in the last week of January), some hotels on Olkhon had exclusively Chinese guests. Of course, people from China go not only to the Irkutsk region (Moscow and St. Petersburg are the most popular, like other tourists), but it is this region that is now experiencing a real tourism boom: according to Rostourism, there is an increase in the tourist flow from China in the region compared to 2015 to 2016 was 158%.

“This year, almost all of our hotels and camp sites remained open for the winter,” recalls Christina Mayor, administrator of the Nikita Bencharova Estate camp site. - For several days in a row, only Chinese tourists stayed with us. Out of curiosity, we checked on Booking.com - there were no vacancies anywhere. People, our locals, came at random and tried to move in, but alas. On excursions it’s the same story: we have popular place- Cape Khaboy, northern point islands. So in winter it happened that you would arrive and you would feel like you were somewhere in China, and not on Lake Baikal.”

Tourists from China, especially the older generation, are often fans of the so-called red tourism to places significant to the history of communism, which arose within the country at a time when its citizens did not have the opportunity to travel abroad. Hundreds of such routes have been created in China, so the Russian tourism industry has adjusted to the demand, especially since Russia has something to offer guests on this topic both in Moscow and in the regions. In 2017, the Chinese tourist flow is expected to grow in connection with the anniversary of the October Revolution.

However, among those who go to Baikal, according to workers in the local tourism industry, there are others: often young people and students, “intelligent and Europeanized,” some traveling on their own. They stop at budget hotels and hostels and do not use the services of guides, relying on social networks. They travel, however, along the same routes as other Baikal tourists: Irkutsk as a starting point; the village of Listvyanka located on the shores of Lake Baikal; optional - Circum-Baikal Railway; definitely Olkhon.

“It is Olkhon that almost every tourist from China strives for,” says the director of the Irkutsk travel company"Greenexpress" Vadim Kopylov. “As far as I know, there is even a popular song about him in Chinese.”

Not investment, but expansion

Back in the eighties, on the border of the Irkutsk region and China there were red signs with inscriptions like “Attention! The Chinese are our enemy! Then the current director of the Irkutsk company Sputnik and the head of the Siberian Baikal Tourism Association (SBAT) Igor Kovalenko was one of the pioneers of establishing business relations with neighbors - in 1989, as part of the Soviet delegation, he traveled throughout the northeast of China to sign several agreements on mutual exchange of tourists. He continued to develop the region in the 2000s - once Kovalenko traveled up and down winter Baikal with a photographer to get photographs that are still used in Chinese advertising brochures. It was then that he coined the phrase “blue ice of Baikal” - now in China it is used to promote winter tours.

Recently, however, representatives of the Siberian tourism industry have begun to worry about competition from Chinese colleagues, often operating under dubious schemes. In the spring of 2017, the executive director of the World Without Borders association, Alexander Agamov, said that the Russian market was flooded by Chinese tourists, who were being sold disproportionately cheap tours in their homeland. According to him, this flow is served by Chinese citizens based in Russia, who meet their compatriots, arrange accommodation for them - and also take them to friendly stores where tourists make purchases for cash at inflated prices: gold, amber, jewelry made of precious stones, clothing from European brands . As a result, at least $500 million is withdrawn from the Russian economy annually, according to World Without Borders, because these purchases are not declared in any way. As the “World Without Borders” explained to Meduza, it works something like this: the Chinese bring cash to Russia (tourists are instructed back home that in Russia everything is sold only for paper money), they make purchases in stores specially created for them for inflated prices that do not correspond to actual cash receipts, and the cash is divided between the owner of the shop, the Chinese guide of the group and/or the Russian guide and the Chinese company.

Kopylov adds that this problem is all-Russian (indeed: on May 17, the publication “Paper” published material about souvenir shops in St. Petersburg, where no one except the Chinese are allowed). “Not only do [Chinese entrepreneurs] enter our market, but they create a closed infrastructure around themselves, when hotels, restaurants, transport - everything becomes Chinese,” says the businessman. - According to our estimates, there are already six or seven [Chinese hotels] in Listvyanka, and fewer on Olkhon. But until you see with your own eyes, you will not know which plots were purchased by whom. They are registered to the Russians, the Chinese never show up, and we will find out after the fact who is really behind it. But they control 40–50% of tourists from their country in our region - that’s for sure.”

Such Chinese entrepreneurs are very closed, they keep themselves apart - and, according to Russian competitors, operate illegally on Russian territory. “You can’t reach such companies; they won’t talk about these topics,” comments Alexander Agamov. “Shadow business is an acute, painful and delicate issue; it is discussed very carefully at the level of the tourism administrations of both countries, and possibly even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Attempts by a Meduza correspondent to contact representatives of Chinese companies suspected of shady activities were unsuccessful.

According to Igor Kovalenko, the Chinese who have not previously worked in the industry are starting to get involved in the tourism business on Lake Baikal - even former traders who made money from Russian tourists who came to China for shopping. “These are people who quickly get their bearings, including already buying land on the shores of Lake Baikal,” explains Kovalenko. “I personally asked one question: “Do you want to build something?” Any infrastructure facilities? “No, they say, we will buy it now and then sell it to the rich Chinese. Eventually they move here. Some may not be forever, but this is not investment - this is expansion."

Kovalenko adds that Chinese companies selling cheap tours often already in Russia take advantage of the fact that their compatriots do not know either the language or the market - and sell additional excursions at exorbitant prices. He also talks about the low quality of service from competitors. “Once I met a partner from Hong Kong at the airport, and this “gray group” flew in with him,” says the head of Sputnik and SBAT. - I say: look at what kind of transport will take them and what their guide looks like, and compare it with what we offer. He says: “I understand everything, there are no questions.” That’s how they make their low prices.”

Excursion spying

In a sense, their Chinese colleagues are also helping Russian tour operators cope with the growing tourist flow. According to the Chinese themselves, in the foreseeable future, about a million tourists from this country will come to the Irkutsk region per year. That's a lot. In Moscow there are already not enough guides and translators with knowledge of the Chinese language, and in St. Petersburg in the summer - at the most high season- and places in hotels. During the high season in the capital, according to the World Without Borders, 80–90 groups from mainland China alone pass through border crossing points (excluding Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as business tourists) - this flow requires about three hundred guides at a time - translators, and there are about a hundred of them in Moscow. The growth of the Chinese flow is recorded everywhere, including beyond the Urals: in Novosibirsk, Altai, Far East and Kamchatka.

Large investment projects aimed at developing Chinese tourism are also beginning to appear - for example, on Baikal, the Grand Baikal company and its Chinese partners are going to invest about 11 billion rubles in construction tourism infrastructure in the city of Baikalsk, on the site of the closed Baikal pulp and paper mill.

Nevertheless, Igor Kovalenko is confident in the need for stricter regulation of the Chinese presence in the Russian tourism industry. He, for example, believes that it is necessary to strictly observe the existing ban on the work of Chinese guides in the Russian Federation, “because foreigners are depriving our guys of work who have studied for seven or eight years” - and also because Russians cannot work as guides in China .

Photo by Margarita Loginova

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