Ke was great in giving us a place to stay for the night, but we found out early in the morning that our ferry actually didn’t leave until Monday which was a good 5 days away, and Vladivostok was only a day and a half away. We explained our situation to Ke and he actually enjoyed our company, since he lived by himself in a really large and by far the nicest apartment Joel and I had ever seen.
Ke’s family runs Khabarovsk’s first and best Chinese restaurant Syangan, he’s been over looking the business now for around 7 years, and he’s only 24. He studied 1 year in London and about 2 years in Vancouver studying English. On top of that he’s invested quite a bit in city’s real estate and owns a bit of land and a few buildings which he rents out. That would explain his amazing apartment that looked over the river, the photo above is the view from his place. No to mention he’s been living in Russia since he was 13, and in fully fluent in Russian and Mandarin Chinese.
Here’s Joel and I at Syangan, Ke’s family’s restaurant, real posh and expensive, yet Ke was happy to pay for the bill regardless of how much we insisted.
Look of the main town square of Khabarovsk.
Ke told us about how Khabarovsk’s economy is booming especially with Japanese Import Cars, the logging and oil industries doing well especially being just down the river from China and Harbin where a lot of this part of Siberian Russia does trade with China.
Ke invited us out to meet his friends, to tell our stories and how far we’ve come. Most of the time he was interpreting for us the whole time. It was interesting to tell a story, then wait for Ke to explain it in Russian and see their reactions to our adventures. Everyone else treated us to dinner as well, but this was by far the easiest time we’ve had in Russia, and can’t thank everyone especially Ke enough for their hospitality.
