SUIFENHE, China – The electricity was out and the water was off in Nezabudka restaurant, and seven Sakhalin housewives on their third bottle of vodka stopped kissing each other and began shining a tiny flashlight in the eyes of nearby men.

“Excuse me,” said restaurant hostess Margarita Gigalchy, a dwarfish babushka from Ussurisk. “I need to sit with them for a minute.”

Gigalchy, 64, settled with the women and urged calm and perhaps a little tea. Her presence — like that of Russian-speaking hosts and hostesses at every restaurant downtown — is an indication of just how essential the Russian customer is here.

Every Suifenhe pharmacy and barbershop posts signs in Chinese and Russian. Every street vendor calls out in Russian to passing tourists: “Girlfriend! Buddy! Come here!” Merchants bargain in Russian, and even beggar children can manage a few words.

Russell Working Two Russian tourists shop for fabric at the Central Deptartment Store in Suifenhe.

Chinese border towns like Suifenhe have been transformed by Russian tourists and traders. They come with wallets full of one-hundred-dollar bills, to goof off, dine on exotic food, and — for the “shuttle traders” — buy cheap consumer goods to resell in the markets back home.

“When there are no Russians, the city is virtually empty,” Gigalchy said. “The transportation doesn’t work, the electricity shuts down, all the shops are closed. So the city basically operates only for Russians.”

In 1996, Russian tourists and traders bought an estimated $1.5 billion worth of consumer goods in China, according to the Far Eastern branch of the Federal Customs Service. Tourists from Primorye spent $350 million last year on everything from hotels to sunglasses, said Aleksandr Latkin, director of Vladivostok’s Institute for Economic Affairs and Forecasting.

Suifenhe, a city of 180,000, is typical of the Chinese cities at the crossing points between the two countries (there are five such border crossings in Primorye). Russian money has helped create a boom town out of what was a village of 10,000 people in 1991.

China’s border cities aren’t growing by accident. The government recognized potential of southern border areas with access to Macao and Hong Kong, and it created development incentives, said Syui Tsay Chen, head of the department of foreign affairs for the Suifenhe mayor’s office. Northern border towns like Suifenhe, Hunchung and Heihe profited from the same policies.

Russell Working Russian restaurant hostess Margarita Gigalchy with an employee.

Added Han Du Dzoy, the 54-year-old owner of Mir Farfora porcelain shop, “After perestroika [in Russia], all of China paid attention to Suifenhe. All of the provinces and companies have representatives here. The reason this city grew is because all of China built it.”

There is a curious sense of unreality to Suifenhe, as if it were a giant Chinese Disneyland for Russian tourists. A stroll through the city can be an overwhelming experience for a newcomer. As tourists leave the train station, women with pancake makeup and tattooed eyebrows surround them, offering to act as translators: “You need help? Later? Later?” Porters exchange blows over who gets to lug a suitcase. The buildings are new – glass and brick towers – and the roads crowded with taxicabs and motorized rickshaws. Hucksters selling guide books grab passing tourists-by the arm or the shirt.

Most Russians who visit arrive on tour groups (visas aren’t required for Russians traveling in organized groups). Valentina Gladkova, a Vladivostok tour guide from Sputnik tour company, recently led her 28th trip to China: 13 housewives and shuttle traders from Vladivostok and the border city of Pogranichny. The tour started out by bus, and as it bounded along a road through fields where Russian tanks were maneuvering, Gladkova took up the driver’s microphone to offer a few warnings.

“Do bear in mind that the Chinese are quite emotional, and get offended very easily,” she said. “Don’t get involved in conflicts, or you might be abused, both emotionally and physically.”

On the Russian side of the border, she sells everyone a fake certificate from a clinic stating that one has tested negative for AIDS (the Chinese require this for entry). She also teaches novices essential Chinese: how to say “no” and “get lost.”

One tourist, who asked not to be identified, now goes to China simply to by clothes for her family; she used to sell in the market, but the local mafia started threatening her.

“You have to pay them off every day,” she said. “They just want a ruble a day if you’re small, but it can be as much as 100 rubles a day if you have one of those tents. One guy used to come to me and say, ‘Give me your money.’ And I would say, ‘I didn’t make any sales today.’ He said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, and I won’t be talking so nicely.’”

Gigalchy, who works at Nezabudka, came here because of contacts she make working at a Ussurisk firm that did business in China. She faced a challenge getting the restaurant up to standards acceptable to Russian tourists: It took some convincing just to get the staff to wash the dishes rather than just wiping them off.

Gigalchy misses her children and grandchildren, and would rather live in Russia. But her pension wasn’t enough to get by on. And in China, a traditional nation of merchants, there is money to be made.

“They think that they are living under socialism,” Gigalchy said, “but they still have those ancient traditions that don’t change.”