The book includes stories and short stories, united by one theme - Russians in Manchuria. Their heroes, living in a foreign land, managed to preserve that original Orthodox Russianness that was drying up in their homeland. Having built the Chinese Eastern Railway at the very beginning of the 20th century, the Russians brought civilization to Manchuria, the forgotten outskirts of China. More than a hundred stations and towns were erected on bare ground, and the capital of Manchuria, the city of Harbin, was built. Tsarist Russia became the Soviet Union, and the breakaway island called Manchuria continued to live the same life in the twenties, thirties, forties, until in the fifties China turned its attention to its northern province, beginning to displace the Russians, forcing them to move to the Soviet Union, Australia , USA, Brazil...