LONDON -- I spent the first two weeks of this year on a whistle-stop tour of Northeast China -- an area once known as Manchuria. The term Northeast China usually means the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.
Heilongjiang has a long border with Russia; Liaoning, one with North Korea. Jilin Province borders both Russia and North Korea, with a tiny sliver of land thrusting out from the frontier town of Han Chun between both countries, almost reaching the Sea of Japan.
Hun Chun is in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture of the Chaoxian People (the Chaoxian being ethnically Korean), a reminder that this is one of the areas conquered during the establishment of the Chinese Empire. Depending on whom you speak to, the ethnic Korean proportion of the population ranges from 39 percent (the most senior Han Chinese give this figure) to 70 percent (the figure preferred by minor Korean officials).