It is lunchtime at the Harbin restaurant in St Petersburg and diners are tucking in to plates of pigs’ ears and bowls of sticky rice.
Outside are the spires of Russia’s magnificent former imperial capital, but in here it feels like a little corner of Podnebesnaya, the Celestial Kingdom, as Russians like to call China.
A boisterous group of Chinese sit at one debris-strewn table, ladling soup from large bowls. They pour tea from jugs into their flasks and, with a scrape of chairs, hurriedly get up to leave.
These diners are tourists, some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese now visiting Russia every year as relations between the countries strengthen. Not everyone is happy with the development.