Gathered on New Year’s Eve in the banquet hall of a beachside hotel in southern China, tipsy revelers jumped to their feet to toast the arrival of 2026 — two hours early.
They were not befuddled by too much drink but wanted to celebrate the start of the New Year according to the time in Vladivostok, a Russian city two hours ahead of China.
Slurred cries went up, in Russian: “Happy New Year, Vladivostok! Happy New Year, Russian Far East!” Many of the partygoers — mostly Russians with a few Kazakhs and others from the former Soviet Union — drifted away from the hotel celebration before midnight, when the new year actually began.
Unlike in many places in Europe, where Russians have learned to keep their voices down because of the war in Ukraine, the beaches of southern China offer a safe and sunny space for Russians to behave as they would at home without fear of sideways looks.
Police officers who were out in force to prevent rowdiness broadcast warnings along beaches that fireworks were forbidden. But they stood by as Russian revelers, wobbling drunkenly in the sand, unleashed a barrage of Roman candles into the sea.
The number of Russian visitors to Hainan, a Chinese tropical island east of Vietnam in the South China Sea, increased 11 times between 2023 and 2024, making them by far the biggest group, buoyed by a visa-free policy and a hospitality that ignores the war in Ukraine. The Chinese authorities, perhaps fearful of alienating tourists from countries hostile to Russia, last year stopped releasing Hainan visitor figures by country. During the winter high season, the island receives eight or more flights each day from cities across Russia.
Too polite — and wary of losing good customers — to mention the rising death toll in Ukraine, Chinese whose livelihoods depend on serving Russian tourists work hard to make their guests feel comfortable and welcome, gushing about the friendship and shared interests of the two countries.
To make money and also make Russians feel at home, locals have opened fake copies of well-known Moscow restaurants like Chaihona No. 1, a popular, fairly high-end chain known for fusion food that blends Central Asian and Slavic cuisines. The knockoff version here is called Chaihona No. 9.
“Our countries have a lot in common,” said a Russian-speaking Chinese guide, who gave his name as Piotr, leading a group of Russians on a visit to a rainforest near the city of Sanya, a popular Hainan beach resort and also the site of a huge naval base for Chinese nuclear submarines.
Invoking a Chinese stereotype of Russians, he apologized that there would only be beer and no vodka at lunch.
The cultural affinity described by the guide is good for business. At his grocery store in Sanya, Dimitry Garifullin, a businessman from the Russian town of Ufa, sells the comforts of home to a growing clientele. But Mr. Garifullin said he has been struck by a different kind of affinity: the local reverence for his own country’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin. Not a fan himself, he said: “Most Chinese like Putin. They see him as a very strong politician.”
But it is Russia, he said, that should learn from China. “Everyone can learn from China,” he added, pointing to economic growth that, even though now far slower than when he first arrived in 2005, still puts Russia’s sickly economy to shame.
His store, stocked with black bread, pickles, cheese, frozen fish, sausages and shelf after shelf of alcohol, did a roaring trade over the New Year holiday.
Asked whether his business had benefited from the war in Ukraine, which has turbocharged Hainan’s Russian tourist boom, he said he did not like the idea of profiting from the suffering of others. He added: “The country that has made the most profit off the war is China.”
His store is in Dadonghai, a resort area near the naval base that has so many Russian visitors that restaurant menus, official notices and shop signs nearly all come with translations in Russian instead of English, the usual lingua franca of mass tourism. Chinese hotel staff in the area greet foreign guests with “ZDRAST-vooy-tye” rather than “hello” or “ni hao.”
Loudspeakers controlled by the local government along the beach at Dadonghai blare the folk classic “Kalinka,” and other Russian favorites.
For some Russian visitors, particularly those who take a dim view of their country’s sharp authoritarian turn under President Putin, China can feel stifling, even by Moscow standards. Anton Poltoushkin, an IT developer from Moscow on his first trip to China, said he had tried to talk to his Chinese tour guide about Taiwan but had been told that the topic was “too sensitive.”
“I talk about the Ukraine war so why can’t you talk about Taiwan?” he said he had asked.
Mr. Poltoushkin said he would have preferred to go to Europe but could not easily get a visa for himself, his wife and young son.
“I love the south of France but how can I get to Nice or Monaco now?” he asked. “I never thought I would end up here but we don’t have many choices these days,” he added.
The European Union in November decided to stop issuing Russian tourist visas that allow for multiple visits and mandated tighter scrutiny of all applicants. This further tightened restrictions on entry to Europe by Russian citizens that began after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
China moved in the opposite direction, allowing visa-free access for Russians to Hainan since 2024 and to the whole country since November, as it tries to revitalize the economy.
Raniya Terkulova, a retired doctor from the Russian region of Tatarstan, said she was on her fifth visit to Hainan. Her family has deep connections to China going back to the 1920s, she said, recalling happy Soviet-era memories of Chinese thermos flasks and other knickknacks. She added that she had for a long time “loved and admired China” and been a big believer in traditional Chinese medicine.
This trip, made with her daughter and granddaughter, however, ended the love affair. “I am very disappointed,” she said, recounting an angry clash on a beach with Chinese vacationers whom she said had been rude and domineering.
Occasional culture clashes aside, most Russian visitors enjoy their time in Hainan for a simple reason: the weather. “It is now minus 30 degrees (-22 Fahrenheit) and snowing at home and here it plus 30 (86 Fahrenheit) and sunny,” said a cafe owner from the Siberian city of Khabarovsk who gave only her first name, Nataliya.
She said she used to go to Spain for sun but stopped after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and the attitude of Spaniards toward Russians soured. “If they heard people speaking Russian in the hotel they wouldn’t clean their rooms properly,” she complained.
In China, she added, hotels are cheaper, and people don’t care about geopolitics, the war in Ukraine or other topics that rile many Europeans. “Chinese don’t spit at Russians like Europeans do,” she said.
Andrew Higgins is the East and Central Europe bureau chief for The Times based in Warsaw, on temporary assignment in Shanghai.
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