Deviation Actions
Description
Propisat
1995
Tzillin sat within a valley, the deep trough gouged by the meandering Songhua River as it wove between the collective Bagua Mountains[1]. It made for the lush vistas of low Khrushchyovka, bestridden by neon signage in Byelorussian[2] and Manchu, crawling up the snow decked peaks of the surrounding cordillera whilst sampans emblazoned with the Soviet star bobbed on the Songhua; that image so often depicted in postcards and television commercials. “Come to Tzillin, the Heart of Manchuria”.
Despite being the nation’s capital, or maybe because of it, the city was a leisurely and quiet place full of bourgeois coffee culture and lackadaisical bureaucracy. This contrasted with the bustling Harbin -the New York to Tzillin’s Washington- 200 kilometres north, or the dynamic Port Pobeda at the country’s southern tip[3]. Then again, thought Lanford, they were all some colour of ‘Perestroika’.
From where he sat outside a Minsk-chic coffeehouse on Tzillin’s westside, he could spy over the flat rooftops of Huangqitun District, across the river, all the way down to Independence Square[4]. Behind it, Dongxing Mountain rose, a verdant green as per the season. He sipped his espresso, and then considered the coffeehouse, it’s broad entrance a frame to the goings within. The stout, bald barista reading and his tall, blonde daughter on her cell phone; a collection of Manchu and Russo-Siberian apparatchiks gathered around a wide circular table eating salad sandwiches and gossiping in Kèliào[5]; an elderly Chinaman smoking by the door. A true microcosm of the country as a whole. Full of diversity, and subsequently, full of commercial opportunities.
The moaning of iron on concrete drew Lanford away from his distended reverie and across his table to where the plump form of a Russian man, a track jacket over his button-down, threw down a briefcase and lowered himself into a chair.
“Pryvet, my cosmopolitan comrade!” he greeted with a grin, before motioning to the Byelorussian girl with a broad, flat hand, “Coffee is good, no?”[6]
“Better than Ipoh[7],” said Lanford steadily.
“Everything is better than Ipoh, seychas,” snapped the Russian, before laughing uproariously. Lanford couldn’t help but laugh with him.
It wasn’t inaccurate and Lanford wasn’t offended. Japan, what had been a rising star purportedly on track to supplant the US as the world’s largest economy, had all but collapsed with the implosion of the asset bubble. Sarawak’s heavily intertwined economy was dragged with it, as Japanese technologists and investors suddenly lost their wealth or confidence[8]. Lanford, an Anglo-Kuchingite, had the forethought to sell off his commercial real estate rather than see it desiccate and collapse beneath him, a prescient action given the purchaser went bankrupt a year ago.
When the girl had scurried over, his Russian comrade mumbled for a red eye and then proceeded to fiddle with his briefcase.
“So what have you got for me, Veniamin?” asked Lanford. Veniamin drew from his briefcase a collection of manila folders, placing them before the broker.
“Many good, good properties, tovarisch,” he said, before a thick finger fell upon a bulging folder. “This one very expensive, but good property, eleven storefronts. Though strange stipulations.”
“Stipulations?” said Lanford sceptically, leaning back in his chair.
“Da, da. One storefront is partaken by a, uh, a Ključnik,” he searched for the word, hands about his head, “a keymaker! He stays.” Lanford’s brows crimped, and he reached across to grab the folder. He would need to examine this more thoroughly; it would be a long day[9].
~
[0] - Propisat is the verb form of Propiska, and a term referring to a Soviet passport, residency permit and their respective owner as a single unit. I thought it was appropriate given the protagonist here.
[1] – A collective term for the four mountains that frame Jilin City. Together with the Songhua river they form a Taiji Bagua, a type of cosmological trigram.
[2] – Whilst Byelorussians (Belarusians) are not great in number in Manchuria overall, there is an entrepreneurial community of about 60’000 in the capital that are well known as baristas and pauguski (in OTL an obscure cutlet involving goose breast) rolls.
[3] - The capital is in Tzillin (OTL Jilin City) because that is where the independence movement during the breakup of the Soviet Union occurred and where the flag was first raised.
[4] – OTL Century Square.
[5] – A Russo-Manchu creole with a great many borrowings from Mandarin that has grown near universal in the country, especially among the multicultural youth, but is not considered an official language. Comes from the first three characters of the Chinese word for ‘Creole’; kè lǐ ào ěr yǔ (克里奧爾語)
[6] – I’ll apologise in advance if any of my ethnically diverse characters are horribly racist caricatures; it’s difficult to know where that line is at times.
[7] – A type of Malaysian coffee.
[8] – Up until this point, Sarawak (which remained an independent kingdom ITTL) was a steadily developing tech centre similar to Singapore, largely driven by their large expatriate Japanese community.
[9] – I might expand this out into a complete short story, but I don’t want to make the description of this map too extensive.
