China has long looked on slices of Siberia as “lost territories,” stolen in the nineteenth century when China was weak and beset by revolution and preyed upon by Western imperial powers. During the Taiping revolt that took twenty-five million lives, the czar’s agents swindled the Chi’ing Empire out of 350,000 square miles north of the Amur and between the Ussuri and the sea. This land, now Siberia’s Maritime Province, is twice the size of California, and fits around Manchuria like a cupped hand. Vladivostok, Russia’s port on the Sea of Japan, naval base of her Pacific Fleet, was founded in
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