 Many of the Russians in Harbin were wealthy, and the city was a center of Russian culture as the Russian community in Harbin made it their mission to preserve the pre-war Russian culture in a city on the plains of Manchuria with for instance Harbin having two opera companies and numerous theaters performing the traditional classics of the Russian stage.The economic success of the Russians in Harbin often surprised foreign visitors who assumed that they should be poor, leading one visitor in 1923 to comment that Russian “ladies as well gowned as at the Paris races [who] strolled
with men faultlessly garbed by European standards”, leading him to wonder how they achieved this "deceptive appearance".The extent of Russian economic dominance of Harbin could be seen that “Moya-tvoya", a pidgin language combining aspects of Russian and Mandarin Chinese which developed in the 19th century when Chinese went to work in Siberia was considered essential by the Chinese merchants of Harbin.