11. Have a look at photos of old Khabarovsk on pages 163-171. Can you guess which modern buildings are these?

12. Make a presentation or a slide-show about several old and modern buildings of Khabarovsk. Compare them and tell about differences.

13. On your own. Use the Internet and other sources to find information about Khabarovsk as the industrial, international, educational, scientific and cultural center of the Far East.

Lesson 25. The Importance of the Amur River for the Region

1. Scan the Statistical Data. Name the peculiarities of the Amur River. Statistical Data:

The Amur River or Heilongjiang or Sahaliyan Ula (Manchu) Amur, is the third-longest river in Russia and ninth in the world.

A border between the Russian Far East and northeastern China runs along this river.

Its length is 2,824 km, together with the Onon and the Shilka – 4,279 km; together with the Khailar and the Argun — 4,049 km.

Its watershed is 1,855,000 km². 

The river originates in the Khentii mountains of Khentii Province in Mongolia.

The river flows to Sakhalin Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Its basin includes 10 610 big rivers and 61426 lakes.

2. Study the key vocabulary:

livelihood - средства к жизни

tenuous military presence – непрочное, слабое военное присутствие

drive -напористость, настойчивость (в достижении какой-л. цели)

adjacent - расположенный рядом, смежный, соседний ( to)

respectively - соответствующим образом

backwater –заброшенный

to yield – уступать

to ply -курсировать

non-ferrous metals - цветные металлы

bambusa - желтощек

mirror carp - сазан

to spawn - метать икру, нереститься

3. Match the following columns:

livelihood tenuous drive adjacent respectively backwater to yield to ply non-ferrous metals bambusa to spawn

to mine lack of land to fish to study mirror carp waste river influence to show to demand

4. Make up sentences with the word-combinations from ex.3.

5. Translate into English:

•В период экономического кризиса у многих дюдей не хватает средств на существование.

• Слабое военное присутствие на границе может привести к захвату любой соседней территории.

• Невельскому и Муравьеву-Амурскому пришлось проявить настойчивость в решении Амурского вопроса.

•Прежде чем развивать территорию, её нужно сначала соответствующим образом изучить.

•Во время переговоров одной из сторон пришлось уступить оппоненту заброшенный пустырь для постройки нового здания на этой территории.

•Летом по Амуру курсируют большие и малые суда, перевозящие большое количество нужных городу грузов.

• Желтощеки и сазаны нерестятся весной, а лососевые виды рыб летом и осенью.

6. Scan the text: Amur River History

Tungus-Manchurian tribes named the Amur “Amar” or “Damar” (Big River). Chinese firstly named it “Kheikhe” (Black River) and later Heilongjiang (River of a Black Dragon). And the Mongols named the river “Amur-Khara-Muren” (Black water). The Amur River has always been closely associated with the island of Sakhalin, and most names for the island, even in the languages of the indigenous peoples of the region, are derived from the name of the river: "Sakhalin" derives from a Tungusic dialectal form cognate with Manchu sahaliyan ("black," as in sahaliyan ula, "Black River").

For many centuries the Amur Valley was populated by the Tungusic (Evenki, Solon, Ducher, Nanai, Ulch), Mongolian (Daur) people, and, near its mouth, by the Nivkhs. All local peoples regarded this river to be sacred. For many of them, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17^th century, these peoples were not known to the Europeans, and little known to the Chinese, who sometimes collectively described them as the Wild Jurchens.

In the 13-14th centuries the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, ruling by China, established a tenuous military presence on the lower Amur. Ruins of their Yuan-era temple were excavated near the village of Tyr .

In the early 15^th century Manchurian Ming Dynasty reached the Amur and established control over the lands in the northeast.

The 17^th century was a period of struggle for control over the Amur River between Russia, which has expanded to Eastern Siberia and Manchuria, whose main forces were concentrated in the south-eastern Manchuria. In 1643-1651 Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vasily Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries.

Yerofey Khabarov established the fort of Albazin on the upper Amur, at the site of the former capital of the Solons.

This event deprived the Manchurian rulers from the tribute of sable fur that the Solons and Daurs of the area supplied them. So they tried to return that territory back and in 1685 during a short military campaign Albazin fell. In 1689 in accordance with the Nerchinsk Treaty the left entire Amur valley, from the confluence of the Rivers Shilka and Argun downstream, became the Manchurian property.

The Amur region remained a backwater of Manchuria for the next century and a half, with Aigun being practically the only major town on the river. Russians re-appeared on the river in the mid 19^th century, forcing Manchuria to yield all lands north of the river to the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Aigun (1858). Lands east of the Ussury and the lower Amur were acquired by Russia as well, by the Treaty of Peking (1860).

The acquisition of the lands on the Amur and the Ussury was followed by the migration of Russian settlers to the region and the construction of such cities as Blagoveshchensk and, later, Khabarovsk.