Secretly visited the famous Seven Kilometers Market, and found the local old Chinese "Silly Brother" among the six major ethnic groups.

Hello everyone, I am Shen Dianqi, a traveler who has visited all over the world and paid attention to the Chinese people around the world.

Ukraine’s 6th stop, I’m in Odessa

Unannounced visit to the Seven Kilometers Market in Odessa

When it comes to “Seven Kilometers”, almost all Chinese in Ukraine Everyone knows this place, and most of the more than 3,000 Chinese people in Odessa work here.

When Xiao Zhu took me to this market, it was 9 o'clock in the morning, because this market mainly sells stalls in the morning and gradually closes at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

Seven Kilometers is the largest commodity distribution and wholesale market in Europe. At its peak, the number of Chinese people reached 10,000. In addition to the Chinese, there are also various faces in the market, people from all over the world. All.

In the market where Xiao Zhu took me, I visited an old Chinese from the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Everyone called him "Silly Brother". He was from the Northeast and had arrived in Ukraine in 1993. I will write some stories later.

A bird’s eye view of the “Seven Kilometers” market.

The entire market is made of containers, and some have two floors. The first floor is for shops and the second floor is for warehouses.

Due to the mixed crowd inside the market, radios in the market blocks repeatedly broadcast warnings in Russian such as "Beware of being deceived, beware of pyramid schemes." It is enough to show how complex this market is.

When I raised the camera, I encountered a large number of very wary shopkeepers on the road, asking me what I did... Later I learned that there was a local sphere of influence, and Many people within the market may have criminal records... In short, in this complex environment, people remain highly vigilant about the outside world, which I fully understand.

So, I chose the secret visit method. I set the camera to be invisible. Then, I went to the Afghan neighborhood, where there were a large number of Afghan refugees (they took refugee cards Direct entry into Ukraine is very convenient), and now there are more and more Afghan refugees in Ukraine.

Vietnamese Pho in the Seven Kilometers Market

In addition to Chinese, there are a large number of Vietnamese in the Seven Kilometers Market, so there is also authentic Vietnamese Pho here. We had one for lunch Vietnamese pho restaurant, the taste is very good, the soup is very fresh, and the amount of beef is large. The correct method is to pour the chili sauce into the dipping plate and then dip the beef slices in the chili sauce.

The beef is very tender, fat and lean, and delicious. A bowl of beef noodle soup costs 80 GB, equivalent to RMB 20 yuan. When he went back to Ukraine to go to school, Xiao Zhu missed Asian food and would take a car all the way from the city to the Seven Kilometers Market to eat a bowl of noodle soup.

The proprietress of the restaurant is very enthusiastic. The first floor of the restaurant is a small supermarket selling some Vietnamese food and seasonings.

A 29-year-old Chinese "Silly Brother" from Qikm Market

Xiao Zhu went to Qikm Market and helped me find a local old Chinese "Silly Brother". Xiao Zhu said, Sha Ge is a very nice person. If local international students need to go through any procedures, they will come to him for help. He is very enthusiastic.

It has been 28 years since Brother Sha came to Ukraine in 1993. He first went to study abroad in a small Ukrainian city along the Dnieper River, and has since been rooted in Ukraine.

He experienced the Great Depression just after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He recalled the scene when he first came to Ukraine. The shelves in shopping malls, shops, and supermarkets were all empty, and he could not buy anything. arrive.

But it was easy to make money at that time because there were many opportunities. Brother Sha said that the mechanical pencils they brought from China at that time were very novel to Ukrainians and had never seen them before. It can be said that there were no light industrial products in Ukraine at that time.

It was probably around 1995 that the situation improved as products gradually came in.

However, after decades of development, Ukraine’s national power has been “steadily declining”. This is a very helpless but not very stinging feeling, like boiling a frog in warm water. , a little bit of economic downturn.

Undercover visit to the seven-kilometer Afghan district

Since this market is a mixed bag, I chose to take photos covertly. The following are precious humanities and social science materials that I recorded in a covert manner.

The local old Chinese told me that the number of Afghans here even exceeds that of Indians and Arabs, and the number is increasing. A very important reason is that it is far more convenient for Afghans to come in as refugees than in other ways.

For example, Vietnamese people have the most difficulty getting through Ukrainian customs cards. Many Vietnamese people have been there since the old Soviet Union, and some new Vietnamese people have come through "buy "Guan" comes in, making it difficult for most Vietnamese to enter Ukraine.

The Afghans are just the opposite. Because they are a country at war, they are directly issued a "refugee card" in accordance with international regulations and come in directly.

This is very similar to Australia’s Afghan refugee model, which is that Chinese immigrants to Australia have to pay to learn the language and technical skills, while immigrants queue up. But when Afghans come to Australia, they give them houses and pay them as soon as they get off the plane. The crime rate is still extremely high...

Many MSL countries have high birth rates and insufficient resources, causing chaos and rapid population overflow. Immigration to pagan countries multiplied in large numbers in pagan countries. The successful spread of these few steps is indeed a successful model.

The 6 major races in the Seven Kilometers Market

Brother Sha introduced us to the basic situation of this market. This market has people from all over the world, even Cambodians...

p>

The main groups are divided into six categories: 1. Chinese, 2. Vietnamese, 3. Indians, 4. Afghans, 5. Middle Easterners (Syria, Iran) 6 , Ukrainians

And these six major groups of people control different industries:

1. Chinese people mainly buy shoes, bags and department stores;

p>

2. Vietnamese mainly resell Chinese resold goods, as well as transfer money and exchange foreign exchange;

3. Indians control small household appliances;

4. Afghans A lot of them are sold to China;

5. Middle Easterners control textiles and carpets;

6. Ukrainians do everything, mainly retail or help. The first five types of people work and look after stores;

Us and the Ukrainian flag

Walking through a large sunflower seed field, I suddenly thought that yellow and blue, the Ukrainian flag basically looks like this< /p>

The Ukrainian flag (Ukrainian: Державний Прапор Укра?ни) consists of two parallel and equal horizontal rectangles with upper blue and lower yellow. Blue represents the sky and ocean, symbolizing freedom and sovereignty. Yellow represents wheat fields, symbolizing Ukraine’s country based on agriculture.

Odessa with 160 ethnic groups

Odessa is the dirtiest city I have ever seen in Ukraine (mainly the main city). Compared with other Ukrainian cities, they are very clean, so The center of Odessa seems particularly dirty.

I have put two pictures below, which are in the center of Odessa. I live in this most chaotic place. There are beggars and homeless people on the street. Other cities in Ukraine have much more.

I guess one reason is that Odessa is the warmest place in Ukraine, and homeless people sleeping in the open will be more adaptable to the climate here.

Later, the local Chinese told me that there are more than 160 ethnic groups in Odessa. I said that it really doesn’t look like a Slavic city, because I have been to Odessa. Some Slavic cities are extremely clean.

Later, I thought carefully about it. I saw not many Orthodox churches in Odessa these days. Instead, there were more Catholic churches and various Christian churches. Protestantism, mosques... and Jews are often seen on the streets.

The visible and clearly identifiable ethnic groups in Odessa are: Ukrainians, Jews, Turks, Arabs, Chinese, Vietnamese, blacks,

Large-scale international student groups include: Azerbaijanis, Ecuadorians in South America, and Stanislavs in Central Asia...

7 kilometers In the market, there are: Afghans, Iranians, Syrians, Indians...

Immigrants left over from the former Soviet Union include: Armenians, Georgians...

p>

Immigration caused by history and Black Sea port trade: Greeks, Arabs...

Back to the previous article, in such a complicated situation The demographic structure of Odessa has made the city more diverse and, of course, dirtier.

Tomorrow I will start a new journey from Odessa to Lviv

See you next time