They said our countries were close, our relations close. A mingling of cultures. A mingling of species—wouldn’t you like that? Friendship between peoples: Russian vodka with Chinese baijiu, bears embracing pandas—that’s brotherhood for centuries. And what do we have now, in these troubled times? Chaos in the sky: airships covered in hieroglyphs, matryoshka dolls on board; crowds in the streets, half saying “ni hao,” the other half, “Hello, comrade.”

Hundreds of questions, no answers. Who dreamed all this up? Why? Why are people eating pelmeni with tea now, and why do red lanterns hang beside birch trees? Enough, Teletubbies. That’s it. Game over.

Or perhaps it isn’t the end but the beginning of something strange—a hybrid, like borscht with soy sauce. Rapprochement, they said. A great alliance. Russia and China, hand in hand, paw in paw. A jumble of languages—“Come on, l’chaim, ganbei!”—and species: somewhere out there, beavers in kimonos and dragons in ushankas already roam. What comes next? The Beijing Kremlin? Siberian Shanghai? Thousands of riddles, not a single clue. This is it, ladies and gentlemen, comrades: we’ve arrived. Curtain.

Or have we?