Chinese bureaucrats of a certain age have an affinity for Russia dating back to the 1950s honeymoon between Mao Zedong's China and Stalin's Soviet Union. Many studied in Moscow. President Jiang Zemin of China graduated from Moscow University and worked in the Zil automobile factory, and the Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, trained in Russia as an engineer.
The old camaraderie of those days came back at an extraordinary official dinner in Beijing on Monday evening when Russian and Chinese leaders danced and sang in a heady mood after the fifth successful summit between Mr Jiang and Mr Yeltsin.
"The atmosphere was unique for a state visit," a spokesman for Mr Yeltsin said. At one stage, the Chinese President sang a Russian song and was joined by younger colleagues. The Russian and Chinese deputy prime ministers, Mr Boris Nemtsov and Mr Li Lanqing, sang Moscow Nights and "to complete the party, President Jiang with [Mr Yeltsin's daughter] Tatyanya Dyachenko beautifully danced to music from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty", he said.
Mr Yeltsin arrived in Harbin yesterday on the second leg of his visit to China. Dozens of Communist Youth League members in red neckties shouted greetings as he and his wife, Naina, descended from their aircraft. Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang, formerly part of Manchuria, which borders the Russian Far East. Many white Russian refugees fled to Harbin after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Touching on the symbolism of his visit in a radio address, Mr Yeltsin said he wanted to end the division in Russia between "reds" and "whites".
The Russian President also visited a monument to Soviet soldiers who died fighting the Japanese in Manchuria during the second World War and spoke to the descendants of Russians who helped build a railroad through Harbin in 1896.
Mr Yeltsin is accompanied by the governors of four Russian regions adjacent to China, but Mr Yevgeny Nazratenko, Governor of the Maritime Pacific region, was excluded from official talks. He has strongly opposed concessions made in a demarcation agreement sealed on Monday recognising the 4,300-km (2,800mile) Chinese-Russian frontier as an international border.
In Harbin, Mr Yeltsin, facing criticism at home for the low level of trade between the two countries, encouraged stronger economic co-operation with China. "I'm very happy that economic ties are getting better now," he said.
Mr Nemtsov said he had issued an order to enhance a border freetrade zone, to speed up construction of a border bridge across the Amur River, and to cut down on bureaucratic obstacles to crossborder trade.
The main economic achievement of Yeltsin's visit was a framework agreement on a $12 billion project to build a pipeline to bring natural gas from Siberia to China's Pacific Coast. Mr Yeltsin and Mr Jiang also advanced their goal of a multi-polar world in which no single power, - i.e. the US - would dominate.