Vocabulary of Chinese Origin in the Language of Russian Residents of Harbin in the First Half of the 20th Century

The purpose of the article is to study the functioning of lexical units of Chinese origin in the speech of representatives of the Far Eastern emigration. The language of everyday communication is the first to respond to socio-cultural, ethnocultural, ethno-religious processes occurring in society. At present, when the culture of Far Eastern emigration in its close interaction with Chinese culture has become a fact of history, the reconstruction of the processes of intercultural communication between Russians and Chinese in Harbin causes great difficulties. This explains the relevance of studying the Chinese influence on the language of Russian emigrants who found refuge in Harbin in the first half of the 20th century. The novelty of the work is due to the lack of comprehensive studies dealing with Chinese borrowings in the everyday language of ordinary Harbin residents. An appeal to the memories and oral histories of Harbin residents allows us to trace how lexemes borrowed from the Chinese language and continuing to live in the linguistic consciousness of people who grew up in Harbin. The methodology of this article is based on historical-cultural, functional, linguocultural, and lexical-semantic approaches, as well as interviewing. The work uses materials from the authors’ field research among Harbin residents. Based on the results of the study, the authors conclude that although most Russians living in Harbin in the first half of the 20th century did not speak Chinese, Chinese borrowings were a constant part of their lives. This is especially true for various lacunae related to everyday realities, cooking, traditional culture, etc. Harbin residents organically assimilated such lexical units and preserved them in their speech for decades—even outside China. Of course, this testifies to close ethnocultural contacts between Russians and Chinese in Manchuria.