ABSTRACT
There are few neighbouring settlements along the lengthy Sino-Russian border, but the cities of Blagoveshchensk in Amur Oblast and Heihe in Heilongjiang Province are two notable ones. Starting from a brief historical account of Blago and Heihe, the authors focus on their contemporary ties by assessing the dynamism of flows between the cities, the evolution of challenges experienced and the aspirations expressed. Sitting across the width of the Amur River, Blago and Heihe's proximity point towards expectant border twin cities. The contrast between Blago and Heihe starts with their dissimilar urban development. The built environment is used to argue against applying the notion of a twin-city to Blago and Heihe. Civil wars and foreign interventions occurred on both sides of the border, sometimes reducing cross-border contacts to zero. As soon as the cities were independently declared 'open' by their respective national government from around the late 1980s, cross-border trade became the impetus for their interactions.
