Cycle taxis cruise the streets for fares in Beijing's Russian district (FRANCISCO LITTLE)

Ya Bao Road is chaotic. It's packed tighter than a downtown bus at 5pm. Local Chinese touts blend in with cyrillic street signs, flogging IP cards, escort services and travel specials in Russian, swarming onto a new face like a school of frenetic sharks at supper time.

The Russian quarter in Beijing is one of the less known attractions in the city and provides an entirely different alternative to Chinese life.

The area apparently began life as a roughly constituted outdoor market decades ago and today serves as the hub of wholesale trade for Russian traders. Chinese drivers in beat up Nissan trucks offload huge bales of merchandise in a never-ending cycle. Business, it seems is good. Try to buy a pair of branded trainers, and you're likely to be told the shops here supply wholesale traders only. They mainly take orders from Russians with an eager market back home. Buy in bulk and virtually any commodity, of any brand is yours.

The street teems with cycle taxis. Tricycles converted so that they have a passenger section behind the rider are upholstered in bright colored velvet cloth and tasseled coverings and are parked everywhere. Riders wait patiently for fares outside the big shops and Russian hotels playing cards and smoking Russian cigarettes.

Make your way into one of the Russian restaurants on the west side of Yabao Road and you will think you've slipped back into the 1960s. Furniture, fittings and décor are all firmly wedged in that most inelegant of periods. Large floor space is generally packed with chain-smoking Russian ladies seemingly with a lot of time on their hands. The standard menu options are potato filled dumplings and stuffed pancakes with cream. A live band led by a copper haired beauty, poured into a black catsuit, belts out Russian pop tunes and for a while you will forget you're in China and feel you went on a mental walk-a-bout in Vladivostok.

Part of the life of an expat is the ongoing encounter of the unexpected. Just when you think you have everything worked out, something new turns up. Like a "Chinatown" in many other cities around the globe, it's easy to get immersed in a culture within another culture. Chinese today, Russian tomorrow. Finding another world, right there where you live, can literally be just up your street.