(CNN)   -- Sasha drags bulging shopping bags onto a trishaw as he heads back to his hotel, ending another hectic day in Beijing. It's hectic but lucrative. He typifies the transient traders who come to Beijing on shopping expeditions, making hefty profits buying goods and reselling at home. Beijingers used to call them "da daoye" (big traders). Now they are simply "hao pengyou" (good friend) -- favored customers and trading partners. They congregate in Yabaolu, once a quiet Beijing neighborhood of mostly one-story courtyards, now a bustling trading hub dotted with shops and high-rise shopping malls. Much of China-Russia trade is done along their border crossings in northeastern China. In the Chinese capital it all happens in Yabaolu.
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Yabaolu was once a quiet Beijing neighborhood of mostly one-story courtyards
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Now it's a bustling trading hub dotted with shops and high-rise shopping malls
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Poles, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs and other East European traders also partake
Turkov says he is not deterred by problems of bureaucracy, corruption and business conflicts that sometimes bedevil businessmen in @placeholder.