Russian Farm, Chinese Farmer

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Andrew E Kramer, Russian Farm, Chinese Farmer; A nation rich in land strengthens its ties to one rich in people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/1 ... ch-sides-needs.html
(A Female farmer from around Harbin explained, through an interpreter, why she ventured so far from home: 'I came for the money, what do you think?'  Salaries of about $650 a month are five times the salaries of field hands in China, she said")

Excerpt in the window of print: A trek toward opportunity familiar to countless Mic an grape pickers.

Note:
(a) World Food Program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Program
(a UN organization; Established 1961; Headquarters          Rome)
(b) China Investment Corporation (CIC)  中国投资有限责任公司: a sovereign wealth fund

(c) The report says, "Golden Land is one of nine Chinese farms in the Sverdlovsk region in central Russia, according to the local ministry of agriculture. * * * The Chinese investor in Golden Land had traded for years in a market in the nearby city of Yekaterinburg" before he bought the farm.
(i) Yekaterinburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg
(the fourth-largest city in Russia with a population of 1,398,889 (2012); situated in the middle of the Eurasian continent, on the border of Europe and Asia; Yekaterinburg is the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast; best known as a city where the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed in 1918; founded in 1723 and named after Tsar Peter the Great's wife Catherine I (Yekaterina))
(ii) Catherine I of Russia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia
(1684-1727; the second wife of Peter I of Russia; reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death;
successor  Peter II [grandson of Peter I with the first wife]; the first woman to rule Imperial Russia; For most of her reign, Catherine I was controlled by her adviser; She died just two years after Peter, at age 43, in St Petersburg)
(iii) Catherine the Great
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
(Catherine II; wife of Peter III; 1729-1796; reign 1762-1796)

(d) The report observes, "Far more [Chinese farms] have sprung up to the south, in the Chelyabinsk region."

Chelyabinsk blast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_Oblast
(Its administrative center is the city of Chelyabinsk)
(e) The map of the report shows Ostanino inside Novosibersk.

Novosibirsk blast
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novosibirsk_blast
(Its administrative and economic center is the city of Novosibirsk [the third largest city of Russia after Moscow (No 1) and St Petersburg; largest in Siberia])
(f) At last the report mentions "Zhang Wei Dong, the foreman [of Golden Land], who goes by the Russian nickname Lyosha."

Russian given names Alyosha or Lyosha is a diminutive of Aleksey--Russian form of Alexis (the latter is Greek for helper or defender).