On a previous trip to Beijing, we got to check out the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace. We sampled Peking Duck, and ate the world's most delightful dumplings by the steamer-load (forgoing the donkey-meat option, regrettably).

Some of those places are on the agenda for a re-visit, but that's not the sort of mood we woke up in. We needed something new, something fresh. Something weird and obscure.

Perhaps the Russian Fur Market - whatever that meant - was worth a gander?

And so we set out, and happened upon it - a veritable mini Russia tucked away amidst streets and streets of undifferentiated Chineseness.

Out of nowhere, Ya Bao Lu looms up. A street so jam-packed with Russian accents and Cyrillic script and Chinese touts crying out in Russian to tall, blonde passersby, that it's a little shot of Ruski madness served neat and straight up, thanks very much.

Ya Bao Lu is a 'little Russia' in the centre of Beijing in much the same way as other cities around the world sport 'Chinatowns'. Taking full advantage of its scores and scores of shopping opportunities, it's thronged by light-eyed, haughty-looking beauties caked in foundation, high heels and fur. They trip up and down its length, inspecting fur stoles and mobile phones and underwear of improbably large cup-sizes and questionable taste.

Nattering away on your phone in Russian is mandatory, and there are strictly only two colours of hair here - arctic bottle blonde and Heinz tomato soup red. Both are compulsorily fashioned into forbidding helmet-style arrangements.

Actually, I exaggerate. There is also the occasional Eurasian Russian woman with Asian features and Caucasian colouring who wears her hair dyed inky black and shot through with gold and auburn streaks, bright as fire.

African merchants peruse the side-streets, ready to strike a deal if and when necessary. The street itself is thick with small hatchback taxis, plying for trade, and then there are legions of low-tech cyclo-drivers - men riding bicycles with little passenger compartments strapped to the back. I've rarely seen these in Beijing, but here they are swarming. The little passenger compartments are tricked out in thick velvety material decorated with fat Mongolian blossoms on red backgrounds. Every so often, one glides by with a Russian woman tucked up inside.

It all has the feel of a seedy border trading post, despite being in the thick of the Chinese capital. Fur is the glamour commodity here, but lurid and revealing swimsuits run a close second for popularity.

Amusingly - even though I'm convinced that we stick out like sore thumbs (toting cameras and backpacks and stiff trekking shoes) - the Chinese merchants take one look at Andrew's Eurasianness and my Caucasianness and decide without a moment's hesitation that we must be Russians!

Maybe it's time for me to lay off the blonding creme and the pancake makeup.