Quote Originally Posted by JoeBirmingham View Post
It seems off they would have selected this cup. The figures on the cup don't look asian. ??
Well, think of it from the point-of-view of a foreign tourist (or in this case, a long-term resident foreigner who was getting ready to pack up and leave because the Communists had taken over).

If you were visiting Nigeria, for example, you wouldn't buy a souvenir cup with images of Chinese people on the Great Wall; you'd want a cup with images of elephants and/or black people in traditional African tribal costumes, to show "folks back home" what Nigeria looks like.

P.S. I would guess that the figures on the cup are intended to be bogatyri -- that is, semi-legendary, larger-than-life knights of medieval Russian folklore. Check out the picture at the wikipedia article and compare it to the guys on your cup! Needless to say, there were never any bogatyri in Vladivostok (which, as I said, was Chinese-dominated until the second half of the 19th century).

So this is just a little bit like putting Robin Hood and his Merry Men on a souvenir cup from Canada -- yes, Canada was settled by English people, and Robin Hood himself was English. But Mr. Hood supposedly lived during the reign of Richard the Lionhearted, who died almost 300 years before Columbus reached the Americas! Historically, Vladivostok had as much to do with the bogatyri as Canada had to do with Robin Hood (namely, nothing). But souvenirs like this are about national pride and cultural symbolism, not about historic accuracy.