In 1858 and 1860, Imperial Russia acquired large expanses of territory, north of the Amur River and east of the Ussuri River, stretching to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan, including Sakhalin Island. New Russian towns, settlements, and administrative regions were established. A new border between Imperial Russia and the Qing Empire allowed considerable flexibility in bi-lateral trade, migration and settlement. Chinese migrants became an integral part of the new border towns of the Russian Far East (RFE). Chinese farmers, railway workers and traders were a major economic driving force in the RFE, but their contribution to the economic development of the Russian towns was downplayed by xenophobic sentiments of the Tsarist officials towards the Asian population, and by later official historiography in Russia and the Soviet Union. This talk details the challenges of writing a social history of Chinese migrants in the border towns of Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok.