Sixty-Four Villages East of the Heilongjiang River

Sixty-Four Villages East of the River
The Sixty-Four Villages East of the River are opposite of Heihe, China and Blagoveshchensk, Russia, in the red area next to the rightward shaded area on the map.
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	江东六十四屯
Traditional Chinese	江東六十四屯
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Jiāngdōng Liùshísì Tún
Russian name
Russian	Шестьдесят четыре деревни к востоку от реки Амур or Зазейский район

Coordinates: 50°06′N 127°41′E / 50.100°N 127.683°E / 50.100; 127.683

The Sixty-Four Villages East of the River were a group of Manchu-inhabited villages located on the left (north) bank of the Amur River (or 黑龙江, Hēilóng Jiāng, lit. "Black Dragon River") opposite to Heihe, and on the east bank of Zeya River opposite to Blagoveshchensk. Their area totalled 3,600 square kilometres (1,400 sq mi).

Among Russian historians, the district occupied by the villages is sometimes referred as Zazeysky rayon (the "Trans-Zeya District" or "The district beyond the Zeya"), because it was separated by the Zeya from the regional capital, Blagoveshchensk.

In the summer of 1857, the Russian Empire offered monetary compensation to China's Qing dynasty government if they would remove the Manchu residents from the area; however, their offer was rebuffed. The following year, in the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, the Qing ceded the north bank of the Amur to Russia. However, Qing subjects residing north of the Amur River were permitted to "retain their domiciles in perpetuity under the authority of the Manchu government".

The earliest known Russian estimate (1859) gives the population of Qing subjects in the "Trans-Zeya District" as 3,000, without breakdown by ethnicity; the next one (1870) gives it as 10,646, including 5,400 (Han) Chinese, 4,500 Manchus and 1,000 Daurs. The estimates published between the late 1870s and early 1890s varied between 12,000 and 16,000, peaking in 1894, at 16,102 (including 9,119 Han Chinese, 5,783 Manchus, and 1,200 Daurs). After that, reported numbers went down (7,000 to 7,500 residents reported each year from 1895 to 1899); by that time, however, the Trans-Zeya villagers constituted only a minority of the Chinese present in the region. For example, besides the Trans-Zeya villagers, in 1898 statistics reported 12,199 Chinese otkhodniki (migrant workers) and 5,400 Chinese miners in the Amur Oblast as it existed at the time, as well as 4,008 Chinese urban residents in Blagoveshchensk and probably elsewhere.