Sakhalin - where's that again? Quiz

Answer: Manchu

"Sahaliyan" means black in Manchu. Sakhalin Island makes it closest approach to the Asian mainland near the mouth of the Amur River, which the Manchurians called "Sahaliyan Ula" or Black River. Something got lost in translation and the name was mistakenly applied to the island as well.

The Yakuts live in north-central Siberia and their language is distantly related to Turkish. That's another interesting story, but with no special connection to Sakhalin.

Answer: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk means "South Sakhalin" in Russian. Toyohara is the old Japanese name for the same city. Okha is a town near the north tip of Sakhalin. "Petropavlovsk-Sakhalinski" doesn't exist: I made up the name by combining Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinski, a small but perfectly real city in central Sakhalin, with Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski, a major Russian city that's located even further east, on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Answer: La Perouse Strait

What is that French name doing way over here!? Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de la Perouse was one of the first Europeans to see Sakhalin (1787). La Perouse tried but failed to demonstrate the existence of the Tatar Strait - which separates Sakhalin from the Asian mainland - by sailing through it from the Sea of Japan into the Sea of Okhotsk.

The Tsugaru Strait lies between Hokkaido and Honshu, Japan's main island. There is no "Aniva Strait", but the large indentation in Sakhalin's southern coastline is called Aniva Bay.

Answer: Kurile Islands

According to one version, the Kurile Islands - part of the Japanese Empire until WWII - are named for their many volcanoes: "kurit" means "to smoke" in Russian. Novaya Zemlya (or "new land") is the name of two much larger Arctic islands to the north of European Russia. The Commander Islands - or Komandorskiye Ostrova in Russian - are located east of the Kamchatka Peninsula, not far from Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Wrangel Island is another Russian Arctic possession, in this case to the north-west of Alaska.

Even though Russia is a huge country, its oblasts are more like British counties than American states. They handle local administration, but policy is made in Moscow - and the Russians have a saying: "Moscow is far away". It doesn't get much further away than on Sakhalin!

Answer: Koreans

Most Sakhaliners today are Russian, but according to the 2002 census Koreans make up 5.5 per cent of the population. Korea was another Japanese colony and people from there were brought in to do forced labour in the island coal mines. Japanese residents of Karafuto - their name for Sakhalin - were repatriated after the war.

Neither Chinese nor Mongolians have ever been resident on Sakhalin in large numbers, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union it became common to see visitors from China setting up stalls in the markets.

Answer: Chukchi

The Nivkhs (around 5000 survive today) are native to Sakhalin and the Amur River estuary. The Oroks, who have all but disappeared, are natives of Sakhalin's far north. The Ainu, of course, are the native population of Japan's Hokkaido island, but their traditional territory also included southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands; the Japanese name for Sakhalin comes from an Ainu expression meaning "god of the mouth of the water land".

The Chukchi are the native people of Russia's easternmost tip; before the Soviet Union "collectivized" them, their way of life in many ways resembled the traditional lifestyle of North American Eskimos (Yupik and Inuit).

Answer: Mount Lopatin

It's 1609 metres (5279 feet) high. Mount Ichara is the second highest, at 1481m (4860 ft). Pik Chekhova is a much smaller elevation not far from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk named for the famous Russian writer Anton Chekhov, who visited the island in 1890 (like much of Siberia, it was used as a penal colony and he was curious about the living conditions there). Klyuchevskaya Sopka is a 4750m (15,584 ft) volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula, which, like Sakhalin, forms part of the Pacific Ocean's "Ring of Fire".

Answer: 25 km (16 miles)

Viewed from the right angle, Sakhalin's outline looks very much like a dehydrated fish! Below the "waist" the mountain ranges branch out to embrace what locals call the "Solnechnaya Dolina" or Sunshine Valley, where Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is located.

Answer: No - the surrounding ocean makes it cloudy

Even Sakhalin's northernmost tip is only 54 degrees from the equator, which puts it well below the Arctic Circle. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, at 47 degrees latitude, is further south than Seattle or Paris. In any case, a polar night in winter is always balanced by a polar day in summer!

At least Sakhalin's sunniest days usually come in winter - that's according to my wife who grew up there - which must make the chilly season a little cheerier! Skiing, anyone?

Answer: oil and gas

Control of the Sakhalin I and Sakhalin II undersea drilling projects passed to Russia's Gazprom in 2007 after a controversy over their environmental impact... but that's a long story. Sakhalin does have a lot that's worth saving, though, including the only known feeding ground of the Western Pacific Grey Whale. The other three industries are also important and were the backbone of the island's economy up until the 1990's.

Actually, life on Sakhalin isn't dreary at all: not with all those gorgeous mountains and salmon streams and beaches that are warm enough to swim at in the summertime. Find out more about Russia's mega-island in the Pacific!

http://www.sakhalin.ru/Engl/