Pidgins—their development, disappearance, or subsequent creolisation—are a fascinating phenomenon in the parts of the world that experienced long-term foreign intrusion and its consequences, one of which was contact between two or more linguistic groups, usually of unequal power. Colonisers did not learn the language of the colonised, who often were perceived as inferior, while the colonised people did not or could not master a foreign language in their own country. In most cases, pidgins were a telltale sign of colonialism. Linguists classify these contact languages, which have no native speakers, into major groups named after the dominant base, such as English-, Portuguese-, Spanish-, Dutch-, French-, or Russian-, as well as African-, Asian-, and Austronesian-based.

The Zelenyi [Green] Bazaar is like a self-contained village, where each house is a small shop. The Chinese traded and lived here. They represented ninety percent [of the bazaar population]; the rest of the territory was inhabited by the poorer Russian emigrants, who were only able to buy small, cheap houses and only lived in these, without trading in them. At the other ends of the city these people were referred to as the Zelenobazarskie [the people from Zelenyi Bazaar], which was not exactly a compliment. The small house-shops were closely packed together—God forbid a fire was to break out—when this happened, the flames were carried from house to house with unbelievable speed and destroyed the wooden constructions. And when it had rained, the ground was thick with mud. The bazaar itself was abundant with all possible products, with meat and fish as well as many kinds of textiles. There were two or three photographic studios and even several small tailors. The bazaar was generally seen as the place where it was practical to have a look at all possible goods.

Much of Harbin's early history revolved around struggles over the city's identity and also for control of the city's colonial legacy. The city's Russian past, in particular, has existed uneasily alongside its development as a Chinese city, and nearly a century after Russian control over the city ended, the competition over Harbin's identity continues to evolve. After many decades of denying and dismissing Harbin's colonial past, local, regional, and national Chinese governments are now exploiting that past as an asset for the city's economic development. Building on trends that first emerged in the 1990s, Harbin's Chinese rulers are now turning to the city's non-Chinese past as a means of competing in a global cultural and economic environment. More than attracting foreigners focused on nostalgia, however, Harbin seems eager to present itself as example of the “occidental” exotic for Chinese domestic tourists.

Among epidemic diseases, plague is particularly charged with historical memory and ominous cultural connotations. In many parts of the world, plague's seemingly mysterious origins, its gruesome ways of spreading, and its powers of devastation have raised it to a symbol of evil. In several languages, the word “plague” itself has become synonymous with scourge and universal disaster over the centuries. However, plague is not only a disease from the remote past; it also exemplifies the biological globalisation of modern times, highlighting at once socio-biological phenomena, global connectedness, and other dimensions of modernity. In particular, outbreaks of the so-called third plague pandemic from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century made the disease an oppressive reality in many regions of the world.