The article is devoted to the main areas of establishing Russian-Chinese cultural ties in the North-East of China in the first half of the 20th century. It overs the results of field studies. In the considered period, two cultural worlds — Chinese and Russian ones — actively interacted, demonstrating the unique outlook, types of thinking and mental features. Contacts in the region had their peculiarities: short-term ones did not lead to cultural synthesis as the result of the interaction process. Russian culture was a local phenomenon in China, specific to a large geographical region — Manchuria. When one culture invades another, the penetrating power of each component is directly opposite to its social value; an alien culture perceives the economic element with the greatest readiness, then comes politics, the cultural element is in last place. Considering the ways of ethnocultural interaction between the Russian and Chinese peoples revealed the diffusion of separate elements and complexes of cultures. The Russian stay in the North-East of China significantly impacted the industrial, industrial, financial and economic spheres of life.