[Tanz]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone who as either been to Harbin, or is well versed with the city, answer a few questions for me? I am researching what the city was like during the Japanese occupation of the puppet state of Manchukuo but am running dry for sources. One claim to fame is that the infamous Unit 731 was located near the outskirts of the city.

Apparently, there was a large concentration of White Russians who had fled the Soviet Union, situated there to. Does anyone know of any other ethnic groups, aside from the Manchus and Chinese?

Also, despite that the heavy Russian influence, Harbin seems to have always housed more Chinese than Russians. Did the Chinese begin to take over the city with their own culture; i.e. were Buddhist and Taoist temples bulit alongside Orthodox Churches, and was Chinese architecture constructed next to its Russian counterparts?

Were there any famous monuments or attractions that existed during the Manchukuo regime that's no longer there today, perhaps destroyed by the Cultural Revolution?

Thanks in advance for any information.

[tianzhuwoye]

Hey there Tanz,

First up, I haven't heard much about the Japanese occupation period, but as far as I can tell outside of the Ahn Jung-geun story (not known at all by the average Harbin resident) and 731 (which being a secret operation is well outside of the city) there wasn't much of a mark visible today left here in Harbin, and there are no other major stories about what occurred in the city during that time. The ‘new’ train station is Japanese, and looks a great deal like Seoul Station, built about the same time, but this isn’t common knowledge and the cityscape doesn't have the same associations with Japanese involvement that you find closer to Japanese interests in China proper like you have in Changchun, etc. Architecturally and historically, the roots of the city are Russian. The fact that this was a Russian city plus Russia’s relatively recent loss to imperial Japan may explain why so little of what happened here during the Manchukuo era ended up in the PRC’s official narrative of anti-Japanese aggression. Otherwise, we would have heard about it.

The city started up as a minor 'Manchu' settlement on the Sunggari river, hence the name, but became legitimately urban once the Russians moved in and again, any architecture of historical significance around here is Russian. There are churches, orthodox crosses and onion domes all over, but none of the 'classically Chinese' architecture you would find in cities historically linked with the central plains. Harbin has a seriously large buddhist temple, the Jile Si, but it was only constructed in the 1920's. There are stories about how it was built specifically to counter some violations of fengshui or chineseness or whatever brought about by the placement of this or that orthodox church, but given the distance between these buildings those tales are most likely false.

As for demographics, the non-tourist Russian presence is by now just about non-existent. People claiming Manchu ancestry are here and there but there's no Manchu cultural aspect associated with the city. Harbin has a huge number of Hui (our mosques are done in the ‘authentic’ style, rare in the PRC where most mosques are extremely Chinese-influenced) and a strong enough Korean presence to warrant Korean-language newspapers and several Korean middle and high schools (one in the building that used to be the main synagogue, which is still basically intact with stars of David in all the windows) as per the PRC's unity through segregation educational policies. Wouldn't know the specifics on when Han arrivals to the city came to outnumber the Russians but the assumption is the balance tipped quickly enough. The city is bisected by a (Russian) rail line, which to this day makes traffic a bear, and before the Russians were kicked out for good the east, “inside” side of the tracks (道里区, the Daoli district) was the Russian section and the northwest “outside” side (道外, Daowai) was mostly Chinese. Photographs from the pre-Japan period tended to be taken in Daoli, so you don’t see many Chinese people. Like all of the areas outside historical central plain political influence ‘added’ by the Qing, large-scale Han settlement is relatively new in the northeast. Very few Chinese families have been in Harbin or the vicinity for more than 3-4 generations.

Harbin wasn’t politically ‘Chinese’ in any decently stable sense until after World War Two, and at that point Chinese culture was Maoism. So again, no major temples or palaces and so on were around long enough for it to be a big deal if they were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, with the primary victims being a lot of churches and other Russian-built structures. Today the Chinese structures built alongside Russian buildings are all massive department stores and shopping centers.

[wushijiao]

That was an accurate right up by tianzhuwoye.

When I first came ot China, I had the image that up in Harbin there would be tons of Russians and Russian buildings everywhere. I had previously studied Russian for four years, so I had made a plan of possibly going up there to learn Chinese and Russian at the same time.

However, when I went up there to see the ice sculpture festival in January, I really couldn't see any Russians anywhere. Some beautiful Russian architecture remains, but it should be noted that it comprises just a small proportion of the overall number of buildings, which are pan-Communist/Stalinist in nature. Like most Mainland citites, some of the city's heritage might have become a victim to modern, short-sighted, urban planning.

Anyway, I'd strongly recommend that if you are interested in Harbin, you should go up there for either the delicious beer festival in the summer or the ice sculpture festival in the winter! It's one of my favorite cities in the Mainland!

[karewa]

Haha yeah...the beer there is actually cheaper than Coke !!!
I ate alot of fried insects with rice there....