A Pictorial History of Changchun 1898–1962

A Pictorial History of Changchun, 1898–1962 

Yishi Liu, Tsinghua University 

Xinying Wang, Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Relics, Changchun City 

Close to the Yitong River, which runs toward Sungari, the place that we know today as 

Changchun lies in the central plateau of Northeast China (dongbei, also known in the West as 

Manchuria), between 43.05 and 45.15 northern latitude and 124.18 and 127.02 eastern longitude. 

Under the Qing (1644–1911), Changchun lay within the borders of Mongolian princely estates 

that had, until the late eighteenth century, banned Han Chinese migration into Manchuria. In 

response to the presence of a growing number of Han peasants, the Qing court approved in 1800 

(the fifth year of the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor) the establishment of a local administrative 

unit, the Changchun ting, and assigned to it a magistrate who held the rank of a subprefect. 

The year 1800 is thus commonly viewed as the date of the establishment of Changchun, 

but Changchun has experienced multiple rounds of administrative reconstitutions since that time, 

including multiple name changes: 

• Before 1889, it was known as the subprefecture of Changchun (Changchun ting). 

• After 1889 (the fifteenth year under the reign of the Guangxu Emperor), it was 

elevated to a prefecture (Changchun fu) until the fall of the Qing in 1911. 

• Between 1912 and 1932, under the Republic of China (1911–1949), it came to be 

known as Changchun County (Changchun xian). 

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 

E-Journal No. 5 (December 2012) • (http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-5)

Liu and Wang 191 

• Between 1932 and 1945, under the Japanese-controlled Manchukuo, it was renamed 

Xinjing, or “new capital,” and it functioned as the capital of Manchukuo. 

• With the fall of the Manchukuo in 1945, it again came to be known, until 1948, as 

Changchun. It fell under the transitional regimes of the Soviet Army and the 

Kuomintang (KMT). 

• Between 1948 (when the People’s Liberation Army took the city) and 1955, it was 

named a “special municipality” (Changchun tibie shi) and placed directly under the 

Administrative Committee of the Northeast. 

• In 1955 it came to be known as Changchun, as it is still called today. 

In the process of urbanization and modernization, Changchun’s political status and functions 

have altered dramatically, as explicitly reflected in its urban form and the physical construction 

undertaken during each phase to match these alterations. Changchun thus provides a unique case 

for studying the relationship between Chinese urbanism and the history of China’s politics in the 

twentieth century, as it was planned mostly by the Japanese and then appropriated for different 

political ends in the People’s Republic of China since 1949. 

This essay periodizes Changchun’s urban history from 1800 to the 1950s according to its 

major city functions in order to contextualize coauthor Xinying Wang’s remarkable personal 

collection of visual materials presented in the accompanying Cross-Currents photo essay and, in 

turn, to contribute to a better understanding of Changchun’s urban transformation between the 

turn of the twentieth century and the early years of Maoism. 1 In each phase of Changchun’s 

urban development, modernity found different forms in the construction of the city, revealing 

that modernity is neither constant nor secluded from the larger political and cultural milieu. 

Influenced by both indigenous and foreign factors, modernity is constantly reinvented to fit into 

new contexts and to meet new needs. 

A Frontier Garrison (1800–1898) 

Twenty-five years after the establishment of the subprefecture of Changchun in 

1800, the seat of the administrative office was moved, because of frequent flooding, to a place 




called Kuanchengzi (“broad-walled town”) on the north bank of the Yitong River. Kuanchengzi 

was also called Kuanjie (“broad street”) or Kuanzhuang (“broad village”) due to the shape of its 

walls, which were made by stamping earth between board frames in 1865 (the fourth year of 

Tongzhi’s reign) to protect the place against bandits. In 1897, eight years after Changchun was 

elevated to a prefecture, the humbly built walls were heightened and reinforced with bricks, the 

city was girded by deepened moats, and tiles were applied to all gate towers. Because 

Changchun had established its status as a trading center for soybeans from central Manchuria — 

so much so that some nicknamed it the “Bean Capital” (Sewell 2004)—the military function of 

the city as a frontier garrison was effectively enhanced against bandits prevalent in Manchuria at 

the time (see photos 1 and 2 in the accompanying photo essay). 2 

Not unlike medieval cities in Europe, the old city of Changchun developed 

organically; its urban plan and streets were not designed in advance but emerged as the result of 

spontaneous development. The old city was divided by two main streets running from north to 

south (nan dajie and bei dajie) and included fourteen smaller streets (figure 1). Buildings of 

similar functions, such as administrative offices, prisons, temples, and shops, were clustered in 

different parts of the city, while houses were scattered throughout the city (photos 3 and 4). 

Figure 1. Sketch map of old Changchun in the 1880s. 3 




A Collaged Railway Junction (1898–1932) 

Along with its modernization and urbanization during the late nineteenth century, 

Changchun underwent a qualitative change from garrison to railway city, while its city functions 

became diversified. Being at the nexus of political and economic conflicts among Chinese, 

Russians, and Japanese, the city of Changchun before 1932 was a collage of territories divided 

according to ethnic sovereignty: the Russian railway town at Changchun, the Japanese South 

Manchuria Railway settlement, the Chinese commercial district, and the old walled city. 

Russian Railway Settlement 

The Sino-Russian Secret Treaty signed in 1896 allowed Russia to obtain personnel, and 

Russian police received extraterritorial jurisdiction along the yet-to-be-built Chinese Eastern 

Railway (CER) across Manchuria. The Russians then began construction of a settlement for 

railway employees, and a small Russian town, a generally north-to-south rectangle, was built up 

around 1900 to the north of walled Changchun (figure 2). 

By the turn of the twentieth century, the CER had set up more than thirty settlements 

categorized into three classes along the railway. Changchun settlement (called Kuanchengzi by 

Russians, while the same name also referred to the old walled city far to the south until the early 

Republic) belonged to the second class of settlements, indicating that Changchun was at the time 

no more than an ordinary freight station, unlike Harbin, the headquarters of the CER, or Dalian, 

the port connecting the railway to the sea (figure 3). No matter how minor the settlement was, a 

number of modern facilities were first introduced to Changchun at this time, including a railway 

plaza, post office, water supply piping system, and industrial buildings. 

Just as the Russians introduced modern planning to Manchuria, the first modern 

architecture in Changchun appeared in the Russian settlement. Soybean and grain processing 

were established industries in Changchun, and the Russians helped build its first modern flour 

factories (photo 5). The oldest and highest existing building in Changchun is a five-story factory 




Figure 2. Map of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria, 1903. Courtesy of the Department 

of Cultural Preservation in Changchun. 

Figure 3. Plan of the Russian Kuanchengzi Settlement, 1935. 




that produced flour. Red bricks were introduced and used widely in factory buildings during this 

period, in contrast to the Chinese black bricks. 

The most elaborate buildings were those related to the railway. The railway station was a 

modest single-story building, categorized as a fourth-class station along the CER (photos 6 and 

7). It was far less impressive, for example, than its Japanese counterpart built one decade later. In 

a recent survey of CER buildings, similar buildings were found elsewhere along the railway, 

indicating that standard design methods were applied to the construction of the CER and related 

buildings, such as railway stations, bridges and tunnels, locomotive warehouses, employee 

houses, barracks, and water towers. 

The CER employee club of 1903 is the most striking structure that still stands in what 

was the Russian settlement, though two of its turrets have been destroyed. Its design incorporates 

vernacular Russian elements such as columns and windows. In the aftermath of the Boxer 

Uprising in 1900, Russia sent more troops to Changchun and built barracks as well as mansions 

for officers, some of which survive to this day (photo 8). The Russians introduced fireplaces and 

used simply constructed insulated walls in their houses, practices common in Siberia. 

Because Russia was soon defeated in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, the Russian 

settlement in Changchun did not fully develop; the total built area was less than one square 

kilometer. The Soviet government sold out the northern part of the CER to Manchukuo in 1935, 

and the Russian station was shut down in 1936. The Russian settlement fell into decay, and the 

station was finally demolished in 1958. 

Japanese Railway Settlement 

In the wake of its victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, Japan gained 

control over the southern half of the railway, and Changchun became the dividing point between 

the two halves of the line. The Japanese-led process of modernization in Manchuria fell chiefly 

to the South Manchurian Railway Company (SMR, or Mantetsu), a quasi-official corporation 




modeled on the British East India Company, which took charge of modernizing programs and 

fostered the growth of a modern society in Manchuria. 4 

Having abandoned the existing Russian railway station and settlement, the Japanese built 

their own railway settlement in Changchun (figure 4). Under the supervision of Goto Shimpei, 

the first director of the Japanese SMR, the Japanese produced a plan based on Western 

technologies boasting efficiency and rationality, both emblems of progress. 

Figure 4. Plan of Mantetsu’s settlement in Changchun, 1908. 

Principles of zoning appeared in the Japanese project, and the settlement was divided into 

five major parts in which residences occupied 15 percent of all land; commerce, 33 percent; 

grain warehouses, 31 percent; entertainment, 9 percent; and public and military facilities, 12 

percent. Eight east-to-west streets and ten north-to-south streets formed the settlement’s basic 

grid of twelve hundred blocks. Two diagonal streets radiated from the railway station and 

converged with the grid at two circular plazas, where the Japanese erected buildings with 




impressive facades. A high percentage of space was reserved for roads. At a time when 

automobiles were rare, Goto’s foresight of building a city for vehicles embraced modern 

technology and modernity. The influence of both the City Beautiful movement 5 and American 

railway town planning, which later also became the planning principles for Manchukuo’s capital, 

was obvious in the making of the Japanese settlement in Changchun (Buck 2000). 

In order to supply water to residences and industry, a 30-meter water tower was built out of steel 

and concrete in 1912. As the Japanese settlement expanded in the 1920s and 1930s, another 

38.15-meter water tower was built in 1933 (photo 9). The SMR also vigorously developed 

electricity along the railway; Changchun’s first power plant was built in 1909 and began 

operation the following year (photo 10). 

Since the late Meiji, the variety of building styles in Changchun has been striking, as has 

the noteworthy absence of Japanese elements in the Japanese settlement, except for Shinto 

shrines and statues (photo 11). Using both vernacular and imported building materials, a 

profusion of styles flourished: baroque, neoclassical, gothic revival, Tudor, secessionist, arts and 

crafts, art nouveau, and ingenious inventions, including the imperial crown that used large 

sloping roofs on the top of a functional plan. These architectural developments in the Japanese 

home islands were introduced to Manchuria after Japanese influence grew in that region. The 

SMR operated its colonial projects in Manchuria in a consciously modern fashion, expressing a 

Japanese colonial modernity that had much in common with other colonial powers. By providing 

the appropriate physical infrastructure—including hospitals, schools, libraries, commercial and 

financial buildings, and auditoriums—to the new section of Changchun, the Japanese were 

earnest to demonstrate their ability to run a modern city as effectively as the Western powers 

(photos 12 and 13). 

The Japanese erected a Renaissance-style concrete station in 1913 that was much larger 

than its Russian counterpart (photo 14). The neoclassical Mantetsu regional office near the 

station plaza was a massive, symmetrical, three-story structure, while the Yamato Hotel, 




Changchun’s preeminent hotel, located at the other side of the plaza, had a sleek art nouveau– 

style facade (photo 15). Sitting across from the train station on either side of Changchun 

Boulevard, these grand edifices greeted visitors when they first arrived in Changchun. 6 Along the 

boulevard were the library, police station, and a two-story post office constructed of stone and 

reminiscent of the European baroque (photo 16). 

The new Yamato Hotel demonstrated that the Japanese were capable of constructing in 

any style the Russians could. Art nouveau did not captivate Japanese architects as it did many 

Europeans. The Japanese use of this style for Changchun’s Yamato Hotel did not result from any 

cultural rebelliousness; instead, it reflected a desire to demonstrate technical competency in a 

powerful new style. Along with contemporary technologies and organizations, the application of 

diverse architectural styles also presented Japanese society as being as culturally and technically 

sophisticated as any other power. Because European architects at the turn of the century viewed 

the eclectic art nouveau style as representing modernity, Japanese designers felt the need to 

adopt it as well. 

Chinese Commercial District 

The SMR town was not the only place in which new built environments were appearing. 

Between the SMR’s new towns and the extant Chinese cities, new commercial districts appeared. 

(figure 5). In these commercial districts could be found Chinese creations of the modern, some 

inspired by Japanese creations and some competing with Japanese concerns. 

During the 1920s, the rising tide of Chinese nationalism under the warlord regime of 

Zhang Zuoling and Zhang Xueliang clashed violently with Japan (Mitter 2000). As a result of a 

chain of conflicts, the Japanese Guandong Army (also known as Kwantung Army) occupied all 

of Manchuria in 1931 in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident (also known as the “9/18 

Incident”) and established the puppet state of Manchukuo the following year. 




In the face of Japanese encroachment, the Chinese government began to build a 

commercial district (shangbudi) in Changchun, a strategy it had used in many cities before. 7 

Despite the economic motivations for developing a Chinese commercial district, the primary 

concern was to antagonize Japanese economic and territorial expansion in Changchun. 

Figure 5. Map of Changchun’s commercial district in the 1930s. 

Xu Shichang, a viceroy of three Northeast provinces who later became the president of 

the Republic of China, appointed Yan Shiqing, a nationalist local official, as the intendant 

(jichang daoyin) to supervise Changchun’s Chinese commercial district. Yan built his 

administrative office, as well as a police station and commerce office, on the south edge of the 

Japanese settlement in order to prevent further Japanese expansion (photo 17). The main hall of 

the administrative complex was built in 1909 in the so-called veranda style. Fitting the hot and 




humid climate in South China, veranda-style buildings were widely seen in treaty ports as 

combined dwellings and offices for Europeans. Though the veranda does not suit the harsh 

winter in Manchuria, the main hall was surrounded by a masonry veranda on all sides measuring 

2.4 meters in depth (Chen 2003, 501). The complex included offices and houses that composed a 

series of courtyard-like traditional Chinese yamen (administrative offices). Later, the compound 

was used by the last emperor of China, Puyi, for his inaugural ceremony as chief executive in 

1934. It then served as Puyi’s temporary palace and house the State Council of Manchukuo and 

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other functions. Considering the proximity of this office 

to the neighboring Japanese railway settlement, the display of modernity indicates that a clear 

resolution to resist Japanese incursion prevailed over practical concerns. 

Other modern buildings in the newly developed district included a Russian consulate 

built in 1907 that survives today (photo 18), a Japanese consulate (1912) demolished in the 

1980s, and several light industrial plants. For example, Jin Yufu (1887–1962), a renowned 

scholar of Manchurian history and historiography, headed a small pulp factory in this area in the 

1920s (Huiwang Changchun Committee 1998). 8 Although the Japanese settlement was the most 

dynamic part of Changchun, the population of the old city and the new Chinese-run district far 

outnumbered the Japanese population (photo 19). 9 

Old Walled City 

As the railway was built across Manchuria, the Russians and Japanese left their imprint 

on the construction of urban Changchun, not only in the newly built sections of the city but also 

in the old walled city. The walled city featured modern construction materials and technologies, 

as well as new architectural styles and forms. The Russo-Chinese Bank built in 1899 was the 

first Western-style building that changed the landscape of the old walled city (photo 20). Chinese 

financial buildings like the branch office of Jilin’s Yongheng Bank also appeared (photo 21). 




During the 1920s and 1930s, various cultural and religious buildings were built or rebuilt 

in styles that referred to different traditional forms and motifs. The Guandi Temple (photo 22) 

and Confucius Temple (photo 23) were rebuilt in 1922 and 1924 respectively, and an Islamic 

mosque was renovated around the same time (photo 24). In 1932, a Catholic cathedral, the first 

gothic building in Changchun, was built (photo 25). 

Because Changchun was fragmented spatially, ethnically, and administratively into four 

separate sectors before 1931, the architectural plurality of the city provided a visual commentary 

on the complexity of power relations in the city. The pattern of competition and fragmentation 

seen in Changchun mirrors similar situations found in many Chinese port cities, but what made 

Changchun distinct was its integral planning and massive construction as a colonial capital by 

the Japanese. 

Whether the architects and planners were Japanese, Chinese, or Russian, the approach to 

the modern was an unmistakably Westernizing program. While various styles and materials of 

architecture that embodied Western modernity abounded in the city and competed with one 

another, no hint of Chinese (or East Asian) element showed in the much-boasted images of 

Changchun’s modernization at the time. In this way, the plurality of Changchun before 1931 

differed from that of the later colonial capital dominated by traditional elements widely seen in 

East Asian countries. 

A Capital City (1932–1945) 

Following Japan’s military occupation of the whole of Manchuria in 1931 and the 

establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo the following year, Changchun was made into 

the capital city of the colonial state and renamed Xinjing (“new capital”). Manchukuo’s 

modernity was evident in this new capital, an ambitious project based on the railway town and 

Chinese city at Changchun. 




After Changchun was made the capital of Manchukuo, it was redesigned to reflect the 

vision, power, and non-Western modernity of the Japanese-controlled state. All of the urban 

sectors before 1932—the Russian railway town, the Japanese railway settlement, the Chinese 

commercial district, and the old walled city—were incorporated into a new, grandiose plan. 

Sano Riki (also known as Sano Toshikata), a prominent Japanese architect and professor 

at the Imperial University of Tokyo, was appointed to advise the Guandong Army in the 

principles of planning and architecture. The design was characterized by a geometrical 

composition and a monumental perspective (figures 6 and 7, photos 26 and 27). The most 

important and decisive elements of the urban structure included Puyi’s palace and Manchukuo’s 

governmental quarter, with the railway station and wide avenues radiating outward. The street 

layout of the old town, now incorporated into the new city, was maintained with a major street 

leading toward the curvilinear river. The less developed area on the east side of the Yitong River, 

located downwind from the city, separated light industry factories (mainly flour processors) from 

the city center (Mantetsu keizai chosakai 1935). 

As such, the new capital was planned to extend over an area of 100 square kilometers 

(including the 21 square kilometers of the built area before 1931) and to contain a population of 

three hundred thousand. Japanese urban planners were well prepared to draw on Western 

contemporary planning theories and to put them to work in the early 1930s, reflecting Japanese 

conceptions of the modern city. Building Changchun as a colonial capital was an aggregation of 

experiments in regional planning based on imported concepts. 10 After the Sino-Japanese War 

escalated in 1937, and especially after Pacific War broke out in 1941, however, war exigencies 

resulted in diminished resources for the construction of the capital. 




Figure 6. Plan of the new capital, 1933. 

imperial palace, 1934. 

Figure 7. Planning scheme for the 

Various urban construction projects in Xinjing were initiated under the banner of 

Wangdaoism (the “way of the king,” or the “kingly way”), the specific form of pan-Asianism in 

Manchukuo. Pan-Asianism had emerged as an ideology incorporating Japan’s role as both victim 

and victimizer in the imperialist game, and the ideology permitted the Japanese the conceit that it 

was obliged to lead the Asian nations against the West in a “holy war.” 11 

In addition to 

promoting Asian unity to overcome Western colonialism and materialism, the Japanese 

highlighted the cultural and racial similarities between Manchukuo and Japan, and Japanese pan- 

Asianism emphasized cultural independence and the revival of indigenous tradition and ethics. In 

this vein, the content of a new modern arose, which valued frugality and diligence, filial piety 

(xiao), loyalty to the monarch (zhong), the chastity of widowed women (jie), and so on. It is in 

this context that Japanese architects in Manchukuo looked back into Eastern traditions for 

inspiration, and a specific architectural form in Xinjing emerged. 




In January 1933, the first Five-Year Plan (FYP) of capital construction proposed by the 

Capital Construction Bureau (CCB) was approved, and construction started immediately on a 

group of buildings for the central government (photos 28–30). Despite a strong central state that 

unified the administration and carried out construction schemes quickly, the urban landscape was 

still characterized by a plurality of architectural styles. A modified imperial crown style known 

as the “developing Asia style” appeared in the capital and was widely used in Manchukuo’s 

institutional buildings, especially along Shuntian Street, while Japanese revival, Frank Lloyd 

Wright’s prairie style, neoclassicism, expressionism, and modernism all enjoyed a strong 

presence in Xinjing (see photos 31–34 for examples). 

The colonial government also completed several infrastructure projects to match the 

needs of a large city. The Nanling Water Treatment Works was built in 1935 and expanded in 

1942 (photo 35). Jingyuetan (Crystal Moon Reservoir), built in 1935 and located on the city’s 

outskirts, was the capital’s largest artificial lake. It supplied Nanling Water Treatment Works and 

was also one of the most popular tourist attractions for Japanese in Changchun (photo 36). 

The architectural diversity was comparable to that of the previous decade, but it was the 

ambiguous and self-contradictory nature of Japanese colonial ideology in Manchukuo, rather 

than a fragmented administration, that prescribed architectural plurality in Changchun during this 

period. Unlike previous construction, which boasted equality with the West, the new and 

specifically modern buildings in the capital represented superiority over the West. The 

appropriation of cultural and ethnical identities in the newly built capital of Changchun was 

meant to rebuff and tame Chinese nationalism in Manchukuo while exhibiting a positive and 

benign image of the colonizer, who would bring civilization and modernity to all ethnic 

communities there. 




A Transitional Period (1945–1952) 

Unlike Tokyo, Changchun did not suffer from formidable air bombardment until the later 

part of the Pacific war. The Soviet Union joined the war in the Far East on August 8, 1945, 

bombarding the capital of the puppet state of Manchukuo the next day. On August 15, 1945, the 

Japanese emperor read the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, announcing that the 

Japanese government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded the unconditional 

surrender of the Japanese military. Two days later, Puyi, Manchukuo’s emperor, who had fled 

with his family and a group of officials outside Changchun, announced the Imperial Rescript of 

Abdication in a small frontier city on the border of Manchukuo and Korea. 12 

The Soviet Red Army entered Xinjing in late August 1945 and immediately set up a 

military government in the city. The first measure taken by the Soviet army was to change the 

name of the city from Xinjing back to Changchun, and it tried every possible means to eradicate 

Japanese colonial influence. Datong Street and Datong Plaza were renamed Stalin Street and 

Stalin Plaza, respectively. Many major colonial-era institutional buildings were occupied by the 

Soviet Army; for example, the headquarters of the Guandong Army was used as the headquarters 

of the Soviet Army in Manchuria headed by Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky. 

The military government also decided to build a new monument in Changchun’s center, 

Stalin Plaza, in order to glorify the Soviet military forces and memorialize those who had died in 

battle against the Japanese. This site, full of political and cultural significance, had formerly 

contained temporary buildings for governmental ceremonies and celebrations. The Russians 

consciously chose this site to set up their monument in order to symbolically supersede their 

former foe. 

Erecting monuments was a common practice in the aftermath of the Soviet victory in 

World War II. In Changchun, a Soviet bomber model made of cast iron, with its head facing 

north (the direction of the railway station), was erected on top of a tower made of granite. The 

north side of the tower body was carved with Chinese and Russian inscriptions that glorified 




Soviet military martyrs and included their names, ranks, and a Soviet insignia. The monument, 

the victorious army’s first construction project at the center of the city, introduced the style of 

socialist realism, which was replicated in later socialist construction in Changchun (photo 37). 13 

After the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949) broke out, the Kuomintang (KMT) occupied 

Changchun for most of the time until the city was finally liberated by the Communists in October 

1948. Due to the lack of necessary resources to rebuild the former colonial capital, the KMT 

government manipulated place names to efficiently and economically assert a new regime in 

Changchun (figure 8). 

Figure 8. Map of Changchun, 1946. 




Statistical analysis reveals that Changchun experienced a remarkable slowdown of 

population growth during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) followed by a dramatic decrease 

because of the siege of Changchun in 1948, until the Communists took over the city in October 

1948. According to the 1953 census, the city gradually recovered over the following three years 

(1949–1952) with a rapid increase in population and the restoration of urban governance. 14 

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Changchun, and Northeast China as a whole, 

became a base for “supporting the front” (zhiyuan qianxian). Due to turbulent warfare in 

Changchun during the transitional years up to 1952, urban construction came to a halt and the 

city deteriorated. The Soviet monument at the central plaza was perhaps the only significant 

building project in this period, as it shed influence on socialist construction that followed the 

founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. 

An Industrial City under Maoism (1953–1962) 

According to Mao Zedong, the major task of this new urban-centered strategy was to 

bring about a transformation in the nature of the Chinese city. After the Communist takeover of 

Changchun, and especially after the three-year recovery that ended in 1952, the new government 

launched various movements and construction projects aimed at modifying Changchun into an 

industrial city. The Commission of the First FYP selected the outskirts of Changchun for the site 

of the First Automobile Works, which effectually changed the image of the city into a socialist 

industrial base. As such, Changchun was eventually transformed from a city of consumption to 

one of production under Chinese socialism. 

In the meantime, fundamental changes occurred in the middle and late 1950s when a 

number of public buildings were erected in downtown Changchun to house administrative, 

educational, and cultural facilities, and many other colonial buildings were renamed and reused 

for similar purposes. Since this era, Changchun has been known as China’s famous “Auto City,” 

“Movie City,” and “City of Science, Technology and Culture” (PRC State Departments 2003). 




By the end of 1957, the last year of the first FYP, Changchun was officially recognized as a 

“new” city with an industrial base that was home to many important socialist institutions, while 

the urban life in the city had long been attuned to Chinese socialism (Changchun shi dang’an 

guan 1957). 

Rebuilding Changchun Downtown under Socialism 

In the core urban area of Changchun, three basic methods of (re)construction were 

applied: the manipulation of names, the erection of statues of Chairman Mao and revolutionary 

martyrs in front of existing colonial buildings, and the construction of new buildings in the 

socialist realist style. In this manner, supplementation, rather than demolition, played the more 

active role in erasing the past. 

The names of the districts, streets, squares, parks, and buildings of Changchun had 

already been changed several times over, and reconstructing colonial buildings was also an 

economical way to reuse existing buildings to embody socialist ideals. For example, Shuntian 

Street, where the Manchukuo administrative offices were located, was renamed Xinmin (literally 

“New People”) Street, reflecting the socialist revolution’s objective of creating new subject 

identity. 

The Communist government issued decrees immediately after the liberation of the city 

that no estates or industries of former regimes should be destroyed, so most colonial buildings 

along the central avenue continued to function as they had, but under different names and 

political guises. For example, the former Guandong Army headquarters now housed the 

Communist Party Committee of Jilin Province. The former Capital Construction Bureau building 

was remade to house the People’s Municipal Government of Changchun. The Yamato Hotel was 

renamed Chunyi (“Changchun’s Friendship”) Hotel, and the previous Fengle building was still 

used as a theater but with the new name Chuncheng (“the city of Changchun”). 




However, the reuse of existing spaces could go only so far. A new society required new 

art and new architecture. In Changchun, the most striking new building was the massive 

Workers’ Palace of Culture, which faced the central plaza (photo 38). In the PRC, as in all other 

socialist countries, workers became the leading class; indeed, in Changchun the most important 

break from the colonial regime was the replacement of ethnicity with class as an identifying 

marker. The Cultural Palace was built in 1958 as a symbol of the new political order, with a tiled 

and gabled roof and omnipresent traditional decorations. Next to it was Jilin’s Provincial Hotel, 

built in 1957 (photo 39). 

Colonial buildings along Xinmin Street were used by the military for a while, and all the 

institutional buildings that were in good standing after the civil war were renovated as military 

hospitals and medical research institutes. In 1954, a medical college was established, and 

previous colonial institutional buildings were converted into hospitals and affiliated facilities. 

For example, the previous Hall of State Council, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Transportation, 

and Ministry of Economy were remodeled into teaching and research buildings. A statue of 

Bethune, 15 was erected in front of the main entrance at the former State Council, but the internal 

space did not undergo much change. 

As a part of the larger restructuring of universities and colleges according to the party 

line in 1952 and 1953, Changchun Institute of Geology was established in December 1952 on the 

site of the former palace and imperial garden. The existing foundation, which had been designed 

for a two-story “developing Asia style” palace, was used for a new main building with four 

stories for administration and teaching. The project started in 1953; upon its completion the 

following year, it was the first building in “national form” 16 that used traditional architectural 

elements, such as large sloping roofs and decorative motifs, in Changchun (photo 40). 

Due to the elevation of the city’s political status, a number of cultural facilities were built 

during the first FYP. The largest project was the Jilin Provincial Library, located opposite the 

previous Ministry of Transportation across Xinmin Street (photo 41). In terms of decorative 




motifs, height, mass, and color, the library stood in harmony with the historic quarter’s existing 

colonial institutional buildings. 

The new buildings along Xinmin Street filled up blocks left vacant by the 1932 plan and 

successfully transformed the former administrative quarter of Manchukuo into an educational 

and cultural district. Through education, workers were trained to become both politically 

enlightened and technically proficient or, in the parlance of the time, “both red and expert,” as 

the masters of the People’s Republic. Former administrative buildings of Manchukuo, the 

symbol of the puppet state, were used as hospitals and educational facilities that aimed to 

produce “new men” under socialism. Promoting a large number of “red experts” was considered 

a crucial precondition for achieving the transition to socialism, and new buildings were erected 

to this end. New and old buildings along Xinmin Street altogether played a vital role in 

producing proletarian subjects. 

The massive construction projects set out in the first FYP and launched in the mid-1950s 

called for the development of hundreds of new industrial plants, the majority of which were to be 

constructed in and around China’s existing urban centers. This resulted in the dramatic expansion 

of cities and the emergence of new forms of urban space. Out of this process, new public 

buildings that housed key socialist institutions, such as the Provincial Hotel, the library, and 

various research institutes, came to dominate Changchun’s new spatial organization and urban 

life (photos 42 and 43). 

Building the Automobile Town in Changchun 

Rebuilding downtown Changchun, an area rife with evidence of its colonial legacy, posed 

a great challenge to socialist planners asked by the new regime to eliminate any residue of the 

infamous history of Manchukuo. As already discussed, specific techniques were developed for 

this purpose, such as renaming streets, changing the functions of colonial buildings, and 

complimenting colonial planning rather than demolishing significant sites of the city. However, 




the most effective strategy for erasing Changchun’s colonial past involved the construction of the 

First Automobile Works (FAW) and housing compounds for its workers, which together 

comprised a large modern factory community on the southwestern outskirts of the city (photos 

44–46). In this way, Changchun was gradually transformed from a colonial center of 

consumption to a prosperous industrial center under Chinese socialism. 

The new automobile town packed in everything: planned economy, heavy industry, 

mobilization of workers, aid from the Soviet Union, new working methods, socialist competition, 

and, above all, an early and perfect model of the Chinese work unit (danwei) that combined both 

production and nonproduction sectors and would become an essential social institution of Maoist 

China. 

The FAW compound offers a rich example of urban development in the spirit of socialist 

planning, along with an experiment aimed at countering overstandardization in housing design. 

Through spatial intervention, the FAW became a “social condenser” in which production, 

proletarian culture, and everyday social life were combined within a single collective space. At 

the same time, it played a crucial part in mobilizing labor to transform “consumer” cities into 

“producer” cities and, in the process, created a large new working class. 

The deficiencies of the Soviet model of industrialization taught the Chinese Communist 

Party (CCP) to avoid an overemphasis on opening new factories at the cost of improving 

workers’ standard of living. Therefore, housing, groceries, and other auxiliary facilities of 

residential compounds were built concurrently with the construction of the factories of the FAW 

(photos 47 and 48). After the Russian-produced general plan was sent to China in April 1953, the 

Eastern China Industrial Architectural Design Institute in Shanghai was commissioned by the 

state to render the plan of FAW’s residential and auxiliary buildings (Zhang 2004). 

According to Soviet residential planning theories, auxiliary facilities such as dining halls, 

public baths, workers’ clubs, and auditorium halls were to be situated in the center of the 

residential area. These theories also called for reading rooms for the perusal of newspapers and 




magazines, kindergartens and nursery schools to educate children and enable mothers to work, 

sports centers and stadium facilities marking the new role of sports in the life of the community, 

and rest homes for deserving elderly workers. There was no commercial center in the residential 

area: the theories stated, “groceries should be placed in independent buildings or on the ground 

floor of apartments along the main streets” (Huadong jianzhu gongcheng shejiyuan 1958). 

Therefore, the ground floors of the two towered apartment buildings facing the central plaza 

were used for shops. The integration of commercial space in workers’ estates and in ordinary 

urban neighborhoods provided convenient services for inhabitants, since the equal distribution of 

social resources was a keystone of socialist planning. Accordingly, the polarization of rich 

commercial districts and slums needed to be eliminated. This also implied that commercial 

activities were no longer an exclusive priority, and Chinese urban communities became much 

more self-contained than their counterparts in the West. 

The spatial formation of the FAW and its housing compound stipulated a new way of life, 

one that created proletarian subjects. It is apparent that the principle of collectivity was not only 

reflected in the symbolic form of the danwei compound but also adhered to in a very practical 

way within the everyday spaces around which danwei life revolved. The FAW offers a clear 

example of urban development in the spirit of socialist realism, above all due to its combination 

of national form and socialist content. Here the concepts of classical architecture and classical 

town planning still held sway: from the ornament, architectural detail, street facades, square, and 

block, to the factory community as an artistic entity. The richness of the housing’s appearance, 

on the other hand, showed architects’ enthusiasm in building Chinese socialism. The shift to 

communism was premised on both the collectivization of living space and the unification of 

everyday life and productive labor into one collectivized whole. 

In 1953, the CCP commenced fulfilling large scale modernizing projects throughout 

China. In order to make Changchun a base of heavy industry starting from the first FYP in 1953, 

a series of grand manufacturing plants were built surrounding the city. In addition to the FAW, 




the CCP’s most celebrated achievement during this time, the Changchun Railway Vehicles 

Factory (photo 49), built in 1957 in the former Russian settlement, was another crucial project of 

the first FYP. It is still one of the most advanced manufacturers producing carriages for highspeed 

railway trains. The National Diesel Engines Factory was built in 1956 in the eastern part of 

Changchun. 

In 1958, the second FYP was launched, and several more major industrial projects were 

situated in Changchun. The Changchun Tractor Factory opened in 1958, applying the most 

advanced construction technology of the time. As such, Changchun was restructured on the 

bones of the old by the socialist regime, and thus transformed from a former colonial capital city 

of consumption into a progressive and vigorous part of the industrial base in Northeast China. 

Concluding Remarks 

The built environment of Changchun offers a visual manifestation of the idiosyncrasies of 

various endeavors to modernize Changchun and uncovers connections among these projects. The 

realm of architecture and city planning is essential for understanding not only the political and 

cultural development of the culminating period of Chinese nation-state building but also the 

central and critical role that the built environment has played in shaping the norms and forms of 

the country’s society, culture, and politics. 

A profound dilemma confronted today, especially by architectural scholars and local 

officials, is how to evaluate, or face up to, all sorts of colonial legacies. Changchun, unlike other 

major cities in Northeast China such as Harbin, Shenyang, and Dalian, had almost nothing left 

before the twentieth century, and the present urban structure was inherited from the Japanese 

colonial period. In Harbin and Dalian, the terminus of the Eastern Ching Railway, the Russian 

imprint was evident, while Shenyang has been honored as a political center of national 

significance from at least the Qing dynasty. In this vein, the preservation of Japanese colonial 

buildings, many of which were important institutional buildings of high standards, was crucial to 




distinguishing Changchun from other cities, and has given the city a unique image that has 

helped boost tourism. All of these factors converged at a time when rapid urban construction and 

renewal were under way, and urban managers were more and more conscious of the unique 

cultural value of their cities for attracting investment and tourists. In the case of Changchun, 

however, the appeal of preserving Japanese colonial buildings in a former capital city has been 

sensitive both politically and emotionally. As many of the old buildings are located in the central 

part of the city worth of high value, developers who want to replace old buildings with new ones 

have easily found nationalistic excuses for demolition. To make matters worse, current 

preservation and renovation projects often confound architectural styles of different times. In 

order to work through this current dilemma of whether to tear down colonial buildings in 

Changchun, as happened with the demolition of Viceroy House in Seoul in the late 1990s, or to 

skillfully preserve them for new service in the city, we need to thoroughly reconsider recent 

history in a way that includes more nuanced definitions of the modern and its manifestations in 

the built environment. 

Yishi Liu has a PhD in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and is on the 

faculty of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, Beijing. Xinying Wang, born in 

Changchun, is the director of the Institute of Cultural Relics of Changchun. 

Notes 

1. Xinying Wang, a native of Changchun, works in the Bureau of Culture, which is in charge 

of conservation. Since the 1990s, he has collected materials about the architectural history 

of Changchun, including circulated postcards, brochures, and books published in the 

Manchukuo era, some of which have recently been published in Wang (2012). 

2. All photos referred to in this essay can be viewed online in the December 2012 issue of 

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review (http://crosscurrents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-5). 

3. Unless otherwise noted, all figures are from the private collection of Xinying Wang. 

4. This task included establishing ports, shipping lines, warehouses, telegraphic 

communications, urban construction, and other such endeavors. 

5. City Beautiful is a reform philosophy of North American urban planning that flourished 




E-Journal No. 5 (December 2012) • (http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-5) 


during the turn of the twentieth century by introducing beautification and monumental 

grandeur in cities, starting from Chicago under architect Daniel Burnham. 

6. The station, the Mantetsu regional office and the Yamato Hotel were designed by Ichida 

Kichijiro, a 1906 Todai graduate who joined Mantetsu the following year. See Sewell 

2000, chapter 4. 

7. The first Chinese commercial districts built within traditional political centers in the early 

twentieth century were Xiangfang district in Beijing and new districts in Tianjin and Jinan, 

established under Yuan Shikai. 

8. To view buildings in different sectors during the Mantetsu era, see Chinese literature 

including Yu 2001. For English literature, see Sewell 2000, although this work does not 

include any reference to the Chinese town. 

9. According to statistics from 1928, the number of residents during the Japanese occupation 

was thirty-one thousand, while the number of residents in the old walled city and 

commercial district amounted to sixty-six thousand and forty-four thousand, respectively 

(Koshizawa 1988, 86). 

10. New theoretical trends in urban planning appeared continually in the early twentieth 

century and were introduced to Japan immediately. These included E. Howard’s garden 

city and other English practices, the theory of satellite cities proposed by Unwin, and the 

theory and practice of the neighborhood unit in Redburn in 1928. For the emergence of 

modern city planning, see Hall 1988. 

11. The root of pan-Asianism goes back to the Meiji era, when the Sinocentric world order 

collapsed and a number of political associations were formed, advocating the ideal of 

“solidarity with Asia” and the notion of “raising Asia” (ko A) or “developing Asia” (shin A) 

in order to align with other Asian nations to establish a new world order under Japanese 

leadership. For the historical development of pan-Asianism, see Saaler 2006. 

12. Ironically, this was third time Puyi announced his abdication from the throne. The first took 

place in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution, and the second followed an unsuccessful 

restoration of the monarchy in 1917. 

13. As Anders Aman(1992) observes with regard to the examples of Soviet victory monuments 

in Bulgaria and Poland, a victorious army does not erect stone and bronze monuments to 

itself in places where it proposes to relinquish control. Although the Red Army evacuated, 

the Soviet influence became more evident in different ways including visual symbols of the 

power and pride of socialism. Socialist realism became a dominant architectural style in 

remaking Changchun under socialism. 

14. When the Communists entered the city, the population in Changchun decreased from 

700,000 at the end of the Sino-Japanese War to slightly over 170,000 in October 1948, due 

to the turmoil of Chinese Civil War and the long siege of the city. In Manchuria as a whole, 

the population rose by more than seven million people, from 36,703,000 in 1950 to 

43,753,000 in 1953. See Schinz 1989, 405.


15. Henry Norman Bethune (1890-1939, Chinese name: Bai Qiuen) was a Canadian 

Communist physician known to Chinese audiences because Mao Zedong wrote a famous 

article in memory of him after he died in Sino-Japanese War due to infection. A medical 

school was established in his name in Yan’an, the capital of the Communist regime from 

1936 to 1947. 

16. In promoting socialist realism in China, the prevalent slogan was “socialist content and 

national form,” to alleviate conflict between modern function and traditional form and 

decorative motifs. 

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A Pictorial History of Changchun 1898–1962

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