JERRY FENG writes about the fascinating mix of Russian, Jewish, and Chinese histories of Harbin, China, and how this rich diversity plays a role in today’s Harbinite identity.
This paper was made on Yale ArcGIS StoryMaps, but the full text portion of the paper is below. To view the full bibliography of this paper, please contact Jerry (contact info below). To view the full ArcGIS StoryMap, please click the link here.
Introduction/Description
Background
For much of its history, Harbin was a quaint little fishing town. In fact, its name “Harbin” actually just means “a place for drying fishing nets” in the Manchu language (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”).
Harbin, being situated in the northeast of China—a region called Manchuria—was located in a very strategic location, being a center point between China, Korea, Mongolia, and the expansionist regimes of Russia and Japan. As a result, during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Harbin developed from a small rural village into an international metropolis, harboring people of all nationalities and statuses from wealthy Russian aristocrats to Japanese Settlers, and from French merchants to Jewish refugees. This mass influx of Europeans established its influence in and around the city through its urban planning and architecture that gave Harbin its charming European core. Harbin became such a European city that, in the 1920s, it even took on the role of the “fashion capital” of China, as new clothing designs would travel from Paris to Harbin first before reaching Shanghai, another major gateway between China and the West (Xu, “A Stroll through Harbin”). Eventually, Harbin would succumb to Japanese occupation in 1931, followed by a mass exodus of its European population after the end of World War II. Even as nearly all of the European and Jewish inhabitants are no longer living in Harbin or have descendants living there, their legacies in helping build up this city are undeniable.
Thesis
After World War II, through the Cultural Revolution, through China’s market reform, and even today in a rapidly changing China, there are many debates surrounding the demolition or preservation of historic Russian buildings. However, as time passes through, we’re seeing a resurgence of nostalgia to protect the historical spaces of Harbin.
Harbin Railway Station
Founding/History
Built in 1898 and officially completed in 1903, the Harbin Railway Station was the landmark that jump-started the development of Harbin as a boomtown that quickly led it to become an international metropolis (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 19). This location was a strategically important part of the Russian Empire’s strategy in creating their own sphere of influence in Northeastern China. The Harbin Railway Station was part of a larger railway project known as the Chinese Eastern Railway that was designed to pass through the central location of Harbin that would connect Dalian (大连, then known as Port Arthur and was the only warm-water port in Russia’s Far East) with Vladivostok, Russia’s easternmost port city (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 19). This way, Russia would be able to transport goods, civilians, and troops conveniently for their economic and political interests in northeastern China.
During Use
Harbin’s Russian population grew rapidly as a result of the railroad construction’s demand for labor and services. In the 7 years right after the beginning of the construction of the Harbin Railway Station (1898–1905), the Russian population was roughly 30,000, and this number grew to more than 40,000 following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 22). Along with the Russians, the Chinese population also grew rapidly to around 23,000 by 1913, making up roughly one-third of the total population of Harbin at the time (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 22). Aside from the two dominant ethnic groups, what made Harbin truly an international metropolis was the presence of numerous multinational groups of Russia and foreigners, including Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Japanese, Koreans, Germans, and Poles among other groups (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 22). By 1915, Harbin was home to 53 different nationalities and 45 different languages (Zatsepine, “Russia, Railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 30).
Following the collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union, all “unequal treaties”—treaties signed between Western imperial powers and the Qing Dynasty that took advantage of a weak China at the time—were revoked, and control of the China Eastern Railway was to become jointly owned by the USSR and China (Zatsepine, “Russia, railways, and Urban Development in Manchuria, 1896–1930,” 32).
Post-World War II
After the end of World War II in 1945 and the subsequent Communist takeover of Mainland China in 1949, the Harbin Railway Station experienced various phases of both success and misery. Nearly the entire Russian population left Harbin in the coming couple of decades, so control of Harbin and the railroads were given back to the Chinese government. In the earlier years following, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cooperated with the Soviet Union to quickly industrialize China, where Harbin played a major role, as did the Harbin Railway Station delivering supplies, goods, and workers (Ice Festival Harbin, “History of Harbin”). Through a growing urbanized Chinese population with a higher demand for transport of goods and people, the Harbin Railway Station was renovated 5 times: once in 1960, 1972, 1989, 2002, and most recently in 2015 (Wikipedia, “Harbin Railway Station”).
Today
This railway station still stands to this day and is one of the biggest train stations in all of China, playing a crucial role in the public transit of Chinese people. What is interesting about the Harbin Railway Station is that throughout its history, there was relatively little resistance towards the building by the local population—when taking into account the numerous churches and synagogues that were destroyed all across China. Though the railway station was built with the most advanced techniques in European architecture at the time of its construction, it has always served a tangible useful purpose in the development of Harbin and the surrounding areas. It could be for this reason that the railway station was continuously renovated and kept up-to-date as it is a colonial-era building that was an integral part of the development of Harbin.
Saint Sophia Russian Orthodox Church
Founding/History
The Saint Sophia Russian Orthodox Church was first built with timber in 1907 by homesick and war-battered Russian soldiers who wanted to feel a sense of home after the disastrous Russo-Japanese War; five years later in 1912, it was rebuilt using wood and brick (Paul, “Saint Sophia Cathedral in Harbin”). In 1917, the population of Harbin exceeded 100,000 with over 40,000 of them being ethnic Russians (Harbin Ice, “Russian Influence and Russians in Harbin”). Following the October Socialist Revolution in late 1917, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Russian White Guards and refugees fled to Harbin (Harbin Ice, “Russian Influence and Russians in Harbin”).
This group of White Russian émigrés (the refugees adhering to the political faction fighting against the Bolsheviks) were heavily Russian Orthodox and influenced the local community of Harbin to build more churches. Needing to meet a growing demand for religious services, the Saint Sophia Church was again renovated and expanded. As a result, in 1923, the church went on a 9-year renovation campaign that ended in 1932, giving us the church that we recognize today (Paul, “Saint Sophia Cathedral in Harbin”).
During Use
Since the construction of Saint Sophia Church, throughout all of its different renovations, it has always served as an important cultural gathering space for Russian Harbinites; and, during its time of use, the bell tower that had seven bells of different sizes and tones would play for religious festivals and other community activities (China Discovery, “Saint Sophia Cathedral – the largest Eastern Orthodox Church in Far East”).
Post-World War II
However, following the end of World War II, the church was handed over to the Communist Party of China, just like the Harbin Railway Station, except it was closed down in 1958 (Paul, “Saint Sophia Cathedral in Harbin”). Not too long after during the height of the cultural revolution in the 1960s, the church was raided and looted by anti-western iconography, and many of its murals depicting stories from the Bible were destroyed; even some of the crosses at the top of the building were destroyed (Travel China Guide, “St. Sophia Cathedral”). In the decades following that, the Saint Sophia Church underwent considerable decline and was mainly used as a warehouse for nearby department stores (Xu, “A Stroll through Harbin”). It wasn’t until 1996 that the Chinese government designated the Saint Sophia Church as one of the “Key Cultural Relics under State Protection”; it was then repaired and renamed as the Harbin Architecture Art Gallery. in an attempt to subtly erase the history of the building as an important Russian church (ChinaDiscovery, “Saint Sophia Cathedral – the largest Eastern Orthodox Church in Far East”).
The official name change of this building reminded me of a part of Brenda Yeoh’s book Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore that discusses the importance of names—whether they be for buildings or stress—and the changing of names. Specifically, Yeoh mentioned that “most municipal street names honoured the perceptions of powerful European names rather than those of the people living in the places so named” (Yeoh, Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore, 228). In the context of the Sophia Cathedral, the Chinese government’s decision to rename the building into something without mention of any of its history as a Russian-built church is more to erase the perception of powerful European names. Instead, the only part of the new name of the building—the “Harbin” Architecture Art Gallery—that is still accurate is that it is and will always be a part of Harbin’s history.
Today
Today, locals and tourists alike still refer to the building as the Sophia Cathedral, and it is marketed by travel guides as a must-see attraction in Harbin. Just recently in 2016, the Saint Sophia Cathedral was included in the first edition of the 20th-century Chinese architectural heritage list, solidifying the sort of positive perspective change that both the people and government have towards their historic spaces (ChinaDiscovery, “Saint Sophia Cathedral – the largest Eastern Orthodox Church in the Far East”).
Experiences like those of the Sophia Cathedral represent the few optimistic outcomes of these historical monuments. In the thirty years since the founding of Harbin as a Russian city, numerous churches in Harbin and in the northeast of China as a whole have been built, and many were either destroyed or left in disrepair still today. One example was the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, which was destroyed in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution (Eimer, “Relighting Harbin’s History”). However, in the modern day, there is a changing attitude towards historic nostalgia as the St. Nicholas Church is now recreated during the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival. Even one Harbin lawyer, Zhang Qingying, mentioned that for his parents’ older generation, “that sculpture [ice sculpture of Saint Nicholas Church] brings back many memories,” showing the growing nostalgia towards the past (Eimer, “Relighting Harbin’s History”).
The “Old” and New Synagogues: Physical Memories of a Jewish Sanctuary
A Brief History of Jewish Migration to Harbin
Despite not being a well-known city concerning Jewish history, Harbin was actually a major safe haven for the Jewish people during its early history; and these Jewish people came to Harbin in largely three phases:
1) In the 1890s, Jews who resided in the Russian Empire were subject to anti-Semitic “pogroms” that were deliberate attempts by the Russian ruling class to coercively “encourage” Jews to move eastward in an attempt to get rid of the Jews already living in the western part of Russia and also to use their labor for building the Chinese Eastern Railway (Zane, “Jews in Harbin”). Not wanting to face further anti-Semitism in European Russia, roughly 500 Jewish people fled to Harbin by 1903 (Zane, “Jews in Harbin”). Not long after, news spread of the relative non-existence of anti-Semitism from the local Chinese population which encouraged more Jews to migrate to Harbin.
2) In 1905, Following the defeat of the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War, many Jews who served in the Russian army lacked the funding to travel thousands of miles back to their homes in the western part of Russia and decided to stay in Harbin, adding roughly 8000 Russians, of which roughly a third were Jews, to Harbin’s population by 1908 (Zane, “Jews in Harbin”). This growing community of Jews then began building their own communities that included the Main and the New Synagogue, an elementary and secondary school, a cemetery, a Jewish hospital that treated both Jews and non-Jews, hotels, and jewelry shops among others (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”).
3) During and after the Russian Revolution, many Russians fighting against the Bolsheviks fled to Harbin, among them being a lot of Jewish people. So, Harbin also became a place of political movements, many of which would be attempts to restore the Russian Old Order and overthrow the Communists (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”). In addition to refugees who supported the monarchy of Imperial Russia, Harbin was also the only place where Russian-language Zionist groups could operate due to the 1920 Soviet ban on Zionism (Vladimirsky, “The Jews of Harbin, China”). By 1930, the Jewish population of Harbin reached its peak at around 15,000 people, but some sources would estimate the number to be up to 20,000 (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”).
In 1931, Japan officially seized control of all of Manchuria and began terrorizing the local population and “expropriating” private property (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”). They recruited spies among the local population and also encouraged the growing Russian Fascist movement in Harbin to conduct anti-Soviet and anti-Jewish campaigns (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”). Thus, during this period, Jewish people and foreigners alike faced a daily threat of murder and abduction; one such case was the murder of Simeon Kaspe, a naturalized French citizen and concert pianist who was the son of Russian-born Joseph Kaspe, the owner of Hôtel Modern in Harbin and a chain of theaters (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”). Jews began fleeing Harbin to Shanghai, Tianjin, and eventually abroad as the Japanese solidified their control of Manchuria. Even a correspondence between the American Consul General in Harbin to the US Secretary of State in1934 mentioned the Japanese “utter indifference” to bandit attacks on trains and Russian railway workers, showing that the Japanese government did not, indeed, take terrorization of the local population as important (Adams, “The Consul General at Harbin to the Secretary of State”). By the end of World War II, only about 2,000 Jews were left in Harbin.
In 1955, only around 300 Jews were left in Harbin, and that number dwindled to just one elderly woman by 1982 who died in 1985 (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”).
New Synagogue
I chose the New and Old Synagogues of Harbin because they represent a different experience of these historic spaces through the test of time.
Built in 1918 and completed in 1921, the New Synagogue was the second synagogue built by the Jewish community of Harbin after the Main or “Old” Synagogue and could accommodate up to 800 worshippers; it was the largest synagogue in northeast China (Ice Festival Harbin, “Harbin New Synagogue”).
During its time of use, the synagogue was not simply a place of religious practice and worship but also served as a place of community education as a public library (Ice Festival Harbin, “Harbin New Synagogue”). However, the Jewish people gradually left Harbin over the next couple of decades, the synagogue was closed and left in disrepair over the next several decades.
By the early 1990s, the New Synagogue reopened as a club for the local Public Security Bureau, far from its originally designed purpose, before being closed down again in 1996 (Ice Festival Harbin, “Harbin New Synagogue”).
After lots of advocacy from international Jewish organizations and local support, the Harbin municipal government renovated and designated the synagogue as the Jewish Museum of History and Culture after an international symposium in 2004 on the history and culture of Harbin’s Jews that was organized by the Jewish Research Center of Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Science and the China-Israel Friendship Association (Ice Festival Harbin, “Harbin New Synagogue”).
Old Synagogue
Built in 1906 and completed in 1909, the Main Synagogue—though now referred to as the “Old” Synagogue because of the construction of the “New” synagogue—was the first synagogue built by the Jewish community of Harbin (Lyons, “Home to one Jew, Harbin Synagogue to be renovated”).
During its time of use, the synagogue served as the central assembly location for Jews in Harbin and also had a couple of schools adjacent to the building; however, the synagogue was damaged in a fire in 1931—allegedly started by the anti-Communist and anti-Semitic Russian Fascist Party members in Harbin— and rebuilt shortly after (Lyons, “Home to one Jew, Harbin Synagogue to be renovated”).
Following World War II, the Cultural Revolution, and the market reform period of China, the Old Synagogue was simply neglected and closed down as a synagogue in 1963 (Lyons, “Home to one Jew, Harbin Synagogue to be renovated”). Over the next couple of decades, it would serve a variety of purposes from a kindergarten to a guesthouse for railway workers (Goldstein, Clurman, and Ben Canaan, “Jewish History of Harbin”).
It was not until 2013, following the success of the renovation of the New Synagogue as a museum in 2004, that the Harbin Municipal Government decided to invest $1 billion in Chinese Renminbi to also renovate the Old Synagogue (Lyons, “Home to one Jew, Harbin Synagogue to be renovated”). Finally, in 2014, the Old Synagogue officially became a music concert hall with the adjacent Jewish Middle School becoming a music school itself (Lyons, “Home to one Jew, Harbin Synagogue to be renovated”).
Today
Still today, both the Harbin New Synagogue and the Harbin Old Synagogue are marketed as “must-see” attractions that add to the uniqueness of Harbin as a place (Top China Travel, “Harbin New Synagogue”). Both places are frequented by descendants of Harbin Jews, the local population, and other travelers seeking a unique experience.
The experiences of these two synagogues are also optimistic outcomes of colonial or imperial spaces in the post-colonial era. Much unlike the popular support for the demolition of the Japanese Government-General building in Seoul as mentioned in Henry’s Assimilating Seoul the Chinese people and government alike have chosen to not only keep but also restore and renovate old buildings that represent an outdated colonial history (Henry, Assimilating Seoul, 213). However, what could be different in the experiences of these two synagogues and the Government General building in Seoul is that these synagogues are not simply just reflections of Russian-style architecture, but were built by Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe whereas the Government General building represented a foregone and no longer existent Japanese empire that committed numerous war crimes against the Korean people. While the trajectory of the statuses of these two synagogues was similar to those of the Harbin Railway Station and Sophia Cathedral—neglected then renovated—they symbolized the benevolence of this city in China that served as a safe haven for the Jewish people and continues to be a memory that fosters positive interactions between China and Israel.
Conclusion
In this story map, I was only able to briefly cover the histories of four influential landmarks of Harbin that show an experience of buildings that were built by imperial powers in the post-colonial era. These discussions about whether or not to destroy and erase, or preserve and invest are still very much prevalent today in countries across the world that were once victims of European colonialism. For both the people and the governments in power, the benefits and costs of erasing landmarks of colonial oppression and preserving them as cultural and historical sites always sit on a blurred line. Even for sites that aren’t often seen as important historical landmarks, there is resistance against their demolition.
In 2017, there was another case in Harbin where the Chinese government wanted to remove the Jihong Bridge—built in the 1920s by Russian engineers and designated an “immovable cultural relic” in 2013 by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage— to make way for a new high-speed railway but was met with strong resistance from the local residents (Zhao, “Chinese City with a Russian Past Struggles to Preserve Its Legacy”). Through numerous petitions and social media advocacy, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage then decided to keep the bridge in its original location but moved to a “longer and higher span to accommodate the new rail line” (Zhao, “Chinese City with a Russian Past Struggles to Preserve Its Legacy”).
From these examples, it is clear that attitudes in China, or Harbin specifically, towards historic imperial buildings are changing. Though the economic side of tourism and the historical nostalgia of the people seem to be very influential in the preservation of these historic relics, the Harbin City Government website largely avoids any mention of Russian influence or any Russian-built landmarks under its “Tourist Attractions” section. This relative reluctance of the government to admit Russian influence in the city as a tourist attraction shows there still is indifference towards these relics.
In a future project, I think researching the interethnic dynamics in Harbin during the early 20th century through viewing personal correspondences would give a much better idea of what life for the individual was like during that time. Additionally, delving deeper into Harbin’s experience during the Cultural Revolution and market reform period would help better understand the societal and cultural changes that Harbin underwent to reach the state that it is in today. Whether or not petitions and social media campaigns succeed in preserving cultural relics, only by taking action in advocating for what we want to preserve will we be able to know.
Jerry Feng is an undergraduate student at Yale College studying History and Global Affairs. Jerry can be reached at jerry.feng@yale.edu.