When he first arrived in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin in 1984 to attend university, Bu Chong was stunned to see an imposing, European-style building on campus with tall columns, arched doors and elaborate reliefs. “I’m from the countryside,” he said, “and I’d never seen anything like this.” For Gao Hong, a local businesswoman, such structures are not at all surprising. They were standard features of the Harbin she knew as a child, a city constructed in the late 19th century as a Far Eastern outpost of imperial Russia, a base for the Chinese Eastern Railway in what was once known as Manchuria. Read more
