Heritage, memory and identity of Harbin: A confluence of Russian and Japanese colonial effects

Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang Province and China’s northernmost metropolis. The modern city of Harbin was founded by the Russians in 1898 and colonised by Russia and Japan during the first half of its 120-year history. After the Second World War, the post-colonial Harbin had to deal with its Russian and Japanese colonial pasts and their architectural remains. While the city initially tried to forget its colonial pasts by demolishing the colonial-era buildings, in recent decades, Harbin is re-remembering those pasts through the presentation and (re)interpretation of its colonial built heritage. It is noteworthy that the local government has approached Harbin’s Russian and Japanese colonial heritages in very different ways, and public opinion has polarised on the issue of colonisation regarding the city’s Russian and Japanese colonial pasts. Using archival analysis, observation and semi-structured interviews, this paper investigates the evolution of Harbin’s urban memory of the colonial pasts from both official and popular perspectives. It is argued that the different approaches to Russian and Japanese colonial heritages have historical reasons in cultural, economic and political terms and serve to achieve a common goal in the present, that is to construct a distinct and consistent identity for the city’s future. Further, post-colonial identity constructed in this way is questioned as it still does not overcome the self–other dichotomy that features in colonisation.