Dongfeng District 东风区

History and industry

Before 1949 the area was known as 'Menggu Li' (蒙古力), a name the district government dates to 1914, when Mongol and Hezhe (赫哲族) fishing and hunting people lived here and Huachuan County assigned the disputed land to the Mongols. Dongfeng was set up as a district in 1968, abolished the same year, and re-created at county level in 1972.

The district's industrial history begins with the Jiamusi paper mill (佳木斯造纸厂), one of the 156 Soviet-aided projects of the first Five-Year Plan. Built from 1953 and working from 1957, it was described in the district's own history as Asia's largest paper mill at the time, and made industrial papers from cable and kraft paper to Braille paper. Production stopped in June 2014. The site keeps many workshops in the styles of the 1950s to 1970s, and the city began a plan in 2015 to protect and reuse this industrial heritage.

Today the district centres its seed industry on breeding conventional rice: Jianguo Town (建国镇) was named a national agricultural industry town in 2021, and the district hosts the rice research institute of the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences (黑龙江省农科院水稻研究所) and a national japonica rice engineering research centre.

What to see

The Dongzhu Treasure Museum (东珠珍宝博物馆) stands on the Songhua riverbank in a two-storey building in Ming and Qing style, with more than ten thousand exhibits of dongzhu ('eastern pearls'), other pearls and gems, and a hands-on area where visitors open mussels for pearls.

The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army sculpture hall (东北抗联主题雕塑馆) tells the resistance story through more than 400 sculptures, including figures of Zhao Shangzhi (赵尚志) and a reconstructed secret camp; the district government calls it the only museum in China to do so entirely in sculpture. The Changxing village history hall (长兴村史馆) in Songjiang Township (松江乡) marks the 1932 Mada Bridge battle (马大桥战役), which the district calls Jiamusi's first shot against the Japanese invasion.

The glass goose-watching platform (观雁台) at Zhenjiang village (圳江村) in Jianguo Town sits on an East Asian migratory bird route, where more than ninety species, among them wild geese and red-crowned cranes, can be seen. Dongxingcheng commercial street (东兴城商业街) has snack shops and craftspeople making paper-cuts and embroidery on site.

Highlights

• Jiamusi paper mill 佳木斯造纸厂: Soviet-aided mill built from 1953; production stopped in 2014 and the workshops are planned as protected industrial heritage.
• Dongzhu Treasure Museum 东珠珍宝博物馆: Riverside museum with more than ten thousand pearls and gems and a pearl-opening workshop.
• Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army sculpture hall 东北抗联主题雕塑馆: More than 400 sculptures of the anti-Japanese resistance.
• Goose-watching platform 观雁台: Glass platform at Zhenjiang village on a migratory bird route with more than ninety species.