Harbin: A Polish City in China
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Manchurian city of Harbin, there were Polish schools, organisations and Polish-language press. As many as ten thousand of our fellow Poles were living there. What were they doing there? And how did they end up there in the first place?
In the 1890s, Russia committed itself to a major investment: the construction of a rail link between the south Siberian town of Chita and the important Russian port on the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok. The shortest possible route was mapped out through Manchuria, a region that belonged to China. The two countries came to an agreement – in exchange for Russia's military assistance, the Chinese agreed to the building of the nearly 1500-kilometre railway line through its territory.
The initiator and manager of this enormous project was the then-finance minister of Russia (soon to become premier) Sergei Witte. It is he who hired Polish engineers to design and build the East China Railway. Although the late 19h century was not a time of good relations between Russia and partitioned Poland, Witte nonetheless recognised the talents of Polish specialists in the field of construction; he appointed Polish engineer Stanisław Kierbedź as the de facto manager of this vital project (he was the nephew of another Stanisław Kierbedź, the famed designer of then-innovative iron truss bridges - notably the bridge over the Wisła River in Warsaw which opened in 1864 and was popularly known as the Kierbedź Bridge).
The precise laying out of the route of the railway was undertaken by railroad engineer Stefan Offenberg, who had earlier managed the construction of one of the key stretches of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Offenberg described his experiences in Manchuria in his book The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway. Thanks to his memoirs, we know, for example, about the harsh weather and challenging landscape conditions the Polish engineers had to endure as they fought their way across the taiga laying out the railway's route.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Construction of the East China Railway commenced in 1897. Selected as the base of the project was a small fishing village called Harbin (also known as Charbin). That is where the officials overseeing the project were to live, along with the planning engineers. Engineer Adam Szydłowski undertook the planning of the new city that was to arise and the organisation of the massive project's entire support infrastructure.
Some sources indicate that it was Szydłowski himself who selected Harbin as the central location for the enterprise. Its convenient location on the Sungari River not only lent itself to effectively oversee the construction work, but Harbin also connected with a new branch of the southern bound railway which led to Russian bases in the Yellow Sea port of Dalian.
In the spring of 1898, Szydłowski purchased the building of the former brewery in Harbin and made it the cornerstone of his new city. Other than Szydłowski, early residents of the new settlement included his technicians Raweński, Wysocki and Pawlewski, whose given names have been lost over time. It was not long before the first new homes for construction workers were built in the fishing village. The rail line was divided into a number of segments of which Poles were responsible for roughly half, but the work was not done only by Russians and Poles. From the very start, the city of Harbin was a melting pot of nationalities: Germans, Belgians, Austrians and Englishmen lived there as well, representatives of various firms that supplied the railroad with machinery and other necessities. Even more nationalities were to be found amongst the railroad construction workers: while Poles played a significant role in the actual physical construction work (among them Polish revolutionaries who had been exiled to Siberia), the East China Railway was also built by Georgians, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Greeks, Turks, and Mongolians.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
The Henryk Sienkiewicz Polish Middle School of the Catholic Mission in Charbin (Harbin), 1915-1934, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
The first cars of the East China Railway rolled out in 1903. That is when the growth of the city of Harbin began in earnest – thanks to the opening of the vital rail link, it became a fast growing metropolitan area with a steadily growing population (amongst whom was a large cohort of businessmen and traders).
Not insignificant, too, was the city's special renown as a welcoming international city. Thanks to this reputation, the city attracted political activists who had been forced to flee their own countries (such as opponents of the Soviet October Revolution). In 1917, Harbin was already a city of over 100,000 residents, including members of some 33 nationalities. The most numerous of these groups for many years were the Poles, who, at their height, numbered ten thousand. From the beginning of the 20th century, Polish schools were open in Harbin (e.g. the Henryk Sienkiewicz High School, among whose alumni was the future author Teodor Parnicki), a Polish press flourished and a neo-Gothic Polish church stood on a parcel of land acquired by Offenberg.
One of the builders of the railroad, engineer Karol Weber, established the 'Gospoda Polska' (Polish Inn) Association in 1907 for which he built a lavish headquarters in the city. Harbin hosted a Polish scout chapter and a chapter of the Polish Youth Union. For many years, the director of the Russo-Chinese Bank was neither Russian nor Chinese, but rather a Pole, Stanisław Gabriel; for a year, a Pole was the city's mayor; and a number of Poles sat on the board of the East China Railway. Among the many enterprises established in Harbin by Poles was the local brewery established in 1900 by Jan Wróblewski. The brewery remains active to this day and it is probably China's oldest beer brewery.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
A group of people in front of the 'Gospoda Polska' (Polish Inn) Association in Charbin, 1925-1935, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
In 1937, Russia and China signed an agreement according to which only members of those two nations could work on the railway. This agreement forced many Poles to leave Harbin; the Polish diaspora was also shaken by the arrival of the Red Army in 1945. Harbin's last Polish newspaper ceased to appear in 1940. In 1947, the authorities decided to deport the Poles who remained in the city; the repatriated Poles were resettled in Elbląg, Olsztyn, Opole, Wałbrzych, Szczecin and elsewhere. A Harbiners’ Club is still active in Szczecin and it lobbied successfully for a traffic circle to be named for 'Polish Manchuria'. The Pomeranian Library in Szczecin holds a collection of archives and memorabilia recalling the Polish presence in Harbin.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Children from the Polish dormitory in Charbin with priest Władysław Ostrowski (and the street clock visible in the background), 1934, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)
Today, Harbin has a population of five milllion and is the second largest and second most important city in north-eastern China. Few traces remain of the Polish presence in Harbin's early years: the neo-Gothic church (formerly St Stanislaus Church; since 2004, the Church of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus) still stands in the city centre; the brewery mentioned above continues to operate; and the bridge over the Sungari River was long referred to as the Kierbedź Bridge. For over a dozen years, there has been a Polish-language program offered at the Harbin Normal University (HNU).
The author has utilised material from Edward Kajdański's article 'The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway: The Memoirs of Engineer Stefan Offenberg' published in Gdańsk East Asian Studies in 2016.
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]