The identity construction and heritage making of postcolonial cities are mainly about dealing with the difficult and sometimes conflicting memories related to their colonial pasts, which are largely determined by the interaction between the colonised and colonisers, both during the colonial period and after. It is interesting to see that cities being colonised by several colonial powers in history may remember, interpret, and present their colonial pasts related to those different colonisers very differently: while they regard certain colonial pasts as national humiliation, they may at the same time show 'nostalgia' for other colonial periods.
Harbin is a Chinese city with Russian and Japanese colonial backgrounds. Under the Sino-Russian Secret Treaty of 1896 (Li–Lobanov Treaty), Russia started to construct the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) in 1898, and Harbin as the CER Zone – the Russian administration centre as well as the main junction of the CER – became a 'boom town' which developed rapidly from some small fishing villages to a modern international metropolis within a generation. During the first half of its 120-year history, Harbin had been ruled by Russia, Japan, and China, sometimes successively and sometimes simultaneously, and had gone through the two world wars, both of which marked the turning points of the city's history. While the colonial periods have been a thing of the past, their impact on the city is profound and lasts long. With archival analysis, observation, and in-depth interviews, this paper investigates how the colonial pasts related to Russia and Japan are remembered, interpreted, and used in the postcolonial Harbin and how relevant urban memories are linked to the city's contemporary identity and heritage.
The paper reveals that Harbin perceives its Russian era relatively positively but its Japanese era relatively negatively when interpreting the city's historical memories. Such different perceptions are, to a large extent, the result of the differences in three factors: how Harbin was colonised by the two countries, the colonisers' 'contributions' to Harbin during the colonial times, and the postcolonial relationships between Harbin (as well as the broader China) and the two former colonial powers. Despite the different feelings towards Russian and Japanese colonial pasts, these historical memories are all mobilised to construct a consistent identity of the postcolonial Harbin, which is clearly illustrated by the city's contemporary heritage-making. The paper argues that urban memories of colonial periods can be explored and (re)interpreted to meet the present social and political needs of the city and can act as a driving force for the city's future development.
