Modern Architecture And Urban Planning In Zhalantun

The Middle East Railway, established in the late19th century, is a cross-borderrailway built by Tsarist Russia in Northeast China. Its trunk line runs fromManzhouli to Suifenhe, totally covering1481.2km. The land occupied by Russia onboth sides of the line formed a location called “Land Dedicated for Railway”.Afterwards Japan occupied the entire Northeast of China and gave it an umbrellaname Railway Dependent Territory. Among these dependent territories, Zhalantun isone of the most important stations of the whole trunk line featuring unique naturalconditions and vital strategic position, composing several pivotal functional areasalong the railway together with Angangxi, Boketu, Yimianpo, Hengdaohezi andManzhouli etc and boasting particular historical and geological conditions. Japanand Russia stationed their troops in Zhalantun, exercised judicial power, set up andadministrated organizations, conducted limbering, reclamation, mine exploration,management over transportation, industry and commerce, municipal administrationand financial activities and proceeded with educational and other sorts of culturalactivities, which expedited the rise and prosperity of Zhalantun. The overall andsystematic research on Zhalantun not merely helps reveal the characteristics of townplanning and architecture of smaller dependent territories along the Middle EastRailway but also provides references for systematic research on other stations.Through detailed survey of historical data and the current status of the existinglegacies, the project summarizes and analyzes the original mechanism of theZhalantun Town, classifies its protective historical buildings and proceeds within-depth discussion and research on the artistic characteristics of its architecture. Itinitially puts forth the functional positioning and influential role of Zhalantun alongthe Middle East Railway and town development experienced two momentoushistorical stages, namely the periods of occupation respectively by Tsarist Russia andJapan. During the former period, Zhalantun was classified to be a level3station withits form planned to be the combination of low-density Russian architecture and thenatural scenery such as metropolitan parks and forests etc that composed thebeautiful and lodgeable town environment. The architectures were all of thetraditional Russian styles and unique artistic features. During the latter period,Zhalantun was expanded on the original basis of the town and the road networkstructures and functional patterns were properly changed and optimized. Additionally,public architectures such as schools, shrines, concord associations and townbuildings etc were established and boasted modern style. However after the baptismof the war years and beyond, merely a small amount of them remain today. So the research on the artistic features of the architecture in the paper primarily refers to theresearch on the dependent architectures of Russian style.In brief, the paper targets at Zhalantun that is a dependent territory of theMiddle East Railway for research and makes an analysis of it in the respects of siteselection, town functions, layout form, architectural classification and artisticfeatures so as to unveil its significant role along the line of the Middle East Railwayand provide references for future protection of and academic research on it.