Dandong

The lower Yalu has long been a crossing point between the Chinese plain and the Korean peninsula, and the town that became Dandong grew as a river port on the traffic between the Manchurian interior and the Korean peninsula. The area became known as Andong county in 1876, a name the city kept for most of the following century, and it was opened as a treaty port in the 1900s.

The first bridge across the river was completed in 1911, linking the Japanese-run railways of Manchuria with those of colonial Korea and turning Andong into a junction of the two systems. A second, heavier bridge followed in 1943. The city grew on customs work, timber mills and the railway, with Japanese and Korean residents alongside the Chinese majority, until Japan's defeat in 1945.

War defined the next decade. When Chinese forces entered the Korean War in late 1950, Andong was the main crossing point, and American bombing destroyed the older bridge, whose Chinese half still stands with its ruined spans ending over the water. The city was rebuilt in the 1950s, renamed Dandong in 1965, and has lived since as China's principal land gateway to North Korea, with trade and traffic rising and falling according to relations across the river. In recent decades it has added light industry, tourism to the bridges and the Great Wall section upstream, and a seafood economy based on the river mouth.

Dandong's character comes from the border. The far bank is visible from the promenade, boats run along the mid-river line, and the presence of another country a few hundred metres away is simply part of daily life rather than a drama. Residents are used to visitors who come to look, and they are also used to keeping their own counsel: the frontier is a working state facility and conversation about it tends to be careful.

The city is culturally mixed in a quiet way. Korean-Chinese families have lived here for generations, Korean script appears on restaurant signs, and Korean dishes have become ordinary local food. Trade with North Korea and, in some periods, groups of workers and students from across the river have added another layer. Behind this, the manners are Dongbei: direct, warm, generous at table and fond of long dinners with toasts.

Outdoor life matters in the short warm season. The riverfront promenade is the city's living room in summer, with evening walkers, fishermen, dancers and food stalls; in the hills, the paths of the wooded parks and the climb at Fenghuang Mountain are busy at weekends. Autumn brings chestnut and fruit harvests from the surrounding countryside, and the city keeps a strong sense of having been rebuilt from the war years, expressed in its memorials and museums.

About 2.2 million people live in the prefecture-level city, which takes in a large area of hills, orchards and coast; roughly half of them live in the urban core on the river, and Dandong feels like a medium-sized town rather than a metropolis. Most residents live in blocks of flats on the flat ground between the river and the hills.

Cross-border trade, customs and logistics underpin the economy and make it unusually sensitive to politics and sanctions, with quiet years and busy ones. Around it sit fishing and shellfish farming at the river mouth, bus building — the Yellow Sea marque is made here — machinery, electronics and other light manufacturing, and farming in the hills behind. Tourism from elsewhere in China is a steady earner, focused on the bridges and the border view.

Life runs at a slower pace than in Shenyang or Dalian. Markets open early, the riverfront fills in the evening in summer, and winter moves everything indoors. Like the rest of the region, Dandong has an ageing population and sees young people leave for the larger cities, and its riverside promenades and restored older streets are part of an effort to make more of what the setting offers.

Seafood comes first. The river mouth and the Yellow Sea supply clams, razor clams, cockles, crab, prawns, squid and small fish, cooked simply — steamed, boiled or grilled — so that the freshness carries the dish, and shellfish are often chosen live and priced by weight. Yalu river fish appear on menus along the upriver road, and dried and salted seafood fills the markets. The yellow clams grown at the river mouth are the local speciality, registered as a national geographical indication, and they also go into the city's best-known snack, fried fork seeds.

Korean cooking is woven into local food. Cold buckwheat noodles in chilled broth, grilled beef, kimchi, rice cakes in spicy sauce and soybean stews are eaten as everyday meals rather than as foreign cuisine, and Korean-Chinese restaurants are scattered across the centre. Alongside them the Dongbei staples hold their place: dumplings, pork and potato stews, fermented cabbage with white pork, and guobaorou in its sweet-and-sour glaze.

The countryside supplies the rest. Chestnuts roasted in autumn, strawberries from the greenhouses around the city, apples and pears from the hills, and honey and wild mushrooms are all sold at the roadside and in the markets. Charcoal barbecue with beer is the standard summer evening, taken at pavement tables near the river, and hotpot takes over for the long cold months.