Shenyang

Settlement on the Hun river goes back far into prehistory — the Xinle site in the north of the city preserves a Neolithic village — and a walled town stood here under the Han and again under the Liao and Jin. Its decisive moment came in 1625, when Nurhaci, who had united the Jurchen tribes, moved his capital here and began building a palace. His son Hong Taiji renamed the people Manchu, completed the palace, and in 1636 proclaimed the Qing dynasty in the city the Manchus called Mukden. When the Qing took Beijing in 1644, Mukden became the secondary capital, with the tombs of the first two rulers outside its walls.

Railways and foreign armies shaped the modern city. Russia's railway concession reached it at the turn of the twentieth century, and in 1905 the battle of Mukden, one of the largest land battles of its era, ended with a Japanese victory. The warlord Zhang Zuolin ruled Manchuria from the city until his train was blown up on 4 June 1928. On 18 September 1931 an explosion on the Japanese-run railway outside the city was used as the pretext for the seizure of Manchuria and the creation of Manchukuo, which lasted until 1945.

After 1949 Shenyang became the heart of China's heavy industry. Tiexi district filled with state factories making machine tools, transformers, cables and aircraft parts, and the city's workers were held up as a model. The reforms of the 1990s closed many of those plants and left mass layoffs; since then the district has been rebuilt with housing, parks and museums, and the city has turned towards cars, aerospace, services and its imperial heritage.

Shenyang carries two identities at once: the Manchu capital and the industrial city. The first shows in the palace, the two tomb parks and a strand of Manchu names, food and family history, although the Manchu language has all but disappeared from daily use. The second shows in the vocabulary of factories and work units, in the museums of machinery in Tiexi, and in a civic pride about having built things that the rest of the country used.

The Dongbei manner is at its strongest here — direct, loud, quick with a joke and generous with food and drink. Errenzhuan, the region's bawdy song-and-dance tradition, plays in local theatres, and comedians from Liaoning are familiar across Chinese television. Evening squares fill with line dancing and exercise groups, and parks are used hard in all weathers, including skating and ice games when the lakes freeze.

The city has a substantial Korean-Chinese population, centred on Xita in Heping district, the largest Koreatown in the Northeast, where restaurants, churches, shops and signs in Korean script make a distinct quarter, and Korean-Chinese residents live alongside South Korean businesspeople and students. Russian traders and students add another layer near the universities. Banquet customs are taken seriously: guests are seated by rank, the host orders generously, and toasts circulate until the meal ends.

The 2020 census counted just over nine million people in the municipality, making Shenyang the largest city in the Northeast by urban population, though Harbin's wider municipality holds more. Most live in blocks of flats heated by district systems from October to April, and the metro and bus network carries them between the old centre, the western industrial districts and the new areas south of the Hun river.

The economy has shifted from state heavy industry towards vehicle manufacturing — the city is a major car-making centre — along with aerospace, machinery, chemicals, software and a large service and retail sector. Universities and hospitals are among the biggest employers, and the surrounding farmland of the Liaohe plain feeds markets and food processing. The legacy of the 1990s layoffs remains in older neighbourhoods, and like the rest of the Northeast the city has an ageing population and steady outward migration of the young.

The daily rhythm is set by the cold. Winter life runs between heated flats, malls, markets and hotpot restaurants, with early darkness and thick coats; the brief summer brings the whole city outdoors to barbecue stalls, beer tables on the pavement and parks that stay busy until late. Weekend habits are domestic: family meals, parks, and trips out to the hills at Qipanshan.

Shenyang eats in the full Dongbei manner, with large plates meant for sharing. Dumplings are the local pride — the city's best-known dumpling house was founded in 1829 — and are boiled, steamed or fried and filled with pork and cabbage, lamb, or three-delicacy mixtures. Guobaorou, pork fried in batter and coated in a sweet-and-sour glaze, di san xian of potato, aubergine and green pepper, and stews of pork with potato-starch noodles fill most menus. Suancai, fermented Chinese cabbage, is cooked with white pork and blood sausage through the winter.

Barbecue is the city's evening habit. Skewers of lamb, offal, mushrooms and bread are grilled over charcoal at pavement tables, eaten with beer and cold dishes, and the season runs as long as the weather allows. Hotpot takes over when it does not. Street snacks include grilled squid, stuffed pancakes, roasted sweet potatoes and, in winter, frozen pears and candied haws on sticks.

Two other traditions are easy to find. The Korean quarter of Xita serves cold buckwheat noodles, grilled beef, kimchi, rice cakes and the Korean-Chinese dishes that have become part of the city's own food culture. Manchu sweets survive in saqima, a soft slab of fried dough strands bound with syrup, sold in bakeries across the city and eaten with tea.