Yanji

The land along the Tumen was long part of the Manchu homeland and was closed by the Qing to settlement, which left it thinly populated forest and farmland. From the 1860s famine and hardship in northern Korea pushed farmers across the river to clear fields on the Chinese bank, and the district they settled became known in Korean as Gando. The Qing eventually accepted the migrants and taxed them, and the Tumen was settled as the border while the Korean farmers stayed on the Chinese bank.

Yanji grew from one of those farming settlements into the administrative centre of the district, and Korean migration continued under Japanese colonial rule in Korea, so that the area came to hold the largest Korean population in China. The region was a centre of anti-Japanese guerrilla activity, and under the puppet state of Manchukuo Yanji became the seat of a province covering the border country.

After 1949 the new government recognised the Korean community as a national minority, and the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region was established on 3 September 1952 with Yanji as its seat, becoming an autonomous prefecture in 1955; Yanbian University had opened three years earlier. Since China and South Korea established relations in 1992, a large share of Yanbian's Korean-Chinese have gone to South Korea or to southern Chinese cities to work, sending money home and leaving many villages emptied. Yanji, meanwhile, has grown, rebuilt its riverfront and gained a high-speed railway.

Yanji is the cultural capital of the Korean-Chinese, and bilingualism is written into daily life: by prefecture rules, signs carry Korean as well as Chinese, schools teach in Korean, and there are Korean-language newspapers, publishing and broadcasting. The result is a city that looks and sounds different from anywhere else in China, with Hangul over noodle shops and a hum of two languages in the markets.

The music and dance of the community are its most visible traditions. The farmers' dance of China's Korean ethnic group, performed with drums, gongs and the long ribbon twirled from a hat, is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and the hourglass changgo drum, the gayageum zither and songs such as Arirang are taught and performed at festivals, weddings and anniversaries. Yanbian University and the prefecture's arts troupes keep the repertoire alive.

Everyday manners mix Korean and northern Chinese habits. Elders are deferred to and served first, meals are shared and noisy, and drinking is a social obligation at which refusing a toast needs an excuse. Football has an unusually strong following for a Chinese city of this size, and the prefecture has long fielded professional teams. South Korean television, pop music and fashion circulate here earlier and more freely than in much of the country, and the city's young people move easily between Korean and Mandarin pop culture.

Yanji is small by Chinese standards, a city of several hundred thousand people in a prefecture of about two million. Ethnic Koreans are a large share of both, though the proportion has fallen steadily as families move abroad for work or to bigger Chinese cities, and the population is ageing. Korean-Chinese, Han and Manchu residents live in the same blocks of flats rather than in separate quarters.

The economy is built on administration, education, health care, retail, transport and trade rather than heavy industry, with cross-border business through Hunchun and Tumen, a national cross-border e-commerce zone and a good deal of South Korean and Taiwanese investment. Tourism matters too, since Yanji is the transport hub for travellers heading towards the mountains and the border towns, and the city has hosted an annual travel fair since 1996. Remittances from relatives working in South Korea have paid for much of the city's new housing.

The rhythm of the year is set by the cold. Winter runs from November to March, with district heating on, thick coats, markets selling pickled cabbage by the tub, and evenings spent in barbecue restaurants and hot-stew houses. Summer turns the city outdoors: riverside squares fill with dancers and card players, and barbecue tables spill onto the pavements until late. Shrinking population and the pull of the coastal cities are the issues residents discuss most.

Yanji's food is Korean cooking as it developed in north-east China, and the city's name travels with it. Yanji cold noodles — lengmian, the Korean naengmyeon — are buckwheat noodles in a chilled beef broth sharpened with vinegar, topped with pear, cucumber, thin beef and half an egg; restaurants across China advertise them as a Yanji dish, and here they are eaten in winter as well as summer.

Barbecue is the other pillar. Charcoal grills set into the table cook beef, marinated pork and, in the local style, beef offal, wrapped in lettuce with raw garlic and soybean paste. Around them come the pickles: kimchi in several forms, radish and cucumber versions, and salted greens, all sold loose by weight in the markets. Rice cakes, either pounded into chewy tteok or fried, appear as snacks and at New Year, and dishes of dried and shredded pollock are a regional favourite.

Northern Chinese food sits alongside it — dumplings, stews of pork and potato, and cumin-heavy skewers — and the two traditions meet in the beer-and-barbecue evenings that fill the streets in summer. Soju and rice wine are drunk with grilled meat, and Harbin beer is common. Breakfast may be soybean-paste soup with rice, or a bakery bun; markets also sell ginseng, wild mushrooms and pine nuts gathered in the forests towards Changbai.