The Northeast (Dongbei)

The north-east was for most of history outside the Chinese heartland, home to hunting, farming and herding peoples. The Korean-speaking kingdom of Goguryeo ruled the south of Jilin from its capital near modern Ji'an, whose tombs and city ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and later the Balhae kingdom held the region. The Jurchens founded their Jin dynasty near Harbin in 1115 and went on to conquer northern China.

Their descendants, renamed Manchus, rose under Nurhaci in the early 17th century. His son Hong Taiji ruled from Shenyang, then called Mukden, where he completed the palace his father had begun, and proclaimed the Qing dynasty in 1636; eight years later the Manchus took Beijing. The Qing long closed the homeland to Han settlers, but from the late 19th century millions of migrants from Shandong and Hebei poured north to farm the black-soil plains.

Railways then transformed the region. Russia built the Chinese Eastern Railway across it from 1898, founding Harbin as a rail town and leasing Dalian and Port Arthur, today's Lüshun. Japan won the south in the war of 1904–05, staged the Mukden Incident in 1931 and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, with the last emperor Puyi installed at Changchun. Japan's Unit 731 carried out human experiments near Harbin. After Soviet troops invaded in 1945, the Communists won decisive civil-war campaigns here. Under Mao the Northeast became China's heavy-industry base, with Anshan's steel and the Daqing oilfield, and since the 1990s it has struggled with closed factories and a shrinking population.

Northeasterners — Dongbei ren — have a national reputation for being tall, blunt, generous and funny, and their Mandarin, close to the standard language but with its own vocabulary and drawl, is the voice of much Chinese television comedy. Errenzhuan, a bawdy song-and-dance duet with quick-fire jokes, is the region's own popular theatre, and yangge dancing with fans and silk fills squares at festivals.

The region is ethnically mixed. The Manchus are numerous but their language has nearly vanished, surviving among a few elderly speakers. The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in eastern Jilin, centred on Yanji, has bilingual signs, Korean food and close ties to both Koreas. Small peoples such as the Hezhen, known for clothes made of fish skin, and the Oroqen hunters live along the northern rivers and forests.

Russian influence lingers in Harbin's architecture, bread, sausage and a fondness for classical music — the city has a long-standing summer music festival. Winter shapes customs: the heated brick bed, the kang, remains in village homes, winter swimmers break the ice on the Songhua, and families store cabbage for pickling in autumn. Drinking is serious sport at dinners, where refusing a toast needs a good excuse.

Around 95 million people live in the three provinces. Shenyang and Dalian are Liaoning's main cities, Changchun is the capital of Jilin, and Harbin, with about 10 million in its wider municipality, is the capital of Heilongjiang. Many smaller industrial cities, such as Anshan, Fushun and Daqing, grew around single mines, mills or oilfields.

The economy mixes heavy industry — steel, cars at Changchun's First Automobile Works, machinery, shipbuilding in Dalian and oil at Daqing — with some of China's largest farms, producing soybeans, maize and rice, including prized Wuchang rice. The collapse of state enterprises in the 1990s left layoffs and ageing towns, and the region's population has fallen as young people move south for work and birth rates stay very low.

The seasons set the pace. Summer evenings are long and spent outdoors at barbecue stalls and beer gardens; winters are spent indoors, in heated flats and hot-pot restaurants, with the ice festival and New Year the high points. Dalian, with its beaches, trams and milder climate, feels different from the inland cities.

Dongbei food is hearty cold-country cooking. Luandun stews simmer pork, potatoes and vegetables together, and zhurou dun fentiao is pork belly stewed with glass noodles made from potato starch. Suancai, fermented Chinese cabbage, is eaten with white pork and blood sausage or in hotpot. Di san xian, "three treasures of the earth", is a stir-fry of potato, aubergine and green pepper, and jiaozi dumplings are eaten in huge numbers.

Guobaorou, battered slices of pork in a sweet-and-sour glaze, is credited to a Harbin chef of the late Qing era, and Harbin also keeps a Russian inheritance: large round dalieba loaves, smoked red sausage, kvass and ice cream eaten on Central Street in winter. Harbin Beer, founded in 1900, is among the oldest breweries in China, and beer is drunk in large quantities with barbecue skewers.

Dalian and the Liaodong coast eat sea cucumber, clams, prawns and grilled squid. Yanbian contributes Korean cold noodles, kimchi, rice cakes and grilled beef. Changbai's forests supply ginseng, pine nuts, wild mushrooms and wood-ear fungus, sold in every market in the area.

Harbin is the winter showpiece. The Ice and Snow World on the north bank of the Songhua builds illuminated palaces from river ice each year, the Sun Island park displays giant snow sculptures, and the Ice and Snow Festival officially opens in early January. In the city, Central Street's Russian facades lead to the river, and the green-domed Church of St Sophia is now an architecture museum. Siberian tigers are bred at a park outside the city, and the Unit 731 site is a museum.

Jilin province has Changbai Mountain, the volcano on the North Korean border, whose crater holds Heaven Lake, draining north over a high waterfall; the north and west slopes are the main approaches from the Chinese side. Jilin city is known for its winter rime ice on the riverside trees, Changchun for Puyi's Manchukuo palace, and Ji'an for its Goguryeo tombs.

Shenyang's Imperial Palace, smaller than Beijing's and with Manchu and Mongol touches, is the start of Liaoning's sights, along with the early Qing tombs and the 18 September museum. Dalian has seafront drives, Russian and Japanese quarters and the battlefields of Lüshun. The Manchurian rail towns keep the railway's legacy, from Harbin's old station district to Hengdaohezi's Russian-built wooden houses, while Dandong looks across the Yalu river to North Korea.