Fengtian Wireless Radio Station, Shenyang

In December 1929, the airwaves above Shenyang carried a single news program broadcast in five languages: Chinese, Russian, Japanese, English, and French. This was the work of Cao Enfux, the first director of the Fengtian Wireless Radio Station, who used this multilingual broadcast to report on the Sino-Soviet conflict.

Founded in late 1927 by warlords Zhang Zuolin and Zhang Xueliang, the station at No. 10 Guangrong Street began broadcasting on January 1, 1928, under the call sign COMK. It sent signals to 850 local households. During the Japanese occupation after 1931, the station became a tool of the Kwantung Army. Resistance lived within its walls. Underground Communist agent Jia Yugang used his position here to gather secret intelligence, eventually organizing Chinese staff to reclaim the station on August 17, 1945, just after Japan's surrender.

The physical structure reflects these shifting tides of power. The original nine-bay Western-style flat-roofed house was expanded in October 1938 by the Manchurian Telegraph and Telephone Company. The builders erected a reinforced concrete structure covering over 1,000 square meters, blending modern engineering with traditional Chinese elements like glazed tile roofs, rafters, and decorative brackets. Inside, a 2-kilowatt transmitter imported from the Paris Plant in France hummed, making it the most powerful station in China at its launch.

In November 2014, during museum preparations, workers investigated a persistent patch of mold on a basement wall. They drilled through the concrete and discovered a sealed, unrecorded subterranean chamber. The 120-square-meter room was flooded with over a meter of dark, silent water. Four heavy concrete beams spanned the ceiling, and broken red bricks lay submerged at the bottom. No military archives or blueprints record why this secret bunker was built.

Today, the building stands preserved within the Liaoning Radio and Television courtyard. The quiet, flooded chamber beneath the floorboards remains a mystery, while the broadcast tower above continues to symbolize the moment Shenyang first joined the global airwaves.