At No. 44 Xiaoheyan Road, the European-style masonry of the former library building holds the quiet weight of Northeast China’s first medical university. Scottish medical missionary Dugald Christie laid these foundations, transforming his 1883 Shengjing Clinic into a formal institution that opened its doors on March 28, 1912. Today, a six-meter preservation zone extends from the foundational walls of the east and west protected buildings, creating a physical boundary between modern Shenyang and a century of medical history.

The stones remember the friction of daily discovery. Inside the original physics and bacteriology laboratories, early students handled cold glass slides. The anatomy and specimen rooms carried the sharp, sterile scent of preservation. Between 1912 and 1948, 531 students passed through these halls across 31 graduating classes. A surviving 1917 silver-gelatin photograph captures 19 faces from the first graduating class. Among them sits Guo Weifan, a young doctor whose great-granddaughter, Wang Weiwei, now walks these exact grounds as an employee of the Liaoning Cancer Hospital, established on this site in 1974. She collects the scattered paper trails of her ancestor's education, tracing the faded ink of old diplomas.

The institution absorbed the shocks of the twentieth century, changing its name from Fengtian Medical Specialized School in 1917 to Shengjing Medical University in 1938, and finally merging into China Medical University in June 1949. Through decades of political upheaval, these brick walls sheltered early local student movements and clandestine party meetings. The Viceroys of the Three Northeast Provinces—Xu Shichang, Xiliang, and Zhao Erxun—funded this vision alongside British donors, binding international resources into the mortar.

The surviving structures stand as silent witnesses. The kiln-fired bricks and arched windows frame a legacy of healing. Visitors touching the rough exterior walls connect directly with the hands of the 1912 builders and the generations of physicians who first brought Western medicine to the region.