Former Site of Puppet Manchukuo Xinjing Chihaya Hospital

In 1933, the South Manchuria Railway commissioned a specialized infectious disease facility on Xi'an Avenue. Opened on May 1, 1935, the building featured a symmetrical, horizontal H-shaped layout. Architects designed a central corridor with overhead transom windows to catch the daylight, terminating the wings in south-facing sunrooms. Semi-circular arches, which locals called moon gates, framed the entrance and upper windows. On the roof, a heavy steel framework held massive water tanks.

Behind this orderly concrete facade lay a darker reality. The facility, eventually named the Puppet Manchukuo Xinjing Chihaya Hospital, operated as a peripheral site for Japanese biological warfare units, including Unit 731 and Unit 100. During the 1940 plague outbreak, the hospital became a site for human experimentation. Historical records document the human cost. In July 1939, a Soviet intelligence agent named Sun Liansheng died of dysentery inside these walls. In 1942, the Japanese police injected the anti-colonial editor Zhao Renchang with toxic pathogens before his release; he died five months later of destroyed lungs.

Following the 1946 Soviet withdrawal and the 1948 liberation of Changchun, the building underwent a radical transformation. In 1953, the newly established Changchun Institute of Biological Products converted the hospital into a staff dormitory. The former quarantine wards became homes. Newlyweds occupied the first floor, while single researchers lived on the second. For decades, the smell of cooking food drifted down the central corridors, and residents placed flowerpots on the windowsills. When the last residents moved out, they left behind old kettles and vintage suitcases.

Years of neglect followed. Rainwater rotted the second-story wooden floors, causing partial ceiling collapses and forcing authorities to board up the structure. In 2024, a seven-million-RMB rescue project began. Craftsmen used traditional mortise-and-tenon joinery to restore the timber framework, adhering to the principle of repairing the old to look old. Today, the building stands as a historical warning base, preserving the memory of wartime atrocities while anchoring the neighborhood's modern identity.