In May 1918, the South Manchuria Railway Company established the Anshan Iron Works in Liaoning Province, beginning a century of heavy industrialization. The facility became the Showa Steel Works in June 1933. It grew into a massive integrated complex, utilizing the Krupp-Renn process licensed from German steelmakers in 1937. By 1941, the plant produced 1.75 million tons of iron bars annually, feeding the Japanese wartime machine with raw metal.

The physical remains of this empire still stand. The administrative headquarters, completed in 1933 and known as the Dabailou, features a facade of yellow-glazed ceramic tiles. Originally three stories tall, builders added a fourth floor in the early 1950s. Nearby, the Jingjingliao Dormitory, built in 1920 by the Tokyo Construction Company, rises with an unusual hollow, triangular floor plan under a pitched timber roof.

Beneath these structures lies a history of human struggle. By 1942, the workforce included over 4,000 Chinese forced laborers, alongside thousands of others who faced extreme wage disparities. In 1935, a Japanese worker earned 79.3 yen monthly, while a Chinese worker received 17.4 yen, and temporary laborers survived on a mere 0.37 yen. Seventeen-year-old Jiang Xingbang arrived in 1942 to work as a cast iron worker under these conditions. Chinese laborers resisted through quiet sabotage, sleeping or chatting to slow production. They endured harsh rations of bitter oak-meal bread while working twelve-hour shifts.

During the air raids of 1944, Japanese forces burned thick asphalt in open pits, filling the sky with acrid black smoke to blind American B-29 bombers. When Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, the plant's eight active blast furnaces were suddenly vented, releasing a deafening, collective scream of steam into the air.

Following the war, Soviet forces dismantled the complex, shipping over 70,000 tons of machinery eastward. Yet, the site endured. Reorganized as the state-owned Ansteel Group, the plant restarted production on July 9, 1949. Today, the deactivated 1917 No. 1 Blast Furnace stands inside the Ansteel Group Museum. Its rusted iron shell stands as a physical record of the hands that built, resisted, and rebuilt this industrial giant.