Jiangqiao Fort East Bank Blockhouse

On the east bank of the Nenjiang River, massive slabs of shattered concrete and overturned stone foundations lie scattered across the landscape. These are the remains of the Jiangqiao Fort East Bank Blockhouse. Tsarist Russia built these fortifications between 1898 and 1901. As engineers pushed the Chinese Eastern Railway through a quiet Daur fishing village, they constructed this stronghold to guard the new railway bridge. The builders used thick reinforced concrete and dense stone masonry, equipping the walls with numerous loopholes to give defenders a complete, 360-degree field of fire over the river and its banks.

Decades later, the site became a focal point of resistance. In the autumn of 1932, Chinese General Su Bingwen launched an uprising against the invading Japanese army and the puppet Manchukuo government. Using the bridge area as a stronghold, his forces held off heavily armed Japanese troops for nearly two months.

The east bank blockhouses survived the wars of the twentieth century. Eventually, nature and modernization brought them down. In 1998, a catastrophic flood undermined the primary blockhouse, toppling its massive stone base and fracturing its concrete shell into the large pieces visible today. In 2010, the Harbin Railway Bureau dismantled the upper section of the second blockhouse to ensure the safety of the adjacent, still-operational railway line. Today, these weathered ruins rest quietly beside the water. They offer visitors a physical connection to a century of imperial ambition, fierce resistance, and the slow reclamation of the landscape by the river itself.