Liaoyang Tuoshi Tobacco Co., Ltd.

In 1905, Japanese employees of the South Manchuria Railway moved into a newly built, three-story brick-and-wood dormitory in Liaoyang. These men lived in quiet, single-person quarters, surrounded by the stark lines of Western-influenced modern Japanese architecture. Today, this structure stands in Baita Park, within the Baita Historical and Cultural Street of Liaoning Province. Locals call it "Yanjuan Lou," the Cigarette Building, a name earned during its sudden industrial transformation.

In 1934, the Gongshi Tobacco Company, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, leased the red-brick building to capture the Northeast Chinese market. They established the Liaoyang Cigarette Factory inside. The residential halls soon echoed with the rhythmic, mechanical clatter of six cigarette-making machines. Workers handled raw paper and cured tobacco leaves, filling the rooms with a heavy, sweet aroma. This industrial phase ended in 1938. After the Qidong Tobacco Company obtained legal production rights in Manchukuo, the parent company closed the Liaoyang factory and sold its machinery and raw materials to the Qidong Tobacco Company, which had established a new factory in Yingkou in 1939. The building survived these shifts, later housing military forces after the liberation of China. Soldiers walked the same creaking wooden floors where factory workers and railway clerks once stood.

Today, the building houses the Liaoyang Cultural Celebrity Hall. Visitors to Baita District can look up at the tall red chimney that still pierces the blue sky. The rough, sun-warmed exterior walls hold the memories of lonely railway clerks, busy factory hands, stationed soldiers, and modern writers. It remains a quiet monument to the complex industrial currents of twentieth-century Northeast China.