Longsha Park

In 1904, Heilongjiang General Cheng Dequan looked at a military warehouse in the southwest corner of Qiqihar and decided the northern frontier needed a garden. The wind-swept environment of the northeast seemed hostile to classical aesthetics. Cheng repurposed the garrison's foundation to build what is now Longsha Park. The name itself comes from a poem by Li Bai describing soldiers sleeping in the “dragon sands” of the frontier. This space began as a military encampment and gradually evolved into a site of civic cultivation.

The park's central feature, Labor Lake, covers twenty hectares. It was originally a small pond. On Sundays throughout the mid-twentieth century, the citizens of Qiqihar gathered to dig the earth by hand. They expanded the water basin and piled the excavated soil to create an artificial hill. The topography of the park is a direct record of communal physical exertion. During the deep freeze of January and February, the lake hardens into a solid sheet of ice, supporting horse-drawn sleds and hosting a local ice lantern festival.

On top of the hand-made mountain stands Wangjiang Pavilion. Constructed in 1907, the classical wooden structure observes the surrounding willows and the ripples of the lake. Decades later, figures like Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping would stand on its balconies to survey the expanding city. Nearby, the Shoushan Shrine, built in 1926, memorializes General Shoushan, anchoring the landscape in the region's history of border conflicts.

The most striking architectural hybrid in the park is the Library, completed in 1930. Designed by a German engineer, the building features twenty-six white columns supporting a roof of green glazed tiles decorated with tiger heads and twin dragons. The walls are exceptionally thick. This heavy masonry regulates the interior temperature, insulating over 120,000 ancient manuscripts—including rare Tang and Song dynasty editions—from the severe Manchurian winters and summer heat. The structure functions as a climatic vault for cultural memory.

Longsha Park covers sixty-four hectares of the modern city center. It holds the scars of historical wars, the physical labor of its residents, and the fragile paper records of an empire. The frontier soldiers of Li Bai's poem once slept in the dust. Today, the people of Qiqihar walk along the shores of a lake they dug themselves, moving through a landscape shaped entirely by human intention against the cold edge of the continent.