Cultural Meeting Points

While it could be argued that just about any place on earth is a meeting point for various cultures, there are a few places in the world that represent what I see as “macro” cultural meeting points, where ideas from widely different cultural spheres come together. Often, these cultural entrepôts are more important for the flow of ideas out of them into the various cultural heartlands that mix in these cosmopolitan centers. Cities such as Beirut, Istanbul, Shanghai, and St. Petersburg all come to mind. Harbin, the provincial capital of the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang, is such a cultural meeting point.

If I properly understand the history of Harbin, the city itself was founded by Russian traders and officials in the late nineteenth century, after the treaties of 1858-1860 that opened much of China to western trade (similar treaties gave Britain, France, and other western powers similar influence over areas of the eastern coast of China, including much of Shanghai). The Russian influence is still palpable in the city center, not so much in the sort of faux Russian culture of the shops and restaurants geared toward the legions of Chinese tourists, but in the distinctive fin de siècle architecture that can be found in so many Russian cities. The looming presence of St. Sophia church seems to represent the heart of both this cultural meeting point as well as the contemporary city of Harbin. It stands at one end of what was once the main axis of the town, the other end being the railway station of the Russian-built Trans-Manchurian railway to Vladivostok. 

A vanished world - Queen and Princesses of a Russian ball in Harbin

Yet like so many things in these cultural meeting points, the forms remain but they are indwelled with different meaning as time passes. St. Sophia is no longer a church, but rather a museum exhibiting photos of old Harbin from a distinctly post-revolutionary Chinese perspective. It seems to serve as well as the symbol of this great Chinese city, adorning billboards and even welcome signs at the airport. This warm Saturday morning found it serving as the backdrop for several Chinese couples in their western-style wedding finery. It remains a meeting point. 

St. Sophia Church and the central square of Harbin

While the influence of Harbin in the flow of ideas between west and east in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century pails in comparison to such centers as Tianjin and Shanghai, it served as an important cultural entrepôt between Russia and China, with influence flowing in both directions as the two societies came to know one another. It remains, perhaps, such a meeting point. Russians seem to be about the only “western” tourists that I see, representing perhaps one in every thousand Chinese faces in the city center. While the odd translations and brick-a-brack of the “russkie firmy” (with frequent misspellings, I have to add) may represent a largely vanished Russian culture, the legacy of this intercultural mixing remains strong in booming, globalizing Harbin.