Sun Yat-sen’s Industrial Plan, written in 1918 and 1919, called for a railway hub he named Dongzhen, to be built south-west of where the Nen and Songhua rivers meet, like a spider’s nest at the centre of its web; Songyuan, founded in 1992, stands roughly there.
孙中山在一九一八至一九一九年写成的《实业计划》中,提议在嫩江与松花江合流处的西南建一座名为”东镇”的铁路中枢,”犹蜘蛛巢之于蜘蛛网”;一九九二年设立的松原市,大致就坐落在那里。
The plan was forgotten until a 2001 CCTV programme on Sun rediscovered it; the city itself was approved by the State Council on 6 June 1992.
这一设想后来被人遗忘,直到二零零一年中央电视台为孙中山制作纪念节目时才被重新发现;松原市本身则由国务院于一九九二年六月六日批准设立。
According to People’s Daily, the Olympic torch passed through Songyuan on 15 July 2008, run by 110 torchbearers over 8.25 kilometres from the Olympic Culture Park to Dongzhen Square on the Songhua’s north bank, after 2,008 horse-head fiddle players opened the leg with a performance later recorded by Guinness. Songyuan was Jilin’s second stop, after Changchun. In 2007 the National Astronomical Observatory named minor planet 23686 Songyuan, discovered at Xinglong in 1997, after the city.
据《人民日报》报道,二零零八年七月十五日,奥运火炬在松原传递,由一百一十名火炬手跑完八点二五公里,从奥林匹克文化公园起跑,终点设在松花江北岸的东镇广场;起跑仪式上,两千零八把马头琴齐奏,后来被吉尼斯世界纪录收录。松原是火炬在吉林的第二站,第一站是长春。二零零七年,国家天文台将一九九七年在兴隆发现的23686号小行星命名为”松原星”。
Oil, Fish and Zero-Carbon Crude
石油、鱼与”零碳原油”
Songyuan was built on oil. Well Fu 27 struck commercial oil at Fuyu on 29 September 1959, and the oilfield that grew from it, now Jilin Oilfield, was formally founded on 17 January 1961, according to Economic Reference News; its 2024 output was 4.526 million tonnes of oil and gas equivalent, according to the Jilin Daily.
松原因油而建。据《经济参考报》报道,一九五九年九月二十九日,扶27井在扶余喷出工业油流,由此发展起来的油田即今日的吉林油田,于一九六一年一月十七日正式成立;据《吉林日报》报道,二零二四年吉林油田油气产量当量为四百五十二点六万吨。
On the ice of Chagan Lake, the Xinli 16 platform, described by the Jilin Daily as Asia’s largest onshore oil production platform, produced China’s first “zero-carbon” crude in 2023. By the end of 2024 the oilfield had injected and stored more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide underground, using much of it for enhanced oil recovery, according to PetroChina’s 2024 reporting.
据《吉林日报》报道,冬季查干湖冰原上的吉林油田新立16号平台,被称为亚洲陆地最大的采油平台,二零二三年产出了中国第一桶”零碳”原油。据中国石油二零二四年度报告披露,截至二零二四年底,吉林油田累计向地下注入并封存二氧化碳超过三百五十万吨,其中相当一部分用于提高原油采收率。
Chagan Lake’s winter fishing, which dates from the Liao and Jin dynasties and is on China’s national intangible heritage list, ends each year with an auction of the first fish. The auction began in the early 2000s: the fish fetched ¥1,388 in 2003, ¥2,999,999 in both 2020 and 2021, and ¥1,699,999 in January 2026, when JD.com bought a 19-kilogram fish, according to China Jilin Network and China News Service.
据中国吉林网和中国新闻社报道,查干湖冬捕可追溯至辽金时期,已列入国家级非物质文化遗产名录,每年开捕都要拍卖”头鱼”。这一拍卖始于二十一世纪初:二零零三年成交价为一千三百八十八元,二零二零年和二零二一年均为二百九十九万九千九百九十九元,二零二六年一月,京东以一百六十九万九千九百九十九元拍得一条重十九公斤的头鱼。
A Corn Belt with a Shrinking Population
人口不断减少的玉米带
Songyuan produced 8.1405 million tonnes of grain in 2025, up 2.2 percent, including 6.7483 million tonnes of corn and 1.2316 million of rice, and its output has exceeded 7.5 million tonnes every year since 2021, according to the city’s statistical communiqués.
据松原市统计公报显示,二零二五年全市粮食总产量八百一十四万零五百吨,增长百分之二点二,其中玉米六百七十四万八千三百吨,稻谷一百二十三万一千六百吨;自二零二一年以来,粮食产量每年都超过七百五十万吨。
GDP reached ¥103.06 billion that year, up 4.2 percent, with per capita output of ¥49,727; farming, forestry, animal husbandry and fishing made up 24.8 percent of output. The permanent population was 2.055 million, down from 2.09 million a year earlier, with 7,000 births against 18,600 deaths.
同年全市GDP达一千零三十点六亿元,同比增长百分之四点二,人均产值四万九千七百二十七元,农林牧渔业占比百分之二十四点八;年末常住人口二百零五点五万人,上年为二百零九万人,全年出生七千人,死亡一万八千六百人。
Getting to Songyuan means a train from Changchun that takes about 1 hour 10 minutes.
前往松原,可从长春乘坐动车,约一小时十分钟即可抵达。
Dongzhen Square, which bears the name Sun gave his hub, lies across the 2,500-metre Songhua River Bridge on the river’s north bank, according to People’s Daily.
据《人民日报》报道,沿用孙中山为其铁路中枢所取之名的东镇广场,位于松花江北岸,需经长达两千五百米的松花江大桥前往。
