Tonghua was Manchukuo’s last capital, for nine days in August 1945, after the Kwantung Army ordered the government to retreat there from Changchun, and Puyi read his abdication edict at the iron-mining village of Dalizigou, then in Tonghua’s jurisdiction and now part of Baishan.
通化是伪满洲国的最后一座”国都”,时间只有一九四五年八月的九天:关东军命令伪满政府由长春撤往通化,而溥仪宣读退位诏书的地点,是当时隶属通化、如今归白山管辖的铁矿小镇大栗子。
The Kwantung Army had chosen Tonghua because it had built permanent fortifications in the mountains there, and Puyi’s train reached Dalizigou on 13 August, where he lodged in the house of a former Japanese mine manager. He heard the Japanese surrender on the radio on 15 August and read his abdication edict after midnight on the 17th, in the mine company’s technical training school.
关东军之所以选中通化,是因为那里的山区修有大量永久性工事;溥仪乘坐的火车于八月十三日抵达大栗子,他住进了原日本矿长的住宅。八月十五日,他在收音机里听到日本投降的消息;十七日午夜之后,他在矿业会社的技工养成所里宣读了退位诏书。
According to People’s Daily, which carried an attendant’s memoir, Dalizigou was a town of only a few hundred people that suddenly became Manchukuo’s temporary capital. Puyi was captured at Shenyang airport by Soviet troops on 19 August.
据《人民日报》刊发的一位随侍人员的回忆,大栗子当时是个只有几百人的小镇,一下子成了伪满洲国的临时首都。八月十九日,溥仪在沈阳机场被苏联军队俘获。
A Steel Takeover that Ended in a Killing
一场以命案收场的钢厂重组
Tonghua Iron and Steel, founded in June 1958, was Jilin’s largest steelmaker. When Beijing’s private Jianlong Group bought 36.19 percent in December 2005, workers were not consulted, according to the Economic Observer’s reporting at the time, and within a year those aged 52 or with 30 years’ service were moved to early retirement, some on ¥600 a month instead of ¥1,000, while managers’ pay rose many times over. When Jianlong’s 30-odd executives abruptly left in March 2009, firecrackers popped in the main square for a day and a night; by June the plant had made its first profit, of more than ¥60 million, and on 22 July the provincial state-assets commission announced that Jianlong would return and take control, again without consulting the workforce.
通化钢铁始建于一九五八年六月,是吉林省最大的钢铁联合企业。据《经济观察报》当年的报道,二零零五年十二月北京的民营企业建龙集团入股百分之三十六点一九时,并未征求职工意见;此后一年内,五十二岁或工龄满三十年的职工全部内退,有人的内退工资由一千多元降到六百元,而管理层的薪酬却成倍增长。二零零九年三月,建龙派驻的三十多名高管突然撤出,民主广场上鞭炮响了一天一夜;六月,工厂首次盈利六千多万元;七月二十二日,吉林省国资委宣布建龙将重新入主并控股,职工事先同样毫不知情。
On 24 July more than 400 people were at the gates by 8.35am, and by late morning Chen Guojun, Jianlong’s newly appointed general manager, had been pulled from a platform and beaten. A worker told the paper the crowd grew to tens of thousands, blocking the rail lines and shutting down blast furnaces. A rumour that Chen had said 6,000 workers would replace the existing staff and the rest would go back to farming was known to almost everyone locally, though the paper found nobody who had heard him say it.
七月二十四日上午八点三十五分,厂门口已聚集四百多人;临近中午,建龙新任命的总经理陈国军被人从台上拉下殴打。一位职工告诉记者,人群后来增至数万,堵住了铁路线,多座高炉被迫休风。当地几乎人人都听说陈国军讲过”要用六千工人取代现有职工,其余的都回去种地”,但记者走访多人,无人亲耳听到。
A provincial official announced a suspension at 3.30pm, the state-assets chief announced termination at 5.15pm, and at 7.48pm a notice was read out that Jianlong would never again take a stake. Chen was freed by police at about 11pm but died, and the post-mortem found a fractured skull and bleeding inside it.
下午三点半,省里的代表宣布暂缓执行;五点十五分,省国资委主任宣布终止重组;晚七点四十八分,宣读了建龙永不再入股通钢的通知。陈国军于夜里十一点左右被警方救出,但抢救无效去世,尸检显示颅骨骨折、颅内出血。
In July 2010 Shougang took about 77.6 percent of Tonghua Steel, according to Jiemian News, and the company went through a court-supervised restructuring in 2019, according to Shougang’s own profile.
据界面新闻报道,二零一零年七月,首钢取得通钢约百分之七十七点六的股权;据首钢官网介绍,通钢于二零一九年通过司法重整化解债务。
From Goguryeo to Insulin
从高句丽到胰岛素
The city government calls Tonghua the birthplace of both Goguryeo culture and Manchu shaman culture. It says the Goguryeo kingdom kept its capital at Ji’an for 425 years, and describes the Goguryeo royal city and tombs as the only independently inscribed World Heritage site in the north-east rated 5A.
通化市政府称通化是高句丽文化和满族萨满文化的发源地,并称高句丽王国在集安设都四百二十五年,高句丽王城、王陵是东北地区唯一一处独立申报成功世界文化遗产的5A级景区。
Medicine, not steel, is now the city’s biggest industry: pharmaceuticals contributed 50.7 percent of above-scale industrial value added in 2022, against 14.7 percent for metallurgy, according to the city’s statistical communiqué. Tonghua Dongbao’s human insulin holds the top share of China’s market, according to the Tonghua county government, and the city put its ginseng industry’s output at ¥40.3 billion in 2023, according to its government work report.
如今最大的产业是医药,而不是钢铁:据通化市统计公报显示,二零二二年医药工业占全市规模以上工业增加值的百分之五十点七,冶金工业仅占百分之十四点七。据通化县政府介绍,通化东宝的人胰岛素产品市场占有率稳居全国第一;据市政府工作报告,通化二零二三年人参产业产值为四百零三亿元。
According to Tonghua’s 2024 statistical communiqué, GDP was ¥57.679 billion, up 3.9 percent, and the permanent population was 1.1697 million, down 30,700, with 5,300 births against 13,300 deaths.
据通化市二零二四年统计公报显示,全年GDP为五百七十六点七九亿元,同比增长百分之三点九;年末常住人口一百一十六点九七万人,比上年末减少三点零七万人,全年出生五千三百人,死亡一万三千三百人。
Tonghua joined the national high-speed rail network only on 28 September 2025, with Baishan and Fushun, when the Shenyang–Baihe section of the Shenyang–Jiamusi line opened, according to Xinhua; trains now reach Shenyang North in about an hour.
据新华社报道,通化直到二零二五年九月二十八日才与白山、抚顺一道接入全国高铁网,当天沈佳高铁沈白段开通运营;如今从通化乘高铁到沈阳北站,约需一小时。
Three buildings from those nine days still survive at Dalizigou, in what is now Baishan’s Linjiang: the former mine manager’s house where Puyi lived, the two-storey house of his brother Pujie’s family and the training school where he abdicated, according to the Jilin Daily.
据《吉林日报》报道,那九天留下的三处建筑,至今仍保存在如今归白山临江管辖的大栗子:溥仪居住的原矿长住宅、其弟溥杰一家居住的两层楼房,以及他宣读退位诏书的技工养成所。
