Sitting on the Liaodong Peninsula in north-east China, the second-tier city of Dalian has a complex history. Transformed in 1898 from a small fishing village into a major port city under Russian rule, Dalian passed into Japanese hands in the 1930s before falling under Soviet control after the second world war. In 1950, the USSR handed the city over to the Chinese government.
Dalian’s cityscape reflects this history, with Japanese and Russian architecture surrounded by gleaming new commercial skyscrapers. One of the most famous examples is Russian Street, originally called Engineer Street. [...]
Last November, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) sued the city government in an effort to protect this network of historic streets. A month earlier it has been announced that a reconstruction project would transform the area into a high-end commercial and business district. The move is a familiar one in Chinese cities: according to a heritage survey conducted between 2007 and 2011, around 44,000 heritage sites in China had been demolished since the 1980s.
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