Qiqihar

Qiqihar, city, western Heilongjiang sheng (province), northeastern China. It is situated in the middle of the fertile Nen River plain, a part of the Northeast (Manchurian) Plain.

The site was originally settled by nomadic Tungus and Daur herdsmen; the city’s name Qiqihar is from a Daur word meaning “frontier.” A settlement was also said to have been established there under the Jin dynasty, but the town remained small until the 17th century. The Heilongjiang region then became important both because of the Russian eastward advance to the Pacific coast and because of increasing Chinese interest in the Amur River (Heilong Jiang) valley. Later its importance also grew because of the Qing (Manchu) government’s campaigns against the Mongols. Qiqihar became a major garrison centre in 1674, and a walled city was constructed there in 1691. The military government of Heilongjiang was transferred to Qiqihar in 1699. A military depot with barracks and an arsenal was set up there, and many convicted criminals were exiled to the area.

In the 18th century Qiqihar was a frontier town known for its gambling and sexual license. Nonetheless, it was also a centre of Chinese influence. Schools were established there for the Manchu garrison in 1744 and for the Chinese in 1796. Despite the ban on Chinese settlement, Chinese immigrants soon swamped the Manchus, so that by the end of the 18th century almost the entire urban population was Chinese-speaking. In the 1860s, after the territory north of the Amur had been ceded to the Russians, the Chinese government gradually opened up more and more land in the area to Chinese settlement.

By then Qiqihar had become a city of some size, and by the end of the 19th century some industry had also been established. The completion of the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1903 made the city a centre for communications, and in the late 1920s and ’30s a network of lines radiating from the city was extended into the northern part of Heilongjiang. By 1932 the city had a great concentration of handicraft industries. Under the Japanese, who occupied the region from 1931/32 to 1945, Qiqihar became a major military base, and its economic importance grew rapidly.

Qiqihar has become a large and important industrial city, with an engineering industry producing heavy machinery, railroad equipment and rolling stock, machine tools, diesel engines, cranes, and other products. It has a large woodworking and timber sector, using timber from the Da Hinggan (Greater Khingan) Range. There is a large paper mill, installed in 1954, that produces newsprint. Food processing is important and includes the production of milk powder and other dairy products (the Nen River plain is a dairy-farming district), and there is sugar refining from local sugar beets.

Electric-power generation and the manufacture of textiles and electronic equipment have also been developed. The city continues to be a railway hub, with lines to northern and eastern parts of the province and also to Inner Mongolia and Jilin province. Zhalong Nature Reserve, some 18 miles (30 km) southeast of the city and one of the largest of its kind in China, protects a variety of waterfowl, notably the red-crowned crane. This has earned Qiqihar the nickname "Home of the Red-Crowned Cranes." Pop. (2002 est.) 1,125,311; (2007 est.) urban agglom., 1,641,000.