Visit the museum on holidays
Location: No. 13, Nanshan Street, Haigang District, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province
The treasure of the town hall: Kailuan tank bricks, "mountain jumping" wooden boards
What to see: It condenses the history of Qinhuangdao and Qinhuangdao Port
The Qinhuangdao Port Museum is located in the former site of the Qinhuangdao Senior Division Club of the Kailuan Mining Bureau (which was rated as the second batch of national industrial heritage in November 2018), a national key cultural relic protection unit, fully maintaining the original architectural style and architectural pattern. The museum condenses the history of Qinhuangdao Port since its opening in 1898, which not only fills the gap that there is no port museum in this century-old port city, but also becomes a new highlight of urban industrial tourism and a new base for patriotic education.
If the cylinder brick has a memory
After the autumn equinox, learn the cool breeze blowing the taste of the blue sea, stroll through the tourist attraction of "small island" Qinhuangdao Xigang Park, winding paths leading to secluded places, located in the Qinhuangdao Port Museum.
The red brick walls of the museum, the oil lamps on the walls of the square columns, the plaster relief lines on the interior walls, the small ivory white chandelier in the shape of petals, the solemn and elegant wooden floors and windows... This building, built in 1911, is like a work of art and deserves a quiet pause to admire.
Perhaps, as Liang Sicheng said, a building can witness the change and development of a city, which is not only architecture, but also the witness and inheritance of civilization and culture...
Museum entrance.
In 1894, the Sino-Japanese War broke out. In 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, and China's coastal port sovereignty was almost completely lost. Under this severe situation, the Qing government wanted to open up a good port that could be used, and the coastal waters of Qinhuangdao were small in water and waves, not freezing or silting, and became the first choice for the construction of ports at that time. On March 26, 1898, the Guangxu Emperor approved the establishment of its own port in Qinhuangdao for reasons such as "revitalizing commerce" and "expanding the source of profits", and Qinhuangdao Port became the only sovereign port on the coast of China at that time.
The Kaiping Mining Bureau (the predecessor of the Kailuan Mining Bureau) initially transported coal through Tianjin's Tanggu Terminal, but the shallow water, silt and winter ice at the Tanggu Pier seriously affected the transportation capacity, so the Kaiping Mining Bureau turned its attention to Qinhuangdao Port and agreed with the Qing government that the Mining Bureau would build a wharf on a trial basis and obtain the right to purchase land and contract port construction. In the early days of port development, the main function of Qinhuangdao Port was to transport coal from Kaiping Coal Mine.
After the rise of ports, various industries around port services emerged. At that time, the Beijing-Fengfeng Railway passed through Qinhuangdao, and the southern area separated was called "Daonan", which was under the jurisdiction of the Mining Bureau, with customs, post offices, hospitals, schools, etc., and the streets were lined with foreign banks, inns, and restaurants.
In 1911, the Qinhuangdao Senior Division Club of the Kailuan Mining Bureau located in the "south of Dao" was established. The first exhibition hall of the museum was a dance hall and film screening room at that time, and it is said that Zhang Xueliang and Zhao Si danced here. On the western wall of the ballroom is a piano for profit and a victory dog gramophone, and the music of the record rings in the ears with the sound of the piano.
Walking in the outdoor area of the museum, the red brick under the foot is commonly known as the Kailuan cylinder brick, which is fired by the Mining Bureau for the development of diversified operations (except coal), and the KMA engraved on the brick surface is the English abbreviation of Kailan Mining Administration. Qinhuangdao Port Museum, Qinhuangdao Electric Power Museum (formerly Nanshan Power Plant), and Qinhuangdao Glass Museum (formerly Yaohua Glass Factory) are also built with such cylinder bricks. Kailuan cylinder bricks have been sold well at home and abroad, for anti-counterfeiting reasons, the back of the bricks is engraved with small fish, elephants and other animal logos, to avoid other businesses from shoddy charging, affecting reputation and sales.
Throughout history, the rise and fall of Qinhuangdao is inextricably linked with the Kailuan Mining Bureau. The main road leading to the city by the Port Museum is called Kailuan Road, which was completed in 1905 and is the earliest and highest grade cement road in the area.
"Carry coal for food"
In the corridor from the first hall to the second exhibition hall, there is a wooden board 7.5 meters long and less than 2 feet wide under the glass floor. This plank, also called "mountain jump" and "life and death jump", is a tool to connect the ship to the dock. In the old days, dock workers cooperated in pairs, lifting bamboo poles one after the other, picking up baskets of coal weighing two or three hundred kilograms, and running them step by step from the wooden board to the ship. A slight carelessness, falling into the sea, either dead or injured, "carrying coal for food for life" is a true portrayal of the production and life of dockers before the founding of New China, and the wooden planks carry the arduous process of dockers for about half a century.
Commonly known as "roller jump" and "life and death jump", the bottom of the glass is a historical relics, and the unprotected part of the glass is a tourist experience area.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki and the subsequent Treaty of Xinxiu made it necessary for the Qing government to pay huge reparations to the imperialist powers, and a large amount of the expenditure was passed on to the small rural peasants in the form of land endowments. At the same time, imperialism monopolized the sales market, sold mechanical industrial products at high prices, and lowered the purchase prices of agricultural products. In areas with better years, farmers can barely make ends meet; In the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, especially in Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other places, water, drought, insects and hail disasters were serious, and a large number of peasants left their hometowns to "break into the Guandong".
Most of the dockworkers in Qinhuangdao were bankrupt peasants from the above three provinces, many of whom were recruited and hired because they "crossed the Guandong" through Qinhuangdao, and some were ready to be recruited to South Africa (British capitalists deceived and lured Chinese workers to mine gold in South Africa) but failed to make the trip and stayed behind, they formed the first terminal workers of Qinhuangdao Port. In 1901, the right to Hong Kong was illegally seized by a British consortium, and the British registered in London under the name of "Kaiping Mining Co., Ltd.", defrauded the right to rule the coastal harbor of Qinhuangdao, occupied Qinhuangdao for more than 40 years, and intensified the exploitation and oppression of workers.
On October 1, 1973, the first pipeline transportation terminal in mainland China was completed and put into operation. Photo courtesy of Qinhuangdao Port Museum
According to the "History of Qinhuangdao Port", dock workers get up at 5 a.m. every morning, eat breakfast and start working, working 12 hours a day, but the average salary is only one-twentieth of that of "senior staff". In 1921, the daily wage of workers was only 4 jiao, and the monthly wage was converted into flour, generally between three or four bags (about 150 pounds), even if all of them were converted into coarse grain, calculated by a family of five, there was little left except for subsistence.
Today, the museum also has a group of scene sculptures of the old Qingang dockworkers living in the "pot gang". A pot gang is a gang in a pot, and it is an organizational unit for labor and life under the jurisdiction of the contractor foreman. There are only one or two large kang beds in the compound of the "pot gangs", and dozens of people live there, and most of the workers use clothes as bedding and kang edges or old shoes as pillows.
In the face of exploitation and oppression, Qingang workers tried to resist by passive sabotage, skipping shifts, and destroying tools, but because it was a spontaneous and unorganized struggle, the impact was small. It was not until 1922, when the Communist Party of China sent Comrade Wang Jinmei to the port to propagate and organize the workers, that the workers' movement in Qingang embarked on a correct revolutionary track and dealt a heavy blow to foreign invaders and feudal forces.
Oriental Grand Port "New Life"
On November 2, 1948, the Liaoshen Campaign ended victoriously. On November 27, 1948, the People's Liberation Army entered the customs, Qinhuangdao was liberated, the party and government gradually took over the port of Qinhuangdao, and the port power finally returned to the hands of the people.
In the early days of the founding of New China, the country was in ruins, and the port work mainly relied on people to carry it on their shoulders. In the glass display case in the second hall of the museum, bars, shovels, steel picks and large baskets are placed vertically, which are the main production tools for loading and unloading in the port. People named the stevedores after the tool pictograms, calling the stevedores "Unit 1970".
Walking into Hall 3, black-and-white photos on the left wall transport visitors to the hot days of technological innovation and labor competitions for dock workers. In the early 50s of last century, the port raised part of its own funds and successively purchased, modified and manufactured some small loading and unloading machinery, but the degree of mechanization is still at a low level compared with other major coastal ports. Since 1953, Qinhuangdao Port has carried out technological innovation and rationalization proposal activities, extensively carried out labor competitions, successively equipped with rail cranes, loaders, buckets, battery cars and other equipment, independently researched and manufactured automatic hooks, grabs, bulk grain special portal funnels and other equipment, which effectively promoted the improvement of port production throughput.
One photograph, titled "Research and Manufacturing of Locomotive Frames," records a story of port workers assembling locomotives. In the early 50s of last century, Qingang had only 9 self-owned locomotives, which seriously restricted the port's loading and unloading production. In order to enhance the port transportation capacity and break the precedent that locomotives have been imported from abroad, the staff of the machine repair plant boldly conceived and repaired the old and recycled, and in less than 2 months, successfully configured a brand new locomotive and named it "Xinsheng".
In 1956, Qingang completed the first five-year plan of the port one year ahead of schedule, and in 1957 it ranked among the six major coastal ports in China.
In 1958, the country was in the stage of economic development, and coal was the "food" of industry, the shortage of "grain" in East and South China was serious, and Shanghai's industry was "waiting to be fed". Qinhuangdao Port and Qinhuangdao Station of Tianjin Railway Bureau take the potential of port and railway transportation as the core, form a large cooperative relationship network between "mining, cargo, road, port, navigation and trade" centered on road port, and create the combined transportation form of "production, supply, transportation and marketing" in the mainland, becoming the prototype of the mainland's first iron-water combined transport. At that time, People's Daily and Hongqi magazine widely publicized this "one-stop cooperation".
After the reform and opening up, Qinhuangdao Port seems to have taken off wings, this hopeful and vibrant port, like a rising sun, rising on the shores of the Bohai Sea.
In 2008, during the rain, snow and freezing disaster in the southern part of the mainland, Qingang rushed to transport 20.01 million tons of thermal coal in one month. In 2011, the port throughput reached 279.45 million tons, leaping to become the world's largest dry bulk port. In recent years, the port has adhered to the green development model, built the largest windproof network in Asia, taken the lead in building a reclaimed water treatment plant, and opened a precedent for coastal ports across the country to use industrial wastewater, urban sewage, and seawater to solve industrial water...
From scratch, from weak to strong, from natural simple port to the world's largest dry bulk port. Time has been turned back 125 years, and this place is desolate, and it is still just a small island with a radius of less than 1 square kilometer. Today, Qinhuangdao Port, which has gone through vicissitudes, has become a world-famous oriental port.
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Westport Park
According to the needs of urban development, in 2013, the production of Qinhuangdao Port Grand Wharf Area was officially suspended, which opened the prelude to the withdrawal of Xigang District from the port transportation and production function, and the development of Xigang New City is ready to go. Xigang Park is the first phase of Hebei Port Group's construction of the international tourism port starting area, covering an area of about 1,200 acres, and welcomed the first batch of tourists in 2018.
Xigang Garden "Kaibu Station" check-in point.
The main landscape of the park is redesigned and transformed by the decommissioned equipment and facilities of the port - the South Storehouse, which was built in 1905, is the first large-scale cargo warehouse in Qinhuangdao Port, which undertakes the storage of hardware, grain, Cuban sugar, and daily necessities, and is now transformed into a café, restaurant, and new era civilization practice center; The railway flower check-in point was previously the shunting yard of Building 1 of Qingang Railway Transport Company; The once busy Grand Marina is now transformed into a 58-berth sailing marina; The original office building of the service team of Qingang No. 3 Company was repainted into a theme hotel...
Walking along the railway tracks to the sea, there is a post office with a commemorative postmark built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. The Kaibu Station not far away simulates the scene of the former railway station, and from the platform, you can see the greenery, flowers, blue sea and sky.
Author丨Reporter Xie Zijun Correspondent Ge Feng
Editor丨 Zhai Hui
Review丨Wang Shanshan Zhuang Yan
Executive producer丨Chen Lin
Submission email: [email protected] Business: 010-64266095