There is a Korean song, "Tumen River Love", the lyrics are as follows:
Crossing the valley and crossing the border plug, it flows into the East China Sea like a brocade dance
The changbai fairy is infinitely attached, and the holy water of the heavenly pool expresses emotion
Ah Tumen River Thousand years of feelings, chasing you along the riverbank, the charming Jindalai bloomed with a smile
Holding the white clouds, swinging wooden rows, like brocade dancing into the East China Sea
The waves praise the true feelings of the world, and the songs sing harmonious times
Ah Tumen River Thousand years of style, running to the mountain hill to call you, the beautiful Arirang melodiously spread
Tumen River, the mother river of Yanbian, Jilin Province, mentioning the Tumen River, it has to be reminiscent of a history of chinese people sighing, everyone knows that Jilin Province is an inland province in northeast China, and there is no sea mouth, but during the Qing Dynasty, Jilin Province was the province with the longest coastline in China. From ancient times to the present, what kind of change has this undergone, and why does this change make the Chinese people regret it more than once.
Present-day Jilin Province
Jilin Province, real name is Jilin Ula, Manchu "dock along the river", in the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River Basin, with tributaries such as the Songhua River and the Ussuri River, the river network is longitudinal and densely forested, and has always been the settlement of the ancient ethnic groups. At that time, it was no better than the desert grassland suitable for grazing, nor warmer than the Central Plains suitable for farming, under the ice and snow, people living here could only raise some poultry on a small scale, fishing in the river, hunting in the forest, which was a typical fishing and hunting ethnic life habit. At this time, Goguryeo, an agrarian state established by the Buyeo people in the Jilin area, developed rapidly.
During the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty cooperated with the Korean state of Silla in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula to destroy Goguryeo, the Buyeo. Subsequently, JingXiao took a fancy to the hollow northeast of power and multiplied here. With the Mudanjiang and Songhua River basins as the core, a huge Sinicized state "Bohai State" has been established along the coast. The Bohai state was nominally subordinate to the Tang Dynasty, but in fact it worked with the Tang Dynasty to resist the khitans, a nomadic people in the Liaohe region.
The Anshi Rebellion that broke out in the last years of the Tang Dynasty directly led to the decline of the Tang Dynasty, and the internal regime almost collapsed. The Khitan clan took advantage of the opportunity to grow, and subsequently, the Khitan tyrant "Yelü Abaoji" established the Liao State and took the opportunity to swallow the Bohai State, and the word they called the Bohai People was the later famous "Jurchen". When it comes to the northeast, it is necessary to mention the tribe of "Jurchens", the Jurchens settled in the northeast, and the two regimes established successively had a profound impact on the Central Plains. In the last year of the Liao Dynasty, the Jurchen Jurchen Leader "Finished Yan Akuta" destroyed the Liao Dynasty and established the Jin Dynasty, and after the Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the Mongols, the Jurchens were silent in history for more than a hundred years. After the Ming Dynasty, the Jurchens were divided into three major tribes: the Jianzhou Jurchens, the Haixi Jurchens and the Savage Jurchens, of which the Jianzhou Jurchen leader "Nurhaci" only started with 13 pairs of relics, and after 36 years of arduous conquest, unified the Jurchen tribes. Subsequently, through the Experience of Emperor Taiji, Dolgun, until the Qing Dynasty Ancestor Ai Xinjue Luo Fulin, and finally chasing deer in the Central Plains, the first year of the Qing Shunzhi (1644), the Qing army entered the customs, gradually unified the country, and established the last feudal dynasty in China - the Qing Dynasty, at this time, the Manchus reached the most glorious moment in history.
Jurchen distribution map
The Manchus lived mainly north of the Changbai Mountains and in vast areas of the Heilongjiang and Ussuri River basins, which is the birthplace of the Manchus. The rulers of the Qing Dynasty attached great importance to Jilin, and initially, the Qing Dynasty had two main institutions responsible for governing the northeast, one was General Ningguta and the other was General Shengjing. General Shengjing was responsible for administering the area around present-day Liaoning, while General Ninguta was responsible for all of Jilin, most of the Heilongjiang River, including the Heilongjiang and Ussuri River basins, the entire territory of Sakhalin Island, the vast area of the Sea of Okhotsk in the north and the Sea of Japan in the south, covering an area of nearly 1 million square kilometers. Later, General Ninguta was renamed General Jilin, and today's Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, etc. in Russia belong to the jurisdiction of Jilin Province, and these places are close to the sea, creating a long coastline in Jilin Province.
Qing Dynasty Jilin
In the 17th century, Tsarist Russia invaded Siberia and began to expand wildly along the Heilongjiang River Basin. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Russia seized the opportunity to occupy the north bank of the Heilongjiang River. During the Kangxi Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty gradually stabilized, the Kangxi Emperor launched the Battle of Yaksa, driving Russia out of the Heilongjiang area, and in 1689, the Qing Dynasty and the Tsarist Russia signed the Treaty of Nebuchu to determine the ownership of the area south of the Waixing'an Mountains. However, with the decline of national power at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Tsarist Russia has been waiting for an opportunity to strengthen its infiltration into the Heilongjiang and Songhua River basins. In 1858, Russia forced the Qing government to sign the Sino-Russian Treaty of Yaohun, encroaching on about 600,000 square kilometers of land north of the Heilongjiang River and south of the Waixing'an Mountains, and in 1860, the Sino-Russian "Beijing Treaty" was signed, seizing about 400,000 square kilometers of land east of the Ussuri River, including Sakhalin Island and Vladivostok. At this point, Tsarist Russia encroached on a large amount of territory, and Jilin had no sea outlet in the Sea of Japan.
Unequal treaty between China and Russia
Why is the sea next to Jilin Province called the Sea of Japan, this definitely does not mean that this is The territorial sea of Japan. During the Yuan Dynasty, this area was called the "Whale Sea", and during the Liao and Song Dynasties, the Jurchens fished fish and shrimp in this area, calling it the "Golden Sea", and in 1815, the Russian navigator Crusensters named it "Sea of Japan" based on the fact that there was only one country on its eastern side. Therefore, the Sea of Japan does not mean that this sea is Japanese, but only borrows the name of the Japanese country.
It is said that there is also an episode here, when the two sides agreed to demarcate the boundary and erect the plaque, the Qing government demanded: "In any case, the obstruction of Ru and other Bing should go to the place in the hope that the two countries will have nothing to do, and there will be no other branches in the future", plus when the boundary demarcation monument was erected, the faint-hearted officials were worried about the difficult road and suffered hardships, and they were handed over to the Russian side to take full responsibility, resulting in only 8 of the final 20 boundary monuments being set up, and the sad last piece of the earth (T) boundary plate that originally needed to be placed at the mouth of the Tumen River was arbitrarily erected 30 miles away from the mouth of the Tumen River. This randomly placed boundary plate also deprived China of the right to go to sea on the Tumen River.
boundary marker
By 1931, japan had invaded the three eastern provinces, and by this time the northeast had become a contested area between the Japanese and the Soviets. At the end of July and the beginning of August 1938, a military conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union around the two highlands of Zhanggufeng and Shacaofeng was famous for the Zhanggufeng Incident. On July 30, the Japanese and soviet sides began to repeatedly compete for the high ground such as Shacao Peak and Zhanggu Peak, and on August 11, the two sides stopped fighting, the Soviet army took control of Zhanggu peak, and the Japanese army retreated to the west bank of the Tumen River, abandoning the border line that had always been insisted. Subsequently, the two sides signed a letter of agreement, and the status quo of the territory remained unchanged. The Zhanggufeng incident ended in the defeat of the Japanese army, and the Soviet army took the opportunity to occupy all of Zhanggufeng, classifying it as the "Suman (central) boundary mountain", and pushing its control area to the Tumen River, leaving only a narrow "passage" to the Defense River for China.
The Russo-Japanese Zhanggufeng Incident
In 1950, the Korean War broke out, and the Soviet Union built the Soviet-Dprang Tumen River Railway Bridge in the name of transporting military supplies to Korea. The total length of the bridge is about 530 meters, which is an 8-hole and 60-meter steel-framed iron bridge, but only 3 of them can be used as navigable holes. The terrain on the North Korean side is low, so the bridge is also very low, can not pass large ships, and the Russian side only allows seasonal fishing boats to go to sea, commercial vessels are not allowed, greatly reducing the amount of shipping, so that the sea outlet has become a "chicken rib". Later, our country also proposed whether it was possible to rebuild this bridge so that the big ships could pass. But what makes people strange is that Russia and North Korea seem to have an extraordinary tacit understanding and have maintained the status quo to this day!
After the above historical changes, the facts that have been created today have been created, and with the signing of the border agreement between China and Russia, the Sino-Russian border can no longer be changed. However, china has never given up on this important strategic export, and has been making continuous efforts since the founding of the country, believing that one day there will be a miracle.
Russian-North Korean railway bridge
Panoramic view of the railway bridge, picture from Yanbian Information Port
Originating from the east side of Changbai Mountain, the Tumen River, the boundary river between China and the DPRK in Jilin Province, with a total length of 525 kilometers, the length of the Sino-DPRK boundary section is 510 kilometers, which is the natural dividing line between China and the DPRK, and the last ten kilometers downstream is the dividing line between Russia and The DPRK, the distance of these more than ten kilometers, the starting point is Fangchuan Village, and the end point is the mouth of the Tumen River in the Sea of Japan.
Originally, Fangchuan Village was just an ordinary small village, but due to its extremely special geographical location, it attracted much attention. "People in Fangchuan Village, a glance at the three countries", standing in Fangchuan, China, Russia and North Korea are all in full view, several villages on the hunchun border, less than 3 kilometers from the nearest sea, in the dead of night, you can even hear the sound of the waves. However, we are so close to the sea, but we can't have an outlet to the sea, and we can only watch the Tumen River rush to the sea and never return, which makes people sigh. The North-Russia Railway Bridge, which can be seen in Fangchuan Village, locks the Tumen River like an iron lock, and also locks the outlet of Jilin River, and when the water of the Tumen River flows through the Fangchuan River and crosses the low iron bridge, our land also comes to an abrupt end.
Hogawa, Fukushima
Image source network
If there is an outlet to the Tumen River, then it will be the nearest sea outlet to the Russian Far East, the east coast of South Korea, the west coast of Japan, North America and northern Europe, which is a gold coast for Jilin and even the entire northeast. The three northeastern provinces will form complementary resource trade exchanges with Russia, Japan, South Korea and other countries, and will be conducive to attracting foreign investment, improving the investment environment and attracting talents in the northeast, which is very beneficial to the development of the northeast. I dare not say that the estuary of the Tumen River can completely solve the bottleneck of the development of the northeast region, but at least it can make Jilin a border city with the sea, the geographical advantage will have a qualitative leap, and the possibility of revitalizing the northeast will become a reality.
Picture of the river, picture from Yanbian Information Port
In addition, if you have the mouth of the Sea of Japan on the Tumen River, you can have a coastline, push the defense front line for hundreds of kilometers, establish a naval base in the Far East, and effectively protect the northeast and the Beijing-Tianjin region, usher in greater strategic depth for our country, and more conducive to breaking the blockade of the first island chain. A little farther, the possible intervention of the United States and Japan in the later recovery of Taiwan is also a deterrent, imagine that at this time, Japan and the old US bases in Japan are under the direct threat of our rocket force, navy and nuclear submarines, do you dare to be so arrogant?
Geopolitical map
But history has no ifs, and at this time, we are more sorry. Tumen River has witnessed the development history of China's rise and fall, in fangchuan look at the tumen river that rolls east, and then look at the sea of Japan that is haunted by dreams, but can not be expected, we can only do is to look at the river to ponder, look at the sea and sigh, history has given this ancient nation too much suffering, left too many regrets, Tumen River estuary, just the epitome of many regrets, I hope that in the near future, we can get back the lost land, although, this hope is relatively slim, but we still believe that there will be a chance to realize...