Harbin's past runs deeper than its Russian facades: a Jurchen imperial capital lying in farmland at Acheng, a boomtown built by tsarist railway engineers from 1898, and the wartime laboratories at Pingfang. Three days follow that sequence.
Built beside the Jurchen capital's ruins in Acheng, 45km southeast. Bronze mirrors, gold burial ornaments and armour from the Jin dynasty founded here in 1115, plus a hall on Wanyan Aguda, whose armies took Kaifeng in 1127. Open 09:00–16:30, closed Mondays.
Grass-covered earthen ramparts of the Jin capital, abandoned after 1153 when the court moved south to Beijing. The 11km outer wall, moat lines and Wanyan Aguda's burial mound sit in open farmland — walk the south gate breach for the clearest section.
The largest surviving Confucian temple in northeast China, built 1926–29 with funds raised by warlord Zhang Zuolin's officers. Three walled courtyards, a yellow-tiled Dacheng Hall, and the Ethnic Museum inside covering Jurchen, Manchu and Hezhen peoples.
Founded in 1924 by the monk Tanxu as a Chinese Buddhist counterweight to Harbin's Orthodox cathedrals. The seven-storey Pagoda of Buddhist Relics rises behind the main halls; incense burners still smoke at dusk and the drum tower is struck at closing.
The Japanese army's biological warfare complex at Pingfang, where prisoners were experimented on and dissected from 1936 to 1945. The black concrete museum shows frostbite test records and autopsy files; outside stand the ruined boiler house and specimen pits.
On 26 October 1909 the Korean independence activist An Jung-geun shot Itō Hirobumi, Japan's first resident-general of Korea, on the platform here. The memorial hall inside the station marks the exact spot, with a clock stopped at 09:30 and his prison writings.
Housed in the 1928 police headquarters that Manchukuo took over in 1932, where the resistance commander Zhao Yiman was interrogated in 1936. Cells, shackles and the hospital room she briefly escaped from are preserved among anti-Japanese united army records.
Harbin's first bridge, thrown across the Songhua in 1900–01 by Russian engineers so the Chinese Eastern Railway could reach Vladivostok. Retired in 2014 and reopened as a walkway beside its replacement, keeping its riveted trusses and original datestones.
The largest Jewish cemetery in the Far East: roughly 600 graves relocated here in 1958 from the old Daowai burial ground. Hebrew and Russian headstones record railway merchants, doctors and the grandfather of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.
The district Chinese merchants built in the 1920s after being kept out of the Russian side of town — courtyard siheyuan plans topped with plaster acanthus, cherubs and pomegranates. Nan Erdao Street holds the least restored blocks and their inner galleries.
Behind the 1906 Moscow Department Store facade on Nangang's old railway plaza, in a building the Chinese Eastern Railway turned into its own museum in 1923. Jin dynasty gold, Manchurian ethnography and a mammoth skeleton dug from the Songhua gravels.
The street kept its Russian name and its 1900 anchor tenant, the Churin department store founded by Irkutsk traders who followed the railway east. Red sausage, lieba bread and kvass are still sold from the original ground-floor food counters.