Where the Qing Dynasty Was Founded Before It Conquered China — Imperial Palace, Manchu Tombs & Northeast Cuisine
📍 Shenyang, China📅 3-day itinerary
The city where Nurhaci and Huang Taiji built the palace and planned the conquest of China before the Qing armies rode south to take Beijing in 1644 — the Mukden Palace's ten-sided Dazheng Hall and the Eight Banners Pavilions show the Manchu-Mongol-Chinese architectural synthesis that the later Beijing Forbidden City, built for a Chinese-style emperor, deliberately suppressed, and where the staged railway explosion of September 18, 1931 set in motion the sequence of events that became the Second World War in Asia.
The Ten-Sided Ceremonial Hall Influenced by the Manchu Shamanic Tent Tradition That Was Built to House a Dynasty Before It Had an Empire & The Museum Shaped Like a Calendar Frozen at September 18 Marking the Day the Japanese Army Invented a Pretext for Invading Manchuria
The Sweet-and-Sour Pork Invented in Shenyang to Please Russian Guests at the Qing Governor's Residence — Now Cooked Across All of China in a Ketchup Version That Shenyang Considers a Corruption & The Neolithic Jade Dragons from 4,700 BC That Are Among the Most Significant Pre-Historical Artefacts in China
The World's Longest Underground Navigable River Discovered in 1949 When Coal Miners Drilled Through a Seam Into a Cave with Five Kilometres of Boat-Accessible Waterway & The Mountain Where Nine Buddhist Monasteries and Nine Taoist Temples Share the Lotus-Shaped Peaks with the Largest Single-Rock Buddha Carving in China