Where to Stay in Changchun, Jilin

What is Changchun known for?

Changchun is known as the largest centre for China's automotive industry and as the home of the country's oldest film studio. The Former Site Museum of Changchun Film Studio keeps that cinematic record. Its planned avenues came from an unusual past.

The city was rebuilt as a capital under the short-lived state of Manchukuo, whose seat the Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo now preserves in Jilin.

What are the main landmarks in Changchun?

The main landmarks in Changchun turn on the city's twentieth-century remaking. The Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo holds the seat of that vanished state, and the West Square Water towers survive from the same building programme. Older and newer strands run beside it.

The Changchun Confucius Temple and the Changchun Local Chronicles Museum anchor the civic centre, while the Natural History Museum of Jilin Province and Northeast Normal University and the Former Site Museum of Changchun Film Studio round out the city's collections.

What is the history of Changchun?

Changchun took its modern shape from the railway. Founded in 1889 as a settlement on the Songliao Plain, it grew where the South Manchurian Railway pushed north, and the former site of the Library of the Hsinking Branch of that company still marks the line's reach. The former site of the Pigeon building survives from the same railway town.

Then the plan grew grander. Under the name Hsinking the city was made the capital of Manchukuo, and its designers laid out the wide boulevards, government blocks, and the West Square Water towers that still order the streets. The Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo preserves the palace of that era.

After the state fell, Changchun turned to industry and cinema, becoming the largest centre of China's automotive industry and the seat of the film studio the Former Site Museum of Changchun Film Studio now records within Jilin.

Where is Changchun?

Changchun sits on the Songliao Plain, the capital and largest city of Jilin Province in Northeast China. Flat ground runs in every direction. Its administrative territory takes in seven districts, one county, and three county-level cities, spreading from the planned central grid across the open farmland of the plain.

The city stands among the major centres of the northeast, alongside Shenyang, Dalian, and Harbin.

What is the climate of Changchun?

Changchun has a continental climate set by its inland place on the Songliao Plain. Winters run long, dry, and severe, gripping the boulevards around the Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo in deep cold. Summers are short and warm.

The swing between the seasons is wide, the pattern of Jilin and the wider northeast, well away from the sea.

How do you get to Changchun?

You reach Changchun most readily by rail, on the line the city grew up around. Changchun Railway Station handles the main-line traffic across the Songliao Plain, on tracks that trace the old route of the South Manchurian Railway recalled by the former Library of the Hsinking Branch. Trains link the city to Jilin and the wider northeast.

From the station the central squares and the Confucius Temple lie a short ride away.