Japanese get cautious welcome back to Dalian

Japanese get cautious welcome back to Dalian

By Mark O'Neill

DALIAN, China (Reuter): A magnificent wooden Japanese Shinto
temple looks out over the Chinese port city of Dalian, still in
nearly perfect condition 81 years after it was built.

Just 27 km (17 miles) away, 200 Japanese firms have set up
factories in a booming special economic zone partially funded by
the Tokyo government -- Japan's only such economic-zone
investment in the world.

Dalian, which grew into the major port and industrial center
of Port Arthur during 40 years of Japanese rule early in the
century, has once again become a prime target for Japanese
investment and developers.

"This investment shows how strategically important Tokyo
considers Dalian, today as 90 years ago," Y.C. Hwang, president
of the Artex Corporation of South Korea, said during a visit to
Dalian to sell Korean textiles and garments.

As of the end of June, contracted Japanese investment in all
of Dalian was $2.301 billion in 825 projects, most of it in
manufacturing. Japan ranked second to Hong Kong and Macau, which
had $4.51 billion, mostly in property and services.

More than 2,000 Japanese live in Dalian, the second-largest
Japanese community in China after Beijing.

But they have received a cautious reception, with some city
officials preferring to remember the Japanese as brutal occupiers
rather than civic boosters.

In 1904 Japan went to war with Tsarist Russia in Luxun, a
naval base just south of Dalian. Its crushing victory forced
Russia to hand over control in 1905 of the Liaotung peninsula,
including Dalian, which had been a small fishing village.

During the next 40 years, Japan developed Dalian into a major
industrial and commercial center, laying out the wide streets and
urban plan that survive today, including city hall, the law
court, police headquarters and three tramlines.

But official China has little good to say about the 40 years
of Japanese rule.

"Japanese made no historic contribution to Dalian," said one
city official angrily. "If they had not been here, we would have
built up the city ourselves. They developed railways and
factories only to provide goods for Japan."

"During the Russo-Japanese war, they massacred almost the
entire civilian population of Luxun, leaving less than 50 alive,"
he added. A monument there recalls the event.

Chinese media and textbooks waste no opportunity to speak of
atrocities committed by Japan during the occupation of the
northeast and other parts of China between 1904 and 1945.

But, despite this, Japanese residents say they find it easier
to live here than anywhere else in China.

"Compared to other parts of China, Dalian was peaceful during
the war," said a resident Japanese banker. "That means memories
are not so bitter. Many people speak Japanese, understand Japan
and like Japanese food."

The city boasts many Japanese restaurants, a Japanese primary
and secondary school. A golf course is due for completion next
year.

Residents of the area near the former Shinto temple, now a
storehouse for the city's Beijing opera troupe, speak more
favorably of the Japanese contribution.

"They built factories, roads, sewers, a fine railway station
and other infrastructure," said one man in his 50s. "Without
them, Dalian would not be the city it is today."

"The temple is a fine building. It used to be in an area of
grass and trees, very solemn. You cannot imagine that now, with
all these apartment blocks close by," he said.

Japanese have offered to buy and repaint the temple, but
nobody expects the city government to approve the idea.

Other buildings of the Japanese era remain, including the
former offices of the Bank of Korea, South Manchurian Railway,
Yamato Hotel, Natural History Museum and the Yokohama Specie
Bank, which later became the Bank of Tokyo.

Many former Japanese residents are members of the Dalian Club
and come back to visit their former homes.

"When I was a student in Japan in the 1940s, I used to visit
my parents in Dalian," recalled one elderly man. "I took a ferry
to Pusan (South Korea) and a through train from there to Dalian.
You cannot dream of such a journey now."

"We loved living in Dalian, with a large house, servants, a
driver and a large German shepherd. There was no sense of a war.
Relations with local people were good," he said.

A building boom over the last four years means that many of
the homes and offices built during the 1905-45 period are
disappearing below the developer's hammer, replacing the
European-style villas with multi-storey blocks.