China's Northern Riviera — the Liaoning Peninsula coastal city where Russian and Japanese colonial-era architecture lines European-style roundabouts, the cleanest beaches in northern China face the Yellow Sea, and the Tiger Beach Ocean Park's polar bear enclosure is one of China's most-visited wildlife attractions
Dalian is the second-largest city in Liaoning Province and the main port and financial centre of Northeast China — an unusually clean, well-planned city with a coastline that has made it the top summer beach destination for northern Chinese. The city's distinctive character comes from its colonial history: Russian urban planners designed Dalian's city centre from 1898–1904 (with the characteristic Russian Zhongshan Square with eight avenues radiating from a central circle), and Japanese architects and infrastructure engineers rebuilt and expanded it from 1905–1945, leaving Japanese-era factor…
Dalian's modern history begins with the 1898 Treaty of Port Arthur (Lüshun), by which China leased the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula to Russia following the Triple Intervention (France, Germany, Russia pressuring Japan to return the peninsula it had won in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War). The Russians named their new port city Dalny ('Distant' in Russian) and built it as an ice-free Pacific port to complement Vladivostok. Russia's defeat in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War (the Battle of Mukden, the Siege of Port Arthur) transferred control to Japan, which renamed the city Dairen. Japan developed…