Central Street () or Zhongyang Street () is a pedestrian street located in central Harbin, China. Measuring 1450 meters long, it is currently the longest pedestrian street in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...

and the only cobbled street in Harbin. It was built in 1898 by Russian constructors when the

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be de ...

was at its semi-colonial period. Architectures along the street are in various styles including eclectic, Baroque,

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

and modern.

History

The street was built in 1898 when

China Eastern Railway The Chinese Eastern Railway or CER (, russian: Китайско-Восточная железная дорога, or , ''Kitaysko-Vostochnaya Zheleznaya Doroga'' or ''KVZhD''), is the historical name for a railway system in Northeast China (als ...

, a railway crossing

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym "Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East ( Outer ...

, was under construction, making Harbin a major railway hub and prospering the

. In 1925, cobblestone was paved on the street with great costs in order to prevent erosion from the nearby

Songhua River The Songhua or Sunghwa River (also Haixi or Xingal, russian: Сунгари ''Sungari'') is one of the primary rivers of China, and the longest tributary of the Amur. It flows about from the Changbai Mountains on the China–North Korea bord ...

. By 1920s, the street has become an international street with more than one hundred shops. Its main inhabitants then were

Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 ''Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

, Chinese, Japanese and various other ethnic groups. In 1986, Central Street was listed preserved by Harbin municipal government.

References

{{Commons category Japanese diaspora in China Jews and Judaism in Harbin Russian diaspora in China Streets in China