Current Time in Suihua, China

Suihua lies in the centre of Heilongjiang province in the far north-east of China, on the wide Songnen plain about a hundred kilometres north of the provincial capital Harbin. The land is almost completely flat, drained by tributaries of the Songhua River and covered by the deep black soil for which the region is famous. Winters are long and severe, with temperatures that fall below minus twenty-five degrees for weeks at a time, while the short summers are warm and wet, producing an intense growing season.

The prefecture-level city administers a large territory with several million residents, of whom several hundred thousand live in the central urban district of Beilin. Agriculture is the foundation of everything here. Suihua is one of the leading producers of maize, soybeans and rice in China, and the surrounding counties are known for potatoes, sunflower seeds, flax and dairy cattle. Food processing, brewing, pharmaceuticals derived from local crops and agricultural machinery form the industrial base, and the district markets itself nationally as a source of green and organic produce.

The plain was for centuries the grazing and hunting ground of Manchu, Mongol and Daur communities, and it lay within the imperial preserve that the Qing dynasty closed to Han settlement. When those restrictions were lifted in the late nineteenth century, waves of migrants from Shandong and Hebei arrived to break the grassland, and a county was established at Suihua in 1885. The railway built north from Harbin at the beginning of the twentieth century turned the town into a collection point for grain, and it grew through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the founding of the People's Republic and the era of large state farms that transformed the north-east into the granary of the country.

Suihua is not a city of ancient monuments, and its appeal lies more in landscape and local life. The wetlands and lakes of the surrounding counties, particularly the reserves along the Songhua and around Qingken Lake, attract migrating cranes, swans and geese in spring and autumn. Hot springs at Zhaodong, the hunting and forest scenery towards Qing'an, and the vast open fields under snow in winter define the region. In the city itself, parks, squares filled with dancing and skating in season, a museum of local history and lively night markets are the focus of everyday life, while the ice sculpture and winter festival traditions of Harbin are shared across the province.

The population is overwhelmingly Han Chinese with Manchu, Korean and Mongol minorities, and north-eastern culture is expressed in the comic song and dance form known as errenzhuan, in hearty stewed dishes, dumplings and pickled cabbage, and in a famously direct and hospitable manner. A teachers' university, medical and vocational colleges serve local students, with the large universities of Harbin close at hand. Railways, including high-speed services, and expressways connect Suihua to Harbin in well under an hour.

Suihua is important as one of the great grain producing regions of China and as a commercial centre of the northern plain.