Qualla: Anshan

Anshan: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rincewind42, CC BY-SA 3.0. The largest single piece of jade ever found came from the hills near Anshan. Carved into the form of a Buddha -- 6.88 meters wide, 7.95 meters high, 260.76 tons -- it sits inside the Jade Buddha Palace, a temple complex that has become the unlikely symbol of a city better known for smoke, steel, and the industrial machinery of twentieth-century China. Anshan is a place where contradictions coexist: ancient jade and modern smelters, sacred mountains and strip mines, a Manchu homeland reshaped by waves of Han migration.

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Image: Rincewind42 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anshan: Built on Iron

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yanenming, CC BY 3.0. Anshan was a small, unremarkable city until iron changed everything. In 1918, the Anshan Zhenzing Iron Ore Company was established as a Sino-Japanese venture. When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, the operation became a Japanese monopoly under the puppet state of Manchukuo. The ...

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Image: Yanenming | CC BY 3.0

Anshan: Minerals Beyond Steel

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philarcher0615, CC BY-SA 3.0. Iron is not Anshan's only mineral wealth. The southern and southeastern areas hold magnesite reserves equivalent to a quarter of all worldwide reserves. The city also possesses the world's largest reserve of talcum, accounting for fully one-third of the global supply. The Xiuyan ...

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Image: Philarcher0615 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anshan: Thousand Lotus Mountains

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yoshi Canopus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eighteen kilometers southeast of the city, Qianshan National Park offers a dramatic counterpoint to the industrial landscape. The name means Thousand Mountains -- an abbreviation of "Thousand Lotus Flower Mountains," because the peaks supposedly resemble lotus petals dropped to e...

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Image: Yoshi Canopus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Anshan: A City of 48 Ethnicities

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philarcher0615, CC BY-SA 3.0. Anshan's population tells a story of layered migration. Of the 3.65 million people in the prefecture, over 519,000 are ethnic Manchu, concentrated around the Xiuyan autonomous area -- a reminder that this was Manchu homeland before the Qing dynasty's collapse opened the northeast...

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Image: Philarcher0615 | CC BY-SA 3.0