Adam Szydłowski (1860 – 1916) was a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

engineer, co-founder and first mayor of the city of

Harbin Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban area, urban population (after Shenyang, Lia ...

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

Biography

In early 1898, the Chief Construction Directorate of the

Chinese Eastern Railway The Chinese Eastern Railway or CER (, , or , ''Kitaysko-Vostochnaya Zheleznaya Doroga'' or ''KVZhD''), is the historical name for a railway system in Northeast China (also known as Manchuria). The Russian Empire constructed the line from 1897 ...

decided to send a technical expedition to Manchuria to find a suitable location near the

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

for setting up administrative offices. Adam Szydłowski led the expedition, which departed from

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...

on March 8, 1898, and reached Asyche on April 10, 1898. The next day, Szydłowski decided to establish the city of Harbin in the area. In April 1898, Szydłowski purchased a distillery called Sian-Fan, which had been inactive due to being plundered by

Honghuzi Honghuzi () were armed Chinese robbers and bandits who operated in the areas of the eastern Russia-China borderland during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their activities extended over southeastern ...

. This distillery was bought for 12 thousand taels (453.6 kilograms) of silver. The administrative headquarters of the Chinese Eastern Railway were then established there. In May 1898, engineers and railway construction officials arrived in Harbin and began settling the city.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szydlowski, Adam Mayors of Harbin Polish engineers 1860 births 1916 deaths 20th-century mayors of places in China