Xiangfang District

Xiangfang was Harbin's principal locomotive-and-railway-engineering district during the Russian and Japanese-occupation periods (1898–1945) and the post-1949 Soviet-aided industrial-development period. The Harbin Locomotive Works, founded 1903 by the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway and substantially expanded during the Japanese occupation, was one of the largest single industrial complexes in pre-1949 northeastern China.

The Locomotive Works heritage complex preserves the original 1900s and 1930s industrial buildings on a substantial scale — substantively the only surviving large-scale Russian-and-Japanese-built rail-engineering complex in China. The complex is open as a working industrial-heritage museum and is a substantive destination for visitors interested in Chinese rail history.

The Harbin Old Synagogue, on Tongjiang Street in eastern Xiangfang, is the small surviving heritage of the substantial pre-1949 Russian-Polish-Jewish community of Harbin (which numbered around 25,000 at its 1920s peak). The synagogue building has been restored as a museum of Harbin's Jewish history; the substantial community emigrated to Israel and the West during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

For visitors not focused on industrial-heritage or Jewish-history specifically, Xiangfang is most useful as the residential-and-commercial alternative to central Daoli and Nangang — quieter, less-touristed, and more authentically working-class.