Boduna Fortress

Boduna Fortress was constructed in 1693 as a Qing-dynasty military installation on the northern frontier of Manchuria, and it served for two centuries as an important administrative and commercial centre in what is now northern Jilin Province. The original fortress site and some remnants of the historical settlement are preserved in what is now the Qian Gorlos area near Songyuan.

The fortress represents a layer of Songyuan's history that predates both the petroleum economy and the agricultural intensification of the modern era. Archaeological and architectural remains from the Qing period survive in the area, and the site is worth visiting for anyone interested in the military and administrative geography of the Qing frontier. The connections to even earlier states — the Fuyu kingdom and the Balhae confederation — are documented at local museums, giving the region a longer historical depth than its contemporary oil-city character suggests.

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A story
The Qing imperial court established Boduna Fortress in 1693 as a military post to control the northern frontier and manage relations with the Mongolian and Manchu tribes of the region. By the early nineteenth century the settlement around it had grown into one of the most important trading towns in northern Manchuria, with a population estimated at thirty thousand — larger than many European cities of the same period. Its present obscurity makes that earlier prominence easy to forget.