Dalian

Dalian or Talien , Rus. Dalny, Jap. Dairen, city (1994 est. pop. 1,855,200), S Liaoning prov., China, on the Liaodong peninsula in the Bay of Korea. It has annexed Lüshun (Port Arthur), with which it was formerly combined into the joint municipality of Lüda. With a huge, well-protected harbor, modern freight-handling facilities, and fine rail connections, Dalian is the chief commercial port of NE China and an oil-exporting port. It is also a major industrial center with large shipyards, fisheries, an oil refinery, textile mills, chemical and fertilizer plants, and factories making locomotives, rolling stock, and electrical equipment. China's largest diamond deposit is nearby. Dalian has two sections: a former Japanese district and a Chinese residential area. The city first became important when Russia occupied it as part of the Liaodong leasehold (1898). Under the Russians the city was developed as the southern terminus of the South Manchurian RR and as the chief ice-free port on the route to Vladivostok. When the Japanese acquired the territory in 1905 (thereafter known as the Kwantung leasehold), Dalian was enlarged and modernized. In 1945, Russia occupied Dalian and received a free lease from Nationalist China on half the city's port facilities. This arrangement was continued under the Communist government, and a joint Sino-Soviet company was set up to develop shipping. Russian troops remained there until 1955. Dalian is the seat of a technical university, a medical college, and several specialized schools.

Dalian, Liaoning/China Qing‐ni‐wa, Dalny, Dairen, Lüda With acquisition of the lease of the Liaodong Peninsula in 1898 and having secured the right to build a railway through Manchuria to the Yellow Sea, the Russians decided to develop the fishing village of Qing‐ni‐wa as a commercial port and rename it from the Russian dal′niy ‘far’ or ‘distant’. Following the loss of the Battle of Nanshan in 1904, the Russians ceded control of the peninsula to the Japanese at the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire, USA) in 1905. The Japanese renamed the port Dairen, their rendering of the Chinese Dalian from dà ‘big’ and lián ‘to join’ or ‘unite’, thus a place of commercial activity. It passed to China after the defeat of Japan and the withdrawal of the Russians, who occupied it briefly, at the end of the Second World War. Uniting with Lüshun, between 1946 and 1981 it was known as Lüda, a combination of Lüshun and Dalian.