Zongyang Dajie (also known as Central Street and Kitaiskaia St) is the most unusual street in a most unusual city! The architecture of Zongyang ranges from the Renaissance style evident in the Fuer Shop (Women and Children's Shop: the former Ziehe Bank) through to Baroque structures like in the Jiaoyu Bookstore and examples of Art Nouveau can be seen in the Mod-Er Hotel (formerly the Modern Hotel) and the Daoliqiulin Shop. The street is known as the jewel of Harbin and is a work of art in its own right.
Zhongyang Dajie's construction began in 1898. Originally a thoroughfare of horse-drawn carts, the road was choked with various forms of traffic until 1997, when it was pedestrianised, to become one of the longest pedestrian streets in Asia. The wide, street is now a beautiful, bustling area where goods from all over the world are stocked in abundance. Russian vodka and chocolate feature heavily, but British woolen cloth, French perfume and German medicines are all aspects of the mosaic of goods on sale.
The Flood Control Monument stands at the northern end of Zhongyang Dajie, on the southern edge of Stalin Park. It commemorates the heroic efforts of the Harbin people who fought for a month to contain the effects of a massive flood in 1958. The flood waters reached four meters above ground level and the effects were disastrous. The monument was erected a year later, consisting of a roman cylindrical column, topped with depictions of the Harbin people fighting the flood. The level which the water reached is marked by 11 semi-circular pools near to the column. In 1998 it sadly became necessary to add to the monument, after a second flood even greater than the first swept through the city, killing many people. The monument stands to commemorate the tenacity of the Harbin population, and to remember those who lost their lives.
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