This paper clarifies that soybeans were produced in Manchuria (Northeast China) and were intensively transported to Dalian (大连) using different railways without changing the fare systems based on the relationship between the South Manchurian Railway, the Chinese Eastern Railway, and the regions within or along both using the results from a micro-scale regional analysis. The contents of this paper are summarized as follows:
Tsarist Russia constructed the Chinese Eastern Railway Company. It opened its main line to Vladivostok as an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the early part of the 1900s, and this line bifurcated from Haerpin (Harbin, 哈尔滨) to Lüshun (旅顺) through Dalian as a southern feeder line within Manchuria. After Tsarist Russia ceded the southern feeder line between Changchun (长春) and Lüshun through Dalian to Japan as reparation for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, Japan continued to operate it through the South Manchurian Railway Company. However, trains on the South Manchurian Railway line between Changchun and Lüshun by way of Dalian couldn’t have gone directly to the main or southern feeder lines at Haerpin and Changchun using the Chinese Eastern Railway because Japan had previously changed its track gauge.
Soybeans were one of the most high-volume agricultural products for export from the region in the 1910s. Since more soybeans could be produced in southern Manchuria than in the north during this period, the route to Vladivostok via the Chinese Eastern Railway was less advantageous than that to Dalian using the South Manchurian Railway, which was near the high-volume production areas. Although the Chinese Eastern Railway Company set discounted fare rates, most of the soybeans produced in southern Manchuria were transported to Dalian and little was sent to Vladivostok.
Produce was transported by wagon and then loaded and shipped from particular specified stations, not necessarily the nearest ones from the main farms that produced soybeans, due to the relationship between their locations and the railways. Some stations shipped a high volume of soybeans, and these constructed large consolidating zones for both railways. While they might straddle local hsien boundaries, they rarely straddled those of other provinces. Most of the section west of Haerpin on the Chinese Eastern Railway lines ran across Heilongjiang (黑龙江) Province, and the eastern and southern sections across Jilin (吉林) Province. Since most of the high-volume soybean farms in Jilin Province in the east transported their produce to specific stations on the southern feeder line within this same province, they gradually decreased shipments to Vladivostok after the Russian Revolution.
The author believes that the reason that few consolidation zones straddled provincial boundaries was due to the currency that was circulated within Manchuria in the 1910s. The zones of regional types of money circulation were generally confined to within a given province. Since most of the farmers must have received their payments from the soybean brokers (liangzhan, 粮栈) within their own provinces, few transported their products to brokers at export ports in other provinces.
