1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mukden

MUKDEN (Chinese Shêngking), the capital of Manchuria, on the Hun-ho, 110 m. N.E. of Niuchwang, in 41° 51′ N., 123° 38′ E., with a population of 250,000. It is a centre for trade and also for missionary enterprise. It was formerly the headquarters of the Manchu dynasty, and their tombs lie within its confines. Mukden is a fine town, with splendid walls, about a mile long each way. The suburbs extend a considerable distance from the city and are surrounded by mud walls. In the centre of the town stands a small palace surrounded by an inner wall and roofed with yellow tiles. The boots and pack of Nurhachu, the founder of the present Chinese dynasty, who was a pedlar, are preserved there. Nurhachu's son, the emperor T’ien-tsung (1627–1636), built temples to heaven and earth in the neighbourhood of the city in imitation of those at Peking. These are much dilapidated. Four or five miles to the east of the town stands the Fu-ling or “happy tomb,” where the remains of Nurhachu rest, the outer gates of which are adorned with a green majolica representation of an imperial dragon. The Emperor K'ien lung (1726–1796) wrote a poem on Mukden, which was translated into French by Pere Amiot and attracted the attention of Voltaire. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 some of the heaviest fighting took place before Mukden, what is known as the “battle of Mukden” covering operations from the 19th of February till the Japanese occupied Mukden on the 10th of March and the Russians retreated northward on the 12th.