The story begins with a war and a betrayal. When Japan defeated the Qing Dynasty in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki granted Japan full sovereignty over the Liaodong Peninsula. The victory lasted barely a month. Germany, France, and Russia applied joint diplomatic pressure, known as the Triple Intervention, forcing Japan to cede the territory back to China. The humiliation was calculated: Russia had its own designs on the peninsula. In December 1897, Russian naval vessels entered Lushunkou harbor and began using it as a forward operating base. By March 1898, Russia had formally leased the region from China for 25 years, renaming the harbor Port Arthur and founding the town of Dalniy, meaning "distant" in Russian, nearby. Dalniy would eventually become Dalian.

Russia's ambitions extended far beyond a warm-water port. In 1898, construction began on a railroad running north from Port Arthur to connect Dalniy with the Chinese Eastern Railway at Harbin. This spur line, the South Manchurian Railway, became the spine of Russian influence in Manchuria. It also became the prize that Japan seized after winning the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan replaced Russia as leaseholder, renamed Port Arthur as Ryojun and Dalniy as Dairen, and obtained extraterritorial rights along the 885-kilometer railway corridor stretching north to Changchun. The South Manchurian Railway Company, headquartered in Dairen, channeled profits into transforming the city into a showcase of modern urban planning with hospitals, universities, and a large industrial zone.

Japan established the Kwantung Governor-General to administer the territory and based the Kwantung Garrison to defend it. That garrison grew into the Kwantung Army, which would become one of the most powerful and independent military forces in the Japanese empire. The Kwantung Army played an instrumental role in the creation of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state established in 1932. Through the Twenty-One Demands imposed on the Republic of China, Japan extended the lease of the territory to 99 years. Even after Manchukuo was created, Japan retained the Kwantung Leased Territory as a separate entity, distinct from the nominally independent state surrounding it. By 1935, the territory's population had reached 1,034,074, including 168,185 Japanese nationals.

The territory's last two transfers happened in quick succession. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, the Soviet Union occupied the peninsula and the Soviet Navy took over the Ryojun Naval Base. For a decade, Soviet naval officers walked the same quays and used the same drydocks that Russian, Japanese, and Chinese sailors had used before them. In 1955, the Soviet Union turned the territory over to the People's Republic of China, ending sixty years of foreign control. Today, the harbors and railways that made this peninsula worth fighting over still function. The Port of Dalian is one of China's busiest, and the city itself has grown into a metropolis of more than six million. But the architecture of the Zhongshan District still carries traces of the Russian and Japanese planners who built Dalniy and Dairen, and the military cemeteries scattered across the peninsula mark the cost of the great power competition that defined this place.