CHANGCHUN is a huge, sprawling industrial city based on coal, petroleum and iron. Its historical notoriety rests on its role as Hsinking, capital of Manchukuo, the Japanese-controlled state from 1932 to 1945 that had Xuantong, better known as Puyi, as its emperor. The city is renowned today for its many colleges, its movie studio and also the Number One Automobile Factory , producer of the ubiquitous Liberation Truck and Red Flag automobile, recently reintroduced, though this time without a wooden interior and aimed not at cadres, but at China's new car-crazy middle class.

Changchun is an agreeable place, but locals admit it's better to live here than to visit. The town is well-planned, with straight boulevards and squares throughout, but it's huge, with its few sights spread far apart. A stroll south from the train station down the main artery, Renmin Dajie, to Renmin Guangchang (People's Square) and then west to Wenhua Guangchang (Culture Square) is a good, but long, introduction to the city.

Culture Square is the second-largest in the world (after Tian'anmen), and was to be the site of a Japanese palace. Today it's a large patch of grass with statues of a muscular naked man, standing with his arms raised in liberation, and a reclining naked woman marking its centre. Changchun's only notable attraction is the Puppet Emperor's Palace (daily 9am-4.30pm; ¥10), in the east of the city on the route of bus #10 from the train station, where the last Chinese emperor, Puyi, was established as a powerless figurehead by the Japanese. In 1912, at the age of eight, Puyi ascended to the imperial throne in Beijing, at the behest of the dying Dowager Cixi. Although forced to abdicate by the Republican government in the same year, he retained his royal privileges, continuing to reside as a living anachronism in the Forbidden City. Outside, the new republic was coming to terms with democracy and the twentieth century, and Puyi's life, circumscribed by court ritual, seems a fantasy in comparison. In 1924, he was expelled by Nationalists uneasy at what he represented, but the Japanese protected him and eventually found a use for him here in Changchun as a figure who lent a symbolic legitimacy to their rule. After the war he was re-educated by the Communists and lived the last years of his life as a gardener. His story was the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci's lavish film, The Last Emperor. (In fact, watching the film is probably more engrossing than visiting this palace.) Like its former occupant, it's really just a shadow of Chinese imperial splendour, a poor miniature of Beijing's Forbidden City, with two badly maintained courtyards and a garden. Photos of Puyi line the walls, with captions in Chinese only, but you can surmise the tone of the presentation by looking at the mannequins of Puyi and his wife: she reclines on a sofa smoking opium while her husband gleefully confers with a Japanese general down the hall. Additional photo exhibits in the rear building document Japan's brutal invasion and rule. Next door is the Jilin Provincial Museum (Sun-Fri 8.30am-4.30pm; ¥5), a bland collection of artefacts and maps - you'll need to be able to read Chinese to appreciate them fully.