Hunchun supplies over 80 percent of China's king crabs. [Photo/Jilin Daily]

At 9 am every morning, Gao Jingchun opens his seafood restaurant on Hunchun's famed seafood street, ready to welcome diners from across China. Social media influencers have dubbed his store a "hidden gem" along this bustling 145-meter stretch, home to nearly 30 seafood shops, where the salty scent of the sea fills the air.

Roughly 40 kilometers away in Russia's Posyet Port, trucks loaded with king crabs set off for China. Within hours, after clearing customs at Hunchun, these deep-sea delicacies land on dinner tables across the country.

Hunchun, a small, unassuming border city along the G331 Highway in Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture, Northeast China's Jilin province, has unexpectedly become a viral destination. Once overlooked, it now ranks high on many travelers' bucket lists.

As China's only city bordering Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Hunchun supplies over 80 percent of the country's king crabs, with more than 1.5 million crossing the border here annually.

With four national-level ports and a hundredfold increase in cross-border e-commerce over the past six years, Hunchun has become a dynamic hub for foreign trade, with thousands of tons of international goods flowing in and out of the city each day.

King crabs are just the tip of the iceberg. Hunchun's cross-border e-commerce hub is thriving, with billions in goods passing through yearly. Over 160 e-commerce, logistics, and foreign trade businesses have settled in the Northeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park, with the bonded warehouse center alone serving nearly 2,000 companies across China.

Favorable policies, close collaboration, and a supportive environment are turning Hunchun into a magnet for entrepreneurs, many of them are young returnees from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, drawn home by the promise of cross-border opportunity.