History next stop as station makes way for high-speed
Print Edition
A RAILWAY station that has been in use in Beijing since the early 1900s has taken its place in the history books as the nation charges ahead with the development of its high-speed rail network.
Qinghuayuan Station, once the main rail transport hub linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou, a city in the northern province of Hebei, closed yesterday, as transport authorities concentrate on a new high-speed line between the two cities, according to the Beijing Railway Bureau.
It said the new Beijing-Zhangjiakou line will run underground within the capital’s Fifth Ring Road, making the track and stations of the original Beijing-Zhangjiakou route obsolete.
Since the first piece of track was laid in the early 2000s, the high-speed network has seen passenger trips grow 30 percent a year on average and the whole network was more than 20,000 kilometers long by September 12, according to China Railway Corp.
China’s top economic planner wants it to exceed 175,000 kilometers by 2025. The new Beijing-Zhangjiakou line will help achieve that target. Undertaken, in part, to support the flow of visitors to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Zhangjiakou, the new 170-kilometer line will be operational by 2019.
As China pushes to upgrade its transport infrastructure, it will not be long before many of the nation’s other stations and their trains embark on their final journeys.
In 1905, Zhan Tianyou was appointed by the imperial court of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to preside over the construction of the railway. His calligraphy, of the station’s name, still adorns the original building’s gateway.
“Qinghuayuan Station has stood the test of time, if only its walls could speak. Oh the stories they could tell,” said Liu Fengqiang, previous head of the station. “The Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway was the first long-distance railway track in Chinese history, and a hugely arduous undertaking.”
The station also predates Tsinghua University, which was established in 1911, and the founding of New China in 1949, Liu said.
“In March 1949, Mao Zedong relocated from Xibaipo, Hebei, to Beijing, but as he was nearing Qianmen Station, in the city center, he decided to get off at Qinghuayuan Station, because there were many spies near Qianmen Station,” Liu said.
For the founding ceremony of New China on October 1, 1949, a specially-scheduled train left Qinghuayuan Station filled with students from Tsinghua University, all excited about witnessing the momentous occasion.
Before it closed, more than 30 trains a day passed through the station, taking passengers to the Badaling Great Wall, Hebei’s Chengde City and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north.
In the days preceding the closure, tickets for trains stopping at the station sold out as people flocked to experience this junction in China’s history.
Retired scientist Song, 75, was there “to say goodbye to an old memory.”
Another rail fan said: “The trains once carried Chinese to places they had only ever dreamed of. Even though trains will no longer stop here, we will always have our memories.”
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