This Week in China’s History: January 15, 1971
With more than 23 billion annual rides, China now has more subway riders than any other country in the world; the first of those tickets were sold this week, 52 years ago.
On January 15, 1971, for the first time in China, people bought tickets to board a train that would take them underground. Beijing’s Metro was China’s first, confined to the city’s center until an explosion of development that started around 2002. But right from the start the project had enormous implications for the city and its built environment.
By the time of the official opening in 1971, the Beijing Metro had been operating for about a year and a half, but only on a special basis, ferrying dignitaries and officials along a 21-kilometer, 16-stop route running from the Beijing train station in the center of town to Gucheng station at the feet of the Western Hills. This was Line 1.
The plans for the Beijing metro began as early as the 1950s. They were modeled on the Moscow subway, reflecting Soviet influence at the time, and would have had exceptionally deep tunnels — more than 100 meters deep — that could double as bomb shelters if needed. But Beijing’s geology (and the withdrawal of Soviet advisors) modified those plans to a “cut and cover” design, with trains running just 10 or 20 meters below the surface.
Construction began in 1965, with a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平, Zhū Dé 朱德, and Péng Zhēn 彭真. But passersby wouldn’t have had any idea what the ceremony was for, given the project was secret.
Initially, the subway’s greatest impact was above ground, not below. As soon as the People’s Republic was established, the government called for the ancient walls all across the city to be dismantled to facilitate Beijing’s transition to an industrial center. In its 1954 city plan, the government declared its opposition to “extreme respect for old architecture, such that it constricts our perspective of development.”
The walls, some of which dated back as far as the 13th century, began to be pulled down. The fate of the Inner City walls, first built in the early Ming, was especially controversial. Architect Liáng Sīchéng 梁思成 — the son of Liáng Qǐchāo 梁啓超, who had helped lead the the Hundred Days’ Reforms in 1898 — was among those trying to preserve the wall as part of China’s heritage. But government leaders preferred a path that would turn Beijing into an industrial center, and the walls restricted the city’s ability to develop. Brick by brick, the walls fell.
The subway’s route and construction technique accelerated this destructive trend. The path planners selected for the new line was meant to minimally disrupt homes and businesses, but instead devastated the city’s architectural heritage. Digging the trenches for the tunnels required everything on the surface be razed, though some intervention enabled the preservation of many of the city gates, though the walls around them were torn down. Even today, the subway stations in Beijing’s center reflect the gates that had once controlled access to the capital: Qianmen, Fuxingmen, Hepingmen, Xuanwumen, and so on.
The line opened on National Day 1969, with Premier Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 boarding the first train, and workers who had worked on the line applauding in excitement at Gucheng station. For nearly a year and a half, the system was primarily a glamorous tourist attraction, operating by invitation only and shuttling special guests through its grand stations.
The first years weren’t easy, perhaps predictably given the political environment of the Cultural Revolution. Just a month after the line opened, an electrical fire killed three people and injured another hundred. A string of such problems made Zhou Enlai bring the subway under the management of the People’s Liberation Army.
On January 15, 1971, the subway opened to “the public.” But I put this in scare quotes because so few were allowed to ride. As was true of many things then, a letter of introduction from a work unit was required to buy tickets, which were priced at 0.10 yuan ($0.015). This requirement was lifted a year later; annual ridership growing steadily to more than 55 million — 150,000 rides per day — by the end of the decade.
The subway’s first significant expansion occurred in the 1980s, when a loop that traced the old Ming city walls opened in phases. By 1987, the two lines familiar to a generation of Beijingers — not to mention foreign backpackers carrying Lonely Planet guides — emerged: the east-west Line 1, approaching but not quite reaching Tiananmen, out to Pingguoyuan, while a looping Line 2 circled the Forbidden City, with the two intersecting at Fuxingmen. This basic layout was in place from 1981 through 2001. Fares eventually rose to 3 yuan ($0.44), while annual ridership surpassed 500 million. It was also in the 1980s that Tianjin became the second mainland city with a subway (Hong Kong’s MTR had opened in 1979) followed by Shanghai (1993) and Guangzhou (1997).
The 2008 Olympics spurred the next round of rapid subway development in Beijing. Lines 4, 5, 8, 10, and 13 all opened prior to the Summer Games, during which a daily ridership record of 4.92 million was set on the day of the closing ceremony.
And the boom was not limited to Beijing. During the run-up to the Olympics, new subway construction surged across the country. The central government had ordered a halt on building new subways in 1990, citing concerns with rising expenses and debt, with dozens of systems already being planned. But a flood of new metros arrived once the regulatory bottle was uncorked. Dalian’s system opened in 2002; Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Nanjing by 2005. From 2010 to the present, an average of three cities per year have opened new metro systems, bringing the total number of Chinese cities with subways to nearly 50.
Personally, the system that best brings home the impact of these changes is the Harbin metro, which opened in 2016. It is one of the smallest systems in the country, with not yet 50 miles of tracks (compared to nearly 500 each in Shanghai and Beijing), though neither of those metropolises have charming (kitschy?) subway stations with Russian-styled cupola marking their entrance. Having spent many sub-zero Manchurian nights riding the 104 bus home, which often lacked windows, never mind heat — passengers occasionally having to help the driver reattach the overhead electrical contacts that powered the bus — the notion of a fast, warm train running under the streets is appealing to my former self!
This Week in China’s History is a weekly column.
