Beijing East — Where the F**k is Beijing East?
Oh, I don’t know why I’m leaving
Or where I’m gonna go
I guess I’ve got my reasons
But I just don’t want to know
‘Cos for 77 years
I’ve been scouring all the maps for…
Beijing East…BEIJING EAST
WHERE THE F**K
IS BEIJING EAST
Ticket A59 | 14 August 2019
(Apologies to Smokie, Gompie, Nicky Chinn, and Mike Chapman…)
Of all the “Beijing” stations, Beijing East may be the most enigmatic… the most invisible… the most Bielefeld of them all…
Some of you have seen Bielefeld-ish pics like these… showing express trains just a stone’s throw away from the Beijing CBD.
Welcome to the Bielefeld Railway Station of the capital of the People’s Republic of China — Beijing East (aka Beijingdong in Pinyin). Having started on this post, I hereby (unofficially) declare you guilty as a co-conspirator… of… oh hell! The Bielefeld effect. (You know, that German city that supposedly wasn’t supposed to exist!? Beijing East, too… it’s… Go figure, it has a very Bielefeld-ish to it too, with quite a number of us refusing to believe it exists!…)
But this thing is not in Germany and this thing exists! (Either it exists, or yours truly doesn’t exist, either. That’d make this a horrifically rail-paranormal blog…)
(Gentlemen: Next time you use the loos on the Level 80 bar at China World Summit Wing, look outside the window whilst doing your Number One. You should see a lot of trains in public, just outside the window. Giveaway! Railway line! They also designed the public conveniences so — let’s just say what’s public is public, and what’s private remains private!)
This is one hell of an elusive station. Google Maps places it here…
…and you know you’re probably on the right track (so to speak) when you see this stencilled sign of “encouragement”: “Beijing East, 500 metres further east this way”.
(Note: As with everything Google Maps + China, more likely, it pointed you to the Cargo side of Beijing East, not the Passenger side, which is the north bit…)
Your reward (on the Passenger side) is a yellow-ish building sporting of the few signs in Beijing with the station name still in standard traditional characters.
When you sneak in to the waiting hall (tiny, for now!), this, though, shows the effort they made to update this for the new millennium… ticket gate machines! These machines can read and process both traditional blue tickets, upgraded ExpressPay cards, and a Beijing-only Suburban Rail + Subway card. (Dang it! Expats can’t apply… they require a mainland Chinese 18-digit citizen ID number!…)
Beijing East has been with the city since 1942, first as Dongjiao, or Eastern Suburbs, railway station. In time for the opening of the first Central Beijing suburban rail service, though, the station got quite a makeover in 2017. In particular, the island platform got a full-length shelter, digital displays were introduced, and signs were redone.
The station is probably less than a mile away from Dawanglu Subway Station, and is really, really underused these days. It’s also extremely spartan — the late 2017 improvements were a solid improvement, as the station was in an even less spectacular station before then. Thankfully, news is out that by late 2019, there should be an even better-still Beijing East readied. By 2021 or 2022, there’ll even be a new Beijing Subway line stopping here, creating a direct link to the heart of the Beijing CBD from Beijing East.
These days, suburban trains use the station a fair bit, with most services concentrated during morning and evening rush hour. But loads of trains zip through the station, with some of China’s newer HSR trainsets silently slipping through.
Suburban trains had one more station to conquer in late 2017, when it opened — literally on the very last day of the year. The next stop would have been Tongzhou, but now, there’s one more further east: Qiaozhuang East, closer to City Hall for Beijing (now waaaay out east).
Many journeys don’t usually start from Beijing East, but that doesn’t mean it’s a station designed to be useless. The Tring of Beijing, Yanjiao (in the nearby province of Hebei), had quite a number of rail services that started from that boomtown-just-on-the-outskirts-of-Beijing-municipality, and they made a point to run these to central Beijing stations — including Beijing East.
(That’s Yours Truly putting on a very Early Morning Tring expression for Yanjiao, the sleepy town just outside of town. The train at the back — the Beijing-Tongzhou Express — is actually the very suburban train seen and used at Beijing East!)
Apart from expanding the station building and getting a Beijing Subway link, Beijing East doesn’t seem to (want to) go anywhere. That’s because bigger-still stations lie further east, including one close to City Hall Tongzhou for real High Speed trains. Still, that’s Beijing East decoded for you: a train station which does actually exist. (Just look right as you head south on the nearby 4th Ringway!)
(Three questions as you leave this post. I cannot guarantee if China Railways will give you a lifelong Free Travel Pass for Business Class and Luxury Soft Sleeper if you can answer YES to ALL THREE!…
- Do you know anybody from Beijing East?
- Have you ever been to Beijing East?
- Do you know anybody who has ever been to Beijing East — and actually taken a dang train from the station?…)
