In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.
To be fair to the Chairman, by that time he was lost in the midst of those closing dark days of China’s brutal cultural revolution; the onset of motor neurone disease had shifted his ongoing descent into madness up to warp speed. No one really knows how much of the subterranean nuclear metropolis was actually completed, or just how far the network of underground tunnels and caverns was due to be extended, though it’s generally believed they connected up with all of Beijing’s main hubs and governmental locations, including Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s Central Station, and the Western Hills. Having never been fully operational, it is largely forgotten and neglected these days. In fact, most Beijingers aren’t even aware it exists.
It’s pretty hard to get down there now, but by a few deft strokes of magical luck during my last visit to Beijing I got put in touch with a friend of a friend of someone who knew a guy who heard a story of a bloke with a mate who had an access point down into the tunnels built incongruously into the back room of his small house in the center of the Hutong district of town. On the condition that we didn’t reveal the exact location of the access point, his identity, or how much of a bribe we paid, he agreed to take us down.
It was always going to be highly unlikely that the police would ever pick up on us going down there, but obviously, getting busted would be fucking awful and our guide was skulking like he was being followed by searchlights and sniffer dogs as he lead us through the back streets towards the entrance point: this dilapidated shop.
We corkscrewed down several unlit staircases before reaching an underground thoroughfare. Incredibly, despite the tunnel network reaching between eight to eighteen meters underground, the Beijing electricity board are still pumping the volts through the crumbling artifice – here and there the light switches still worked.
As we got deeper, the groundwater level rose. Soon we were up to our knees in freezing cold, shitty, disease-ridden slop. Here the lighting was a bit more volatile. Sometimes it worked, sometime the water-damaged bulbs would explode above our heads as soon as we flicked the switch.
Most paths – if they weren’t already flooded beyond accessibility – were blocked up with wood or trash. Our guide insisted that if we were to shift all the wood to get over the top, we’d be able to get all the way to Tiananmen Square, where the tunnels are apparently large enough to accommodate rolling tank processions.
It has periodically been put back into use – for local council storage space, depressing accommodation for manual laborers shipped in en-masse from the countryside, or for mad raves held by daring Chinese punks wearing miners’ headlamps. But much of it has also been concreted up, flooded, or destroyed to make way for Beijing’s new subway train network.
For a time, a small portion of it was also opened as a tourist attraction, done up to look as it would have if Mao’s underground utopia had ever come to fruition, but has since been shut down again after Beijing backpackers spoke with their wallets and realized they liked spending their money on cheap Chinese rice liquor more than on exploring empty, rat-infested tunnels.
As we snooped around we found various rooms in different states of disrepair. I guess this is where the proposed underground restaurants, offices, hospitals, schools, theaters, factories, and even roller skating rink would have ended up.
Here’s some evidence of the tunnels being multi-layered, though here the upper floor has been blocked off, or was never completed.
As we wandered on a bit, we found a couple of tiny bedrooms – one complete with damaged old posters on the walls. Great place to bring a girl back to.
Further down the flooded path, we found a few fading tokens of the dream that built this barren bunker.
A crumpled picture of the man himself, and a commemorative plaque reminding everyone to be good communists by “digging deep tunnels, storing more food, not seeking hegemony.” That’s always been my motto.
Here’s a bit of a map we found that gives you an idea of the complexity of the tunnels.
Then something quite unexpected happened. As we walked further, presumably close to another ground level exit, we spotted lights already on ahead of us, and a couple of rather pleasant potted plants.
Turns out the People’s Republic of China are still pushing their proles underground, and some poor folk are actually living down here as a testament to Beijing’s swelling population and housing problems.
Just because they’re on a washing line doesn’t mean they’ve ever been washed.
Look! More proof people live down here – a big kitchen!
And most charming of all, this recent innovation in toilet socialism: fully exposed, communal squat shitters.
Our guide started to get anxious that we were seeing too much and our feet were now soaked and freezing…
So we got the fuck out to return to the communist utopia of contemporary Beijing at ground level.
Tags: Beijing under Beijing, Chairman Mao's neurosis, China, hidden cities, sewer people
My vote for the next Fallout game.
This is just like in Futurama!
I heard that in ny guiliani made all the homeless live in the sewers, which means thats where all the real new yorkers are now, fuck you hipster vice gentrification rich kid koke heads
很好！This is awesome.
HOLY CRAP! I’m so creeped out just looking at the pictures!
That is just incredible!
I wish i had known about that when i went to beijing several years ago. Any hints on how to find someone to take you there would be appreciated.
That’s awesome, I’m fascinated! It actually looks like it wouldn’t be too hard to clean up some of those tunnels…
Fucking awesome. I’m going to Beijing myself in a few months; wonder if there’s any way for me to get down there…
is there a button that needs to be pushed?
Seems like typical communist attrition. China and Russia have all sorts of half-finished (sometimes completely finished) structures which go unused. It follows behind a mentality that goes for preparation and survival by keeping all of your bases covered.
Granted, other places have this too- they just don’t get neglected in quite the same unique fashion.
ni hao, vice magazine! good work.
this is really awesome
Yeah, go ahead and be smug about the legacy that Chinese communism left. What would you say if I told you I had it on good authority that those are simply test residents down there under Beijing. They are actually a kind of pilot program to see if an entire population could live underground. But they are not testing for a Chinese population. They are testing to see if Americans could survive down there. True. Yes it is. It seems the Chinese Government is looking into the eventuality that they would, in the not too distant future, own the whole, or large pieces of America and, by default, its somewhat bothersome citizenry. Anticipating the need to export cheap labor to China (goddamn Chinese Unions are already starting to act uppity), and the need to house that labor; and after stumbling into several histories of how Americans housed their imported Chinese labor during the 19th century, the Beijing Refuge and Retreat Complex seemed the perfect answer. Which explains the potted plants; actually a pilot program to see which American cultivars survive in zero sunlight, and the open communal toilets; the Chinese anticipate Americans will bring there own fixtures to make the room ‘homier.’ You all had better get used to it.
@seamus What would you say if I told you I had it on good authority (sanity and common sense) that your good authority is at best some nut like Glenn Beck, but more likely someone inside your own head? The Communist party is a group of meticulous planners, yes, but they usually plan for things the actually think might happen. Your scenario is quite a few steps removed from plausibility. How would China come to own America? Probably not by buying it, so I assume you mean armed conflict. Aside from the fact that America’s army, while smaller than china’s, is the most powerful and technologically capable army in the world, and we’d have most of europe to back us up, and both sides have nukes so invasion = byebye Beijing, we’re also the worlds largest trading partners, so war would be horrible for business on both sides. Even assuming they did wind up owning all or part of America, what could possibly encourage Americans to take low wage Chinese jobs? Even working at McDonalds is better than getting paid a couple yen a day to work in a garment factory. But I suppose your paranoid fantasy wouldn’t be complete without slave labor, in which case I ask you - which is more expensive, maintaining the underground quarters for an army of slaves, or putting them in a compound in the countryside (also, why would they care if slave’s rooms were “homie”?). I would just suggest Occam’s razor to take care of your xenophobic nonsense, but that scenario is so far off the mark I’m not even sure if you could be familiar with the term.
Other then that, awesome article. I love urban exploration, where better to do it than an abandoned illustration of how crazy/awesome central planning can be?
censor ship? when does it leave port?