Secret city - Beijing’s forgotten subway stop

Mind the gap Fushouling subway stop is never busy at rush hour

Pick up a copy of a Beijing subway map and place your index finger on the Tiananmen West subway station.

Like all the stations on the system, it’s numbered (116 in this case). Now begin tracing Line 1 westwards, counting down the stations as you go, until you reach the end of the line at Pingguoyuan.

See the anomaly that you’ve discovered? The first station on the line is number 103. Shock! But rather than being the result of some numerical superstition, stations 101 and 102 did in fact exist when Line 1 was first opened for full public use in 1981.

The western section of Line 1 began construction in 1965 for military purposes, but these two stations have since become obsolete and disappeared off the map.

Gaojing station (101) and Fushouling station (102), for those with a penchant for mass transit systems and a desire to go west, still have entrances in the middle of the wilderness and are well worth exploring (if you’re brave enough).

Fushouling is located near the Mass Transit Railway Technical School where it is rumoured that trainee drivers practise on the unused section of the track.

However, be warned that the closed stations are still under protection from security guards and any attempts to get down onto the platform are unlikely to end well.

However, any red-blooded trainspotter could do a lot worse for an adventure than head out west in an attempt to check out the origins of Beijing’s oldest subway line. Simon Fowler

Fushouling subway station Take Line 1 of the subway to Pingguoyuan, then take bus 311 and get off at Badachu Park.