"dig tunnels deep,
store rice everywhere,
never seek hegemony"
Beijing’s Underground City - Dixia Cheng
Mao’s slogan calling for people to "dig tunnels deep, store rice everywhere and never seek hegemony" is printed on the wall. For more than 20 years, Beijing’s Underground City, a bomb shelter just beneath the ancient capital’s downtown area, was virtually forgotten by local citizens, despite being well-known among foreigners since it officially opened in 2000. Between 2000 and 2008, it opened to foreign tourists only after years of dissuse. Since then the site has been closed for renovations. As of 2017 it was closed and unlikely to open any time soon. It has been banned from opening to the outside world and has been changed to a police station.
What is simply called Beijing's Underground City is a vast system of bomb shelters beneath the ancient capital's downtown area. Built during the 1970s by more than 300,000 local citizens and even school children, it has 30 kilometers of passages and covers an area of 85 square kilometers. The shelters are eight to eighteen meters below the surface. The 1,000 anti-air raid structures are big enough to house 40% of the capital's population. The Underground City has also been called the Underground Great Wall, since they had the same purpose: military defense.
This complex is a relic of the Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969 over Zhenbao Island in northeast China’s Heilongjiang River, a time when chairman Mao Zedong ordered the construction of subterranean bomb shelters in case of nuclear attack. It includes around a thousand anti-air raid structures. To supply construction materials for the complex, centuries-old city walls and towers that once circled ancient Beijing were pulled down. The old city gates of Xizhimen, Fuchengmen, Chongwenmen and others remain in name only – only two embrasured watchtowers from Zhengyangmen and Deshengmen survived.
In the event of attack, the plan was to house forty percent of the capital’s population underground and for the remainder to move to neighboring hills, and it was said that every residence once had a secret trapdoor nearby leading to the tunnels. There is no authoritative information on how far the mostly hand-dug tunnels stretch, but they supposedly link all areas of central Beijing, from Xidan and Xuanwumen to Qianmen and Chongwen districts, to as far as the Western Hills.
They were equipped with facilities such as stores, restaurants, clinics, schools, theaters, reading rooms, factories, a roller skating rink, a grain and oil warehouse as well as barber shops and a mushroom cultivation farm, for growing foods that require little light. Over 2,300 elaborate ventilation shafts were installed, and gas and waterproof hatches constructed to protect occupants from chemical attack and radioactive fallout. There are also more than 70 sites inside the tunnels to dig wells.
The underground city was thankfully never needed for its intended purpose, but it was maintained by city officials. Water conservancy authorities checked it every year during rainy season, and it was included in anti-vermin sweeps. The tunnels have since been used by young lovers, and by children daring each other to remain in the darkness longer than their friends. But they were largely shut off for safety reasons. On busy streets, some shelters are now used as low priced hostels, while others have been transformed into shopping and business centers, or even theaters.
Despite having so many entrances, foreign visitors usually saw only a small approved section accessed via a small shop front in Qianmen, south of Tiananmen. Tour groups could enter free of charge without prior permission, while individual tourists were charged 20 yuan (US$2.40). One location for seeing the Underground City was 62 West Damochang Street, Qianmen. Apparently, there is another site in Beijing Qianmen Carpet Factory at 44 Xingfu Dajie, Chongwen District, and a lesser known one at 18 Dazhalan Jie in Qianmen.
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