Beijing Mysteries: The Underground City

The entrance when it was open to tourists

Despite a brief period as a tourist attraction in the late 00's, Beijing's system of underground tunnels remains as secret as it did during the days of the Sino-Soviet border skirmishes.  Few tourist strolling through the Qian'men neighborhood even know the series of underground tunnels and vast rooms lays just below street level, and many locals seem to know even less about this wonder of Beijing.  

The entrance now

The government opened a large section of the former shelter to tourists about the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  Since then the cavernous tunnels have again become something of a mystery.  I traveled with Beijing's favorite tour guide to try to get to the bottom, both literally and figuratively, of this Beijing mystery.  We found a nondescript door that once served as the tourist entrance to Beijing's underground maze in a quiet Beijing ally.  A spooky staircase was visible through a broken window leading to a cool, dark basement-like entryway, but other than this fleeting glimpse of Beijing's mythic underworld, we were unable to see anything else.

The larger bricks on top came
from the city wall

The history of the tunnels is quite interesting, but I spare you the details.  It's basically a giant bomb shelter.  You can find out more by just googling it.  Yes this is half-ass journalism, but I have places to be so there.  One of the coolest things though is that many bricks from the original Ming Dynasty city wall were used during the construction of the tunnels.  (see the top part of picture left)  

Knowing no good mystery is ever easy to solve, we asked some of the locals wondering around the area about the tunnels and the locked entrance.  We got a good number of conflicting and outlandish statements from the neighbors about the status of the tunnels, including they'd collapsed, been taken over by the government again, flooded, and closed because the tours didn't make enough money.  The truth is.....in true China fashion.....no one seems to know anything about why they really closed.  Officially they closed following a safety inspection, but if I had to guess, they closed for the extension of Line 8 through Wangfujing and the southern portion of Beijing.

So maybe I wouldn't hack it as an investigative journalist, but getting straight answers here is next to impossible.  I am going to do some long-term research and work on solving this mystery soon.