All Aboard the Yunnan Express

Anson Zong-Liscum (安森)

Riding the rails of southern Yunnan province, where “internet celebrity” tourism and French colonial legacy collide

A white speck hurtles toward me, the sound of it growing from a low hum to a roaring whir. Eventually, the distinctive ivory tubes of a high-speed train blast past my car, carrying hundreds of passengers across the lush landscape of China‘s southwestern Yunnan province . The train careers into the distance, suspended above me on raised tracks carved into nature.

This high-speed railway between the provincial capital, Kunming, and Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, swoops through 10 tunnels and traverses 52 bridges. It stops at five train stations along the way, and took five years and 13.62 billion yuan to build. But I’m not here to spot modern symbols of China’s economic growth: I’m on the trail of railway heritage that stretches back to the late 19th century.

Back then, French colonial ambitions in Yunnan and Southeast Asia collided with a China trying desperately to modernize and escape manipulation by imperialist powers. France built the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, running south from Kunming to Hekou on the border with Vietnam (then French Indochina)—a colonial project to extract resources from southwest China and transport them to the French empire.

After the Qing dynasty fell in 1911 and Chinese leaders sought to modernize their country and resist further encroachment by imperial powers, the government granted another railway contract in Yunnan to a private Chinese railway company. They built the Gebishi Railway, which ran from Shiping in the west to Bisezhai , where it linked up with the French tracks.

I want to trace the Gebishi Railway, and as the new high-speed train tracks bend away from my car and out of sight, I exit the highway near Jijie, my first stop.

The Forgotten Station

As I drive into Jijie, I’m slightly surprised by the run-down scene before me. Jijie was a vital stop on the Gebishi line, as it connected to tin mines in Gejiu city to the south. Gejiu’s mining history dates back 2,000 years to the Han dynasty, and the city’s economy is still heavily reliant on tin and lead mining today, but Jijie Station displays little of this former glory.

I pay an unexplained 1-yuan toll to enter a shabby-looking town, but as I trundle down a dusty road for another five minutes or so, faded red characters appear above a crumbling white wall covered in ads: Jijie Station. While I had seen posts on social media about many of the other stations on my Gebishi Railway itinerary, I had found little information about Jijie online. Sure enough, the station is virtually deserted but for a few families meeting up for a sunset picnic atop the now disused tracks.

A mustard-yellow building with grass-green window shades soon catches my attention. There is a collection of these buildings, all of them in old French colonial style, and they make up the remnants of a 3,000 square meter train station. After walking out from the narrow corridor next to one of the old station buildings, I find numerous dusty rail ties and beams that seemingly haven’t been moved since the last trains ran 33 years ago.

The buildings are a reminder of colonialism in China and Southeast Asia, but they weren’t built by the French. Having already built their railway from Kunming to Hekou in 1910, the French hoped to extend the line west to Jijie and Gejiu to connect to the precious deposit of tin there.

But in 1913, in a show of defiance to the imperial powers, the governor of Yunnan, Cai E (蔡锷), awarded the contract to a group of Chinese merchants led by Chen Heting (陈鹤婷). They formed the Gebi Railway Company, and deliberately built their track narrower than the French one (so foreign trains couldn’t use it). Company rules forbade foreign ownership of the railway, but they still relied on foreign engineers for construction and copied much of the French Yunnan-Vietnam Railway—including the French-style buildings, which became a feature of every station on the line.

The line from Jijie to Bisezhai (the eastern terminus of the Gebishi Railway, where it joined with France’s Yunnan-Vietnam Railway) was completed in 1918. Construction from Jijie Station to the mines of Gejiu was completed in 1921, and it began operating as both a passenger transfer station, but more importantly as the station where tin brought north from Gejiu was transferred to head west to Shiping or, more likely, east to Bisezhai. Much of the tin was eventually carried throughout France’s empire and sold internationally, though some was kept in China. In the 1930s, Gejiu’s tin made up 80 percent of the goods transported on the railway at Jijie.

Now, however, the station feels deserted rather than preserved. I take a break to sample Jijie’s roast chicken, apparently a local delicacy (though I can’t discern anything special about it), and then head back onto the highway to follow the Gebishi Railway’s tracks further west, to a station that has been going viral on social media.

Rail Tourism in the Internet Age

After an hour of driving the 54 kilometers to Jianshui county, I find a totally different scene to forgotten Jijie. Tourists are darting around a train station built in 1928, snapping selfies next to the restored colonial buildings and bronze statues of imagined passengers from the 1920s: a cosmopolitan woman dressed in period attire, a young boy selling candied hawthorn berries, and a pigtailed girl slinging packets of cigarettes. Tucked in the corner, behind (mainly empty) train stalls, sits an old British steam locomotive produced in the 1940s, a reminder of the clamorous beasts that once brought tin and other commodities across these railways.

Unlike Jijie, Jianshui Station has made the leap from historical site to “internet famous” tourist destination. On social media platform Xiaohongshu , I found an endless stream of content, mainly tourists and influencers posing at the French-style station, or hopping on and off pretty vintage green and yellow trains.

Many of the stations along the 177-kilometer Gebishi Railway (like Jijie) have become weathered over the years, but Jianshui has been spruced up for visitors. The highlight for tourists is the vintage “small train” which began operating in 2015 and runs 13 kilometers along the old route—though it doesn’t run on the same tracks, since the narrow gauge was widened for the small train.

The train runs twice a day, and the 100-yuan tickets often sell out. I fail to book a ticket online, but get lucky at the ticket office—there are still tickets available for the next morning. “Arrive at 8:40, 20 minutes before your 9 a.m. ride. The train leaves on time every day,” says the ticket seller, pointing sternly at the departure time printed on my trendy orange and red ticket.

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