In 1915, local merchants and Chinese officials in Yunnan began a quiet rebellion in stone and steel. To protect the region's rich tin mines from foreign concessionaires, they funded their own railway. They raised capital through a unique shareholding system: one slab of tin secured seventy-two yuan of stock, a pile of charcoal bought three, and a basket of raw ore bought one. On the stock certificates, general manager Chen Heging printed a strict warning: any share sold to a non-Chinese citizen was void.

The result was the Gejiu Railway Station, the southern terminus of the 600-millimeter narrow-gauge Jijie-Gejiu line. Completed on November 9, 1921, the station building rose as a ten-meter-tall, two-story brick-and-stone structure blending Chinese and French architectural styles. For decades, the station hummed with the sounds of tiny steam engines chugging along at twenty kilometers per hour. The trains ran so slowly that passengers frequently jumped off before steep tunnels to avoid the choking coal smoke, walked over the hills, and waited for the locomotive to catch up.

Today, at No. 163 Jinhu West Road, the station tells a story of survival and adaptation. The original red-tiled roof became a flat concrete top during modifications in 1991, yet the rough, yellow-washed walls and a cool, twenty-meter-long bluestone platform remain. Though passenger services ended in 1988 and cargo trains stopped in 1990, the building refused to fade. It housed the Railway Station Department Store until 2016, keeping its doors open to local shoppers.