Xianghuiqiao Railway Station

In 1932, local tin merchants and gentry in Yunnan took a bold stand against foreign monopoly. They pooled their wealth to build the Ge-Bi-Shi Railway, China’s first privately funded commercial line. Along this route, in Xinzhuang Town, they raised the Xianghuiqiao Railway Station. Completed in October 1936, the station took its name from the nearby 1814 Qing Dynasty wind-and-rain bridge, where generations of hopeful scholars crossed the river to sit for imperial exams.

The station building is a physical dialogue between two empires. An asymmetrical, L-shaped structure of 238 square meters, it features a central two-story French-style tower of heavy brick and stone. Flanking this European core are two traditional Chinese wood-frame wings, three bays wide, topped with dark clay roof tiles and hip-and-gable roofs. Local carpenters carved classical bracket sets and assembled the post-and-lintel frames without nails. The exterior wears a coat of French ochre-yellow paint, accented by faded-green window lattices.

For decades, the station hummed with the sounds of commerce. Steam locomotives hissed at the platforms, pulling cars along a tiny 600-millimeter narrow-gauge track. In 1970, workers labored to widen these rails to a 1,000-millimeter meter-gauge line, adapting to a changing world. Though the station was decommissioned in 2008, its story persisted.

In 2015, the site found new life. Today, the single remaining meter-gauge track carries the Jianshui Old Town Sightseeing Train. Visitors step off the wooden carriages into a preserved space where the past is tangible. The station interior serves as a quiet coffee bar and teahouse. Guests sit beneath the historic timber beams, drinking local Dianhong tea and listening to the low rumble of passing trains. Designated as a Prefecture-level Cultural Relic Protection Unit in 2016, Xianghuiqiao remains a monument to local self-reliance and architectural harmony, standing quietly amid the green rice paddies of Jianshui.