On the morning of the last day of 2014, I was walking in the hallway of Hankou train station with my colleagues Zhongyi and David. As we were exiting the building, pushing through the tide of people, David remarked that this train station feels so much like the one in Tianjin. Coincidentally, Zhongyi and I were also discussing the unfortunate similarity of train stations in various cities throughout China.
My quick impression of train stations in China is this: “big and messy.” Wondering if this was in fact the case everywhere, I typed “beautiful train station in China” into Google. The response was either decommissioned or small stations in remote areas that I had never heard of before. Considering that trains are the most important and utilized transportation option in China I found the lackluster nature of stations both frustrating and disappointing.
I thought about Grand Central Station, Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, Osaka Station, Tokyo Station, and all the other impressive train stations I’ve travelled to outside of China. They are all grand and full of rich details, stately architecture, and well considered, welcoming public plazas. They are all gateways into the city just like the ones in China. But here, no matter whether it’s a historic station or a new high-speed rail station, a visitor’s first impression isn’t very welcoming or unique; it says nothing about the “place,” and you feel like you could be arriving anywhere until you see a big sign saying, for example, “Welcome to Wulumuqi.”
As I thought more about it, the reasons for this situation became clearer. In 2008, the overall national railroad passenger flow was over 1.45 billion; during the Spring Festival alone, the largest annual migration of people on earth, 220 million tickets were sold— people going home for the holidays (round trip). Train stations become a brutal battle field for travelers fighting their way to the tracks. Wide-open plazas and vast hallways are efficient for people to move in and move on. China built 21 high-speed rails totaling 6894 kilometers from 2007 to 2012. New stations and tracks were constructed and platforms expanded in a short period of time. A cookie-cutter approach that can be quickly copied and built has its advantage in efficiency. And there’s this—the vast majority of train travelers are from the Chinese countryside. Presumably their expectations for public space are not as delicate as white collars commuting through Grand Central or Tokyo Station. The human deluge takes its toll and maintenance of the stations is challenging and perpetual. When all of these factors are considered, unattractive, mass produced train stations seem virtually inevitable.
China continues its rapid urbanization and many more train stations are in the works.
So the questions that face us are these: Can designers help to reclaim the importance of these public edifices and return their status as places of civic pride for their respective communities? Can we provide good design and meet the realities of “China Speed”? Can we, after all, make a difference?
photo: Yong Ding
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