City preview · BEIJING

Beijing moved an old station twice

Cao Yu finished Thunderstorm in the old library at twenty-three. Decades later, crews moved Qinghe’s old station east and then across to the west square. The Bird’s Nest held two Olympic flames of very different sizes, while Peking University students turned Boya Pagoda into an ice-cream cone for a BBS shirt.

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Old Library, Tsinghua University · Editorial illustration, not a historical photo

From a play manuscript to a campus BBS

A play, two moves, two flames, and an ice-cream cone

Four complete stories and their public sources are shown here; the rest of the collection is in the app.

01 · Old Library, Tsinghua University

Thunderstorm Was Finished in the Library

At 23, Cao Yu sat down in the old library and wrote Thunderstorm all the way to its final curtain.

In the summer of 1933, Tsinghua student Cao Yu kept returning to the old library. At 23, he completed Thunderstorm there. More than eight decades later, students and alumni brought the play back, performing between the book stacks and long tables. The stifling sitting room in the drama is fictional; the place where Cao Yu arranged its thunderclaps, doorbells, and four acts is still on campus. Look up at the tall windows, then measure the space between the reading tables: a very quiet room once held a spectacular family crisis.

Source: tsinghua.edu.cn Source: xsg.tsinghua.edu.cn

02 · Qinghe Railway Station West Square

A 700-ton station took two rides without tracks

The old Qinghe station moved 84.55 meters, then another 274.81.

Qinghe's 1905 station building stood directly in the path of the new station works. Engineers wrapped the roughly 700-ton structure in reinforcing steel, then moved it whole so its brick walls, doors, and windows could stay intact. It traveled 84.55 meters east in 2017 and another 274.81 meters in 2019, ending up beside the new station. The old building took two train rides without a rail beneath it.

Source: beijing.gov.cn Source: baike.baidu.com Source: xinhuanet.com Source: beijing.qianlong.com Source: nra.gov.cn Source: wwj.beijing.gov.cn

03 · National Stadium (Bird’s Nest)

Two flames for the Bird's Nest

A roaring cauldron gave way to one tiny hydrogen flame.

At the 2008 opening ceremony, a giant cauldron burned above the Bird's Nest, supplied by a gas station built for the stadium. Fourteen years later, the Winter Olympics left the final relay torch at the center of a snowflake and kept only a tiny hydrogen "microflame" burning. The same web of steel hosted both ceremonies, with the Olympic flame staged at opposite scales.

Source: beijing.gov.cn Source: beijing.gov.cn Source: zscqj.beijing.gov.cn

04 · Boya Pagoda, Peking University

Boya Pagoda Became a 13-Tier Ice Cream Cone

A Weiming BBS T-shirt tucked Boya Pagoda's 13 tiers straight into an ice cream cone.

Weiming BBS marks its anniversaries with T-shirts, giving students a chance to wear pieces of Yanyuan. One 2013 design noticed that Boya Pagoda's 13 projecting tiers looked suspiciously like stacked ice cream. The tower became a towering cone, while the blue shape below did easy duty as Weiming Lake. The solemn landmark kept the familiar 'one pagoda, one lake' silhouette; students merely added something that might melt. Look across the water and the shirt's joke snaps into focus.

Source: bbs.pku.edu.cn Source: news.pku.edu.cn Source: pku.edu.cn

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