Thirty years after the Beijing-Kowloon Line was completed, Dongguan East Station transformed into a vital hub in the Bay Area

China News Service, Dongguan, September 5th. Title: Thirty years after the Beijing-Kowloon Line was completed, Dongguan East Station has transformed into a vital hub in the Bay Area.

Author Guo Jun Lin Canjia Chen Dongming

At 9:13 on September 1, 1996, an orange-red passenger train with the direction sign "Beijing West-Shenzhen" slowly drove out of the platform of Beijing West Railway Station. People at the time might have had difficulty imagining that this steel artery, which ran through nine provinces and cities and stretched for 2,381 kilometers, would completely change the fate of a town or even a region thirty years later.

As one of the earliest major hub stations established on the Beijing-Kowloon Line, the history of Dongguan East Station will be pushed back a few years. In 1990, the construction of Changping East Station started; in 1992, the entire Beijing-Kowloon Railway started construction, and this small station was designated as the hub station of the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and the Guangmei-Shantou Railway. In 1996, when the Beijing-Kowloon Line was fully connected, Changping East Station became a key node connecting North China, East China and the Pearl River Delta; the following year, the station was officially renamed Dongguan East Station.

In the past thirty years, this station has witnessed a lot. From an annual passenger flow of 70,000 to a secondary hub with tens of millions of people, from a simple old station to a new station put into use in 2015, the growth curve of Dongguan East Station is a vivid portrayal of the population flow and economic changes in the Pearl River Delta. Changping Town, where the station is located, has also prospered because of the station and has won the reputation of "the first town in Beijing and Kowloon".

Today, thirty years later, this old station is responding to the questions of the times with a solid set of data.

During this year’s May Day holiday, Dongguan East Railway Station delivered an impressive report card: a total of 169,000 passengers arrived and departed during the five-day holiday. On May 1, the number of passenger arrivals and departures in a single day reached 43,486, a year-on-year increase of 22.8%, setting a new high in passenger flow during the May Day holiday in the past six years. Among them, 24,800 passengers were dispatched, a year-on-year increase of 10.2%; 18,600 arriving passengers were recorded, a year-on-year increase of 44.8%.

The nearly 50% increase in arrival passenger flow is particularly worthy of attention. During the Spring Festival travel period, Dongguan East Railway Station also showed the distinctive feature of "the arrival passenger flow is greater than the outgoing passenger flow". This means that more and more people are choosing to "come to Wanlai" - not for a short stay, but to take root, struggle and live. From being the "first stop for migrant workers" in the past to today's gathering place for talents, behind the changes in the passenger flow structure is the double leap of Dongguan's industrial upgrading and urban charm.

Over the past thirty years, Dongguan East Railway Station and Changping Town have achieved mutual success. In 1995, Changping topped the list of Dongguan’s town and street economy with its boldness as “Beijing-Kowloon’s No. 1 Town”. Railways bring not only the flow of people, but also the flow of logistics, capital and information.

Of course, the path to development is never a straight line. As the rail transit network in surrounding towns improves, the advantages of Changping hub are facing new challenges. But precisely because of this, the upgrading and renovation of Dongguan East Station has never stopped - from the new station building being put into use in 2015 to now planning the renovation of the high-speed rail (motor train) departure station. Starting from May 28, 2026, the railway department has also launched centralized repairs of the Beijing-Kowloon Line. This old station, which has been around for thirty years, is writing its own "second entrepreneurship" story.