Before diving into the Miyun Reservoir, let us go back more than eighty years—a railway that should never have vanished once extended northward from Beijing, crossing hills and mountain ridges to ultimately reach Gubeikou. This was the Jinggu Railway.

The birth of the Jinggu Railway was not smooth. From the late Qing dynasty to the Republican era, plans were repeatedly shelved until 1938, when under the pressure of war, the Japanese authorities forced construction to begin in a very short time, causing this line to be born amidst haste and contradiction.

After the completion of the Miyun Reservoir in 1958, a section of the railway spanning over twenty kilometers from Miyun to Xiaoying and Shixia, along with nearby villages, was quietly submerged underwater. Only a few bridge piers and intermittent earth slopes occasionally resurface during the dry season.

Setting out from the old Miyun Station along the original 1930s route, one can still spot traces such as elevated railway embankments, lonely bridge piers, and unnatural terrain cuts. This is a journey to track down the Jinggu Railway submerged at the bottom of the Miyun Reservoir, and a story about memory, disappearance, and searching.