The Second Platform

Xingyun Station — a station name that doesn't exist in the Taipei MRT system. It surfaced first in an old woman's blurred retelling, the pronunciation uncertain, the way you would read a foreign place name for the first time; later it began to be heard, and to be seen, in more places.

"Xingyun" isn't in the place-name index. It is on a 1944 military supply-line chart — running south through Taipei's western district from a transfer point with no formal name down to Bangka, a track marked on the chart with the number "Xingyun Branch Line," annotated beside it in katakana plus kanji, the meaning close to "night supply track, military use only." The official account of this prewar underground line is that it was backfilled after the war and abandoned; what actually happened, nobody has gone and verified.

The entrance is behind the emergency exit door at the south end of the Bannan Line platform at Ximen Station: seven concrete steps, 20 metres of level passage, and then a T-junction. Bare copper wire, dim yellow bulbs, old-style ridges left by the concrete formwork, plainly older than the MRT. The air is 3 degrees colder than the platform. Straight ahead at the T-junction a green metal sign is nailed up with the station name on it, arrow pointing left.

Walk that passage that doesn't exist to its end and you arrive at a platform that shouldn't exist. About 80 metres long, 5 metres wide, the floor red brick with deep joints, some of the bricks worn down to half by being trodden; 4 cast-iron pillars carry rust, and the rivet rings around their shafts are the kind you find on colonial-era industrial work; the canopy is planks pieced together, and above the splits there is a deeper layer of black. An old-style enamel sign, white ground and black lettering, is nailed to the wall. The reek of damp rust is mixed with old fuel oil.

The platform is empty, and yet the announcement sounds: "Now arriving at Xingyun Station. Passengers, please mind the gap." Around 03:17 in the small hours the incandescent warm-yellow headlights come up in the tunnel mouth and a train of 4 dark red carriages pulls in slowly, doors slid by hand, window frames of wood, some of the glass fogged over, the low frequency of the diesel engine carried up through the foundation into the soles of your shoes and stopping at the knee.

It is too complete, too normal, like a platform in service — except that the line it belongs to has never once existed on this city's map.