As one of China’s last telegraph stations prepared to shut down, thousands lined up to say goodbye — in ink, by hand, one word at a time.
ZHEJIANG, East China — To reach one of China’s last telegraph stations, Thomas Yang spent 18 hours crossing three provinces on one slow train. Just to send a message that would travel even slower.
Arriving in the eastern city of Hangzhou just a couple of days before its telegraph station shut down for good on April 30, Yang took his time to compose and send 15 handwritten messages — his first ever telegrams, and likely his last.
As a once-vital network faded to a final outpost in Beijing, Yang joined the long queue inside Hangzhou’s station. Around him, people hunched over desks, scribbling on green-and-white gridded sheets, sealing their messages by hand, and sliding them across the counter.
One telegram was addressed to a baby still in the womb: “Hello, little baby. Welcome to the world. Be sure to love your mom dearly.” Another wished parents and grandparents good health. A third quoted a line from a well-known dance drama: “The silent river runs endlessly; only love and faith endure,” before signing off with her own: “The telegraph ends, but its echo never truly fades.”
On social media, people shared stories of telegrams past, trading memories, expressing nostalgia, and teaching newcomers how to send one before it was too late. “Telegraph dispatch helpers” also stepped in, offering to send telegrams for those who couldn’t make it in person for 10 yuan ($1.5) apiece, some managing up to 50 orders a day.
The final surge of senders had the station — already limping from a broken telegraph machine, months of patchwork fixes, and just one full-time operator — struggling to adapt.
Reception desks were moved twice to manage the crowds. Staff pulled from other departments helped sort through the flood of forms. It meant messages that once took six to eight hours to transmit now took weeks.
At the check-in desk, one line was repeated all day, always with a straight face: “If it’s urgent, please use (messaging app) WeChat, or call.”
On its final day, the station processed more than 5,800 telegrams, a staggering leap from the annual average of just 25.
That afternoon, only one other relic from the telegram’s peak remained: messages still cost 0.14 yuan (about 2 U.S. cents) per word — unchanged since 1992.
A telegram sent in 1966 from Hangzhou to Taiyuan shows an order placed with an ink factory. From user 雲龍紙雜資料室 on Kongfz.com
“1562 0086”
“In the 1980s, the cost of sending a telegram was almost the same as a pound of pork,” recalls Wang Xiuhua, a retired telegraph operator from Taizhou, a city 270 kilometers southeast of Hangzhou. “Only people with real emergencies would choose it.”
Messages like: “Father is ill, come back immediately,” or “Arrive on the 8th, pick me up at the station.”
Back then, every character had to be encoded by hand. Each Chinese character was represented by a string of four numbers, drawn from a thick manual known as the Standard Telegraph Code Book. Wang spent three months memorizing the codes for 2,000 to 3,000 of the most commonly used words. Once mastered, she could type 80 characters a minute.
“I still remember — 1562 means gong (work), and 0086 means ren (person),” she explains. “Together, they mean ‘working people.’ That’s us.” Her eyes lit up, the numbers still at her fingertips after all these years.
In her prime, Wang would send hundreds of telegrams a day, “from the moment I picked up my pen at work until the end of the day.”
That process continued for decades, until just months before the Hangzhou station shut. After its last telegraph machine broke down, staff began typing messages on a computer: a temporary fix to meet rising demand. They were then printed, stamped, and sealed for express delivery.
An archival photo shows a beginner learning to send telegrams in Chengdu, Sichuan province, 1979. Xinhua
Though telegraph technology arrived in China in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1980s that usage truly surged. In 1988 alone, Zhejiang processed more than 20 million telegrams, with Hangzhou accounting for nearly 2 million.
Two years later, Beijing hit its own peak, handling over 44 million messages in a single year. At its busiest, the city’s telegraph center processed more than 100,000 messages a day.
“As pagers and telephones became more popular, fewer people used telegrams, and I was transferred to another department in 1997,” she says.
But some stayed the course, like Ren Hong, Hangzhou’s last full-time telegraph operator. The day before his station shut for good, a worn copy of the same codebook still sat on his desk, according to local outlet Tidenews. But after 40 years on the job, he no longer needed it. “All the numbers are in my head,” he said, tapping his temple.
At its peak, Hangzhou’s telegraph department employed 300 people. Ren worked every shift, surrounded by the clack of keyboards, the murmur of customers, and the steady churn of the machines. “That noise… I’ll never forget it,” he said.
In the weeks leading up to the shutdown, that noise returned as people from across the country streamed into the otherwise quiet office — some locals, some with suitcases. And some, like Thomas Yang, with just a satchel over his shoulder, a stack of messages, and one final chance to speak in a dying language.
Top left: Telegraph operator Ren Hong shows the code book, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 27, 2025. Jiang Han/Xinhua; Top right: Ren Hong at work in the 1980s. From China Telecom via The Paper; Bottom: Inside the code book. From Tidenews
Three dots
By the time Yang made up his mind, the fast trains were gone. All that remained was a slow sleeper from Shijiazhuang, a northern city just outside Beijing, rattling across provinces.
“Life is about giving it your all, so you don’t look back with regret,” the 33-year-old tells Sixth Tone, channeling the spirit of his grandfather, a radio operator in the army.
He booked it without hesitation. The ride gave him enough time to decide what he wanted to say.
As the train rumbled south, Yang stared at a memo app on his phone, reviewing the messages he’d drafted for friends and family. He had 15 to send — one of them addressed to himself.
For that one, he pulled from a lifetime of influences: a radio call sign from the wartime Chinese spy drama “Lurk,” a line from General Douglas MacArthur’s farewell speech, and a closing salute from the revolutionary film “The Eternal Wave.” “Goodbye, dear comrades,” it read.
Like many that day, Yang wrote in the old style. Each telegram followed traditional phrasing conventions once used to compress meaning. He ended every message with a rhyme code — a single Chinese character marking the day and month — and signed them from Lin’an, Hangzhou’s ancient name.
Just writing them out felt cathartic. “With every word I chose, my mood rose and fell,” he says. “It was quietly wonderful — even therapeutic. Something today’s messaging apps just can’t offer.”
Lü Lianxiang, 61, traveled from Jinhua to Hangzhou to send one “last telegraph,” Zhejiang province, April 29, 2025. Chen Yiru for Sixth Tone
But still, not every message would make it through the old network. As of now, only four regions in China — Zhejiang, Beijing, Shijiazhuang, and Hefei — can still receive telegrams. “Some of my friends live in places that aren’t covered,” says Yang. “So I’ll collect those myself first, then send them out by courier.”
Some messages took longer to surface. Aside from signing her name at work, 24-year-old Shen Yang, a Hangzhou local, realized she hadn’t written anything by hand in over six months.
“I wanted to write to my parents and younger sister,” she admits, eyes fixed on the grid, pen frozen in the air. “But honestly, once I sat down, I had no idea what to say. They live five minutes away.”
Struggling for inspiration, she turned to AI for help — asking a chatbot to craft a vivid message featuring “Xiao,” one of the characters in her sister’s name. But the result felt hollow. Too neat, too polite, too empty.
So, she wrote from the heart.
For her sister, she quoted Usagi, the pastel-toned anime rabbit from “Chiikawa,” a Japanese manga series. To a friend, she simply copied their WeChat name: “Please, you have to sleep and get up early.”
And to herself, she offered only the fragment of a dream from the night before: “White clouds turned into mountains.”
People write telegrams in Hangzhou telegraph station, Zhejiang province, April 30, 2025. VCG
Then there were those who knew exactly what they wanted to say.
Zhao Yangzhou, in his 40s, wrote with a quiet smile to his daughter, Yuanyuan, who would soon sit for the gaokao, China’s grueling college entrance exam. He called this gift a “product of the past.”
While Zhao runs a factory in Zhejiang, Yuanyuan was raised by his wife in their hometown in the eastern Anhui province. She now studies at Maotanchang High School — known as Asia’s largest “cram school,” where nearly 90% of students are repeat test-takers, hoping to change their fate through one final shot.
But Yuanyuan never complained. She worked quietly and steadily, rising to the top of a class of more than 10,000 students. “I hope she can choose her own path in life,” Zhao said.
Then he picked up the pen and wrote:
To my daughter Yuanyuan:
I know how hard you’ve been studying — your father understands, if only a little.
All is well at home, so don’t let your mind wander.
In this final stretch, sleeping early is better than staying up late. Understanding your mistakes matters more than doing extra practice. And your smile means more than any score.
Pack two sets of stationery and your exam pass, just in case.
Remember: what flows from your pen comes from three years of effort — it’s not the end of anything.
Walk into the exam with calm. That alone is victory.
Run with all your heart. Home will always be your safe harbor.
The handwritten telegram Zhao Yangzhou sent to his daughter, Hangzhou, April 29, 2025. Chen Yiru for Sixth Tone
Editor: Apurva.
(Header image: Left: Telegraph operator Ren Hong at work, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 27, 2025. Jiang Han/Xinhua; Right: A woman composing a telegram in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 28, 2025. VCG)