Running east-west through the Dongsi Subdistrict are a series of parallel hutongs (alleyways) called ‘tiao’, which are numbered in ascending order from south to north beginning with Dongsi Toutiao, the first alleyway of Dongsi, up to Dongsi Shisitiao, or the 14th alleyway.
The 10th alleyway, Dongsi Shitiao, was extended eastward through an opening in the Beijing city wall and was widened in the 1990s to become one of the main east-west thoroughfares in the old city. Dongsishitiao Station marks the intersection of the hutong and the wall.
When line 2 was built, Dongsishitiao was the nearest station to the Workers’ Stadium, which is still used to this day for sports events and rock concerts. Because of that its lighting has been designed to emulate the shapes of the Olympic rings, symbolising the unity of people all over the world, as well as the atmosphere of enhancing friendship and advancing hand in hand.
The architectural decoration in Dongsishitiao caused the station to be selected as one of the ten greatest constructions in Beijing during the 1980s.
A ‘ghost’ platform still exists below the platform for Line 2 that was reserved for a planned Line 3 when the station was first built.
The two murals on the platform of Line 2 both have sports as their themes. Among them, the ceramic mural ‘Head to the World’ on the platform in the outer ring direction was created by Yan Shangde and others in April 1985, and shows more than 30 figures practising martial arts.
The sporting motifs for the mural along the other side of the central platform ("Going to the World") were created by Li Huaji and Quan Zheng and refer to the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984 and the 9th Asian Games in Delhi in 1982. They depict sports such as archery, discus, horsemanship and fencing.
Just as at Xizhimen, time has not dealt kindly with this mural. A black vertical crack in the middle splits an athlete's bicycle in half. Further to the right, a female athlete with pink lips has dark spots on her face, which apparently were formed by concentrated drops of small ceramic pieces on the mural.
During 2017, all the platforms on Line 2 underwent renovation with the provision of platform gates, which now partially obscure the murals on all three of Line 2's stations. It is to be hoped that the extra vortex, which these gates will cause when trains enter the stations, will not further damage the mural tiles.
