When millions of people crisscross China to reach family tables for the Spring Festival, another set of city employees does the opposite: they stay on the streets. In Beijing’s Haidian district, firefighters sit in mobile posts and on standby by engine bays, trading reunion dinners for vigilance as lanterns and red couplets brighten the night.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jia Chao, a deputy squad leader at the Shuangyushu Fire Rescue Station, will mark his eighth New Year on duty this winter. His routine is trimmed to essentials: an early midday meal with family, a brief phone call of seasonal greetings, and then he boards the engine for a night of patrol and rapid response. "I won’t go home for the holiday," he says; his elders have stopped asking.
Shuangyushu is among Beijing’s busiest stations, fielding more than a thousand calls a year in a densely populated district of mixed residential and commercial buildings. Station chief Liang Xiaoliang describes an exacting tempo: first engines must roll within 45 seconds by day and within a minute at night, and smaller local rescue units must reach incidents within five minutes. These benchmarks shape the constant rehearsals and practical adjustments — clearing snow from garage doors, storing de-icing salts and traction chains, and even keeping spare underwear beside beds so crews can dress faster.
The pattern of emergencies has shifted. The most frequent late-night calls are no longer dramatic infernos but everyday domestic alarms: smoke from a forgotten pot, the smell of burning when an elderly resident has left a stove on, or non-fire rescue requests such as an animal in the home. Firefighters methodically check each apartment, slipping door seals to sniff for smoke and knocking on doors to verify safety. Many incidents turn out to be false alarms, yet crews treat every call as potentially serious.
The station’s statistics hint at a broader success story: while overall call-outs have climbed, the number of true fires has fallen markedly. That improvement has been driven by a combination of persistent public education, routine hazard inspections, and an expanded network of more than a hundred micro fire stations in the district. These small community units are stocked with basic firefighting gear — extinguishers, hooks, blankets and buckets — and, combined with ongoing training, can contain many blazes before larger units arrive.
The human element remains central. Many firefighters are veterans who have made public service a career; they bring discipline forged in uniformed life to the unpredictable demands of urban emergencies. Night shifts that stretch to 22 hours and sustained physical strain are part of the job, as is an ethos of responsibility for "every street, every community, every resident." That ethic lends a steady note to the boisterous festival atmosphere: while the city celebrates, a "fire-blue" presence patrols quietly in the background.
For international readers, the story speaks to how a dense, affluent megacity manages everyday risk through a blend of institutional standards, decentralised community resources and labour-intensive readiness. It also highlights a governance trade-off: public safety depends on highly trained, often overstretched personnel whose year-on-year sacrifices enable social stability and the uninterrupted functioning of urban life.
The visible trappings of the holiday — lanterns, lights and public events — are supported by a less visible infrastructure of response and prevention. "With us here, it’s safe," Liang says, underscoring the simple reciprocity at the heart of public security: citizens enjoy celebration; professionals absorb risk. As cities elsewhere confront similar holiday spikes in travel and domestic hazards, Beijing’s model of micro-stations, strict response-time standards and continuous public education offers a practical template, though it also raises questions about workforce resilience and long-term investment in both human and technological defenses.