Remember forever: Story behind China's early railway heroes

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In the early hours of June 7, 1976, the rain was pouring down in a railway construction site in western Hunan Province. The mountain torrents washed construction materials and tools away into a river below and a worker who tried to rescue tools fell into the river.

At the urgent moment, worker Chen Xueshan jumped into the furious river and pushed his colleague to the river bank. The colleague was rescued but Chen was swept away by the treacherous currents. The 22-year-old never came back.

This is a true story during the construction of the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway. Chen was one of the 4,065 workers sent by the No.2 Company of the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group, to western Hunan Province, a region known for its many mountains and rivers, to construct seven railway stations, 30 bridges and 22 tunnels in 1970.

Chuanyanping Bridge on the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway. /File Photo courtesy of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group

During the nine years of the mission, Chen and other 85 construction workers lost their lives or died of illness, whose names are inscribed on a tombstone in a pavilion that set up near Zhangjiajie Railway Station on the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway.

Forty-three years have passed, workers of the same company came to the tombstone to pay their tribute to these heroes before the Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb-sweeping Day.

Hard days during construction

The construction of the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway was labor intensive, said Wu Alin, deputy manager of the ongoing Qianjiang-Zhangjiajie-Changde Railway project, an under-construction high-speed rail that will crisscross the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province.

Workers construct the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway in Hunan Province during the 1970s. /File Photo courtesy of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group

"At that time, every tunnel and road was built with blood and sweat," said Wu, who also organized the memorial ceremony for the heroes.

The Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway was built under the nation's call, linking Zhicheng in central China's Hubei Province, through Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province, to Liuzhou in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Together with the Jiaozuo-Zhicheng Railway in the north, the whole rail line formed the second north-south rail line in China's early railway network, which had a strategic meaning to the newborn country that had been tortured by wars for a centenary.

"We hardly had any mechanical equipment. We used rake to rake ground and dustpan to scoop rocks," said 75-year-old Fu Zuhou, who worked in the project, "It was toil and moil every day."

Workers pose for a photo with a piece of mechanical equipment, a rare thing in the 1970s. /File Photo courtesy of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group

At the time, construction workers worked under harsh conditions. Mechanization was low and technological equipment was limited. Many workers were injured on duty – some even lost their lives.

Fu Zuhou was once on the brink of death. He fell off from the three-meter-high railway track during the construction and fainted right away. It took a long time for him to regain consciousness in hospital. Till now, some of his fingers are still twisted because of injury.

Fu's colleague Zhou Shengcai still remembered the collapsing of Bianyan No.2 Tunnel during construction. The Tunnel is located on half way up a mountain. The way to it was full of broken stones, a kind of stone which the old workers said made tunnel construction harder.

Zhou Shengcai (L) and Fu Zuhou before Bianyan No.2 Tunnel in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, March 28, 2019. /Photo courtesy of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group

"The Tunnel had a section of unstable rock, and it collapsed piling up 5-to-6-meter-high rocks," said 74-year-old Zhou, "There was a person in the tunnel. We shouted to him, clawed through the rocks and dragged him out." Fortunately, the worker only got minor injury.

A railway for better life

All the sacrifice and hardness exchanged for the better life of later generations, especially for the mountainous western Hunan Province, where the locals are barely accessible to the outside world before the railway completed in 1978.

"The new railway made traveling way more convenient," said Zhou, "Before, it was a two-to-three-days drive to Zhangjiajie from Changsha, capital of Hunan Province. By railway, we could reach it in a few hours, quite fast indeed."

Zhangjiajie City. /File Photo courtesy of China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group

Since then, Zhangjiajie has witnessed a great change. Boasting its sharp mountains and green rivers, Zhangjiajie became China's first forest park in 1982 and was designated a Natural World Heritage Site in 1992.

The city's breathtaking scenery and big fame attracted a large number of tourists and an increasing stream of money, on which the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway, still as the only railway in Zhangjiajie today, has played an important role. In July and August of 2018 alone, the summer vacation tourism peak, Zhangjiajie railway station transported 506,751 passengers.

Remember heroes forever

One sows, another reaps. The contributions of the older generations should be remembered forever.

Wu Alin said he organized young workers to commemorate 86 heroes every year since the Qianjiang-Zhangjiajie-Changde Railway project started in Hunan Province since 2015.

Workers of the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group commemorate heroes who devoted their lives to the Zhicheng-Liuzhou Railway construction in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, March 28, 2019. /CGTN Photo

"The memorial ceremony aims to let our young workers remember the hard work of the previous generations and carry on their revolutionary traditions to better utilize their capability in future railway construction and nation-building," said Wu.

Videographer: Zhang Jiahua

Video editors: Gao Yue, Yang Shengjie, Lan Haowei

Voice over: Katrin Büchenbacher

Top image designer: Liu Shaozhen

Copy editor: Katrin Büchenbacher

Chief editor: Pei Jian