【China Story】
Author: Wang Shuzhi (Bridge Engineering Expert, Chief Engineer of The Main Bridge Construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. He has successively participated in the construction of Jiujiang, Runyang, Caiyuanba, Chaotianmen, Tianxingzhou and other Yangtze River Bridges, 12 large bridges such as Qingdao Bay, Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao, and three major bridge bases in China, and won the National May Day Labor Medal)
Following in the footsteps of the builders of transportation facilities for the Winter Olympics, we took the Fuxing to Zhangjiakou to visit the bridges on the Beijing-Zhangjiang high-speed railway and the Yanchong-Chongqing expressway. Along the way, my companions were talking enthusiastically, and I did not hesitate to echo it, but in my heart I was chanting, "It's coming, it's coming." During the conversation, the Guanting Reservoir High-speed Rail Bridge rushed towards him, and the orange-red arch components on both sides flashed quickly. I cling to the window glass, my eyes greedily chasing the figure of the high-speed rail bridge that is close at hand, and my expression is so focused. Friends laughed at me: "After eating the pain of building bridges for most of my life, how did I retire and still be so obsessed with bridges?" ”
bridge! bridge! bridge! The wind is not finished, the soul is haunted...
A hundred years ago, Zhan Tianyou presided over the construction of the Huailai River Bridge of the Beijing-Zhang Railway. Images courtesy of the author
A hundred years later, the Yanchong Expressway Prince Edward City Winter Olympic Ice and Snow Ring Bridge helped the Beijing Winter Olympics. Images courtesy of the author
"At that time, I thought that after the bridge was completed, I must take the high-speed rail to Chongli to see the Winter Olympics and experience the feeling of crossing the bridge." I knew in my heart that the reason why I was so concerned was not only my affection for the two newly built bridges on the Guanting Reservoir, but also my love and obsession with the origin of the Shanqiao Factory cooperating with Zhan Tianyou to build a hundred steel bridges on the Beijing-Zhang Railway a hundred years ago. ”
On July 7, 2017, the main project of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge was completed, and I left the bridge construction site in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province. To participate in the command and construction of the "super project" to draw a conclusion to their work career, it should be said that it is a complete and gratifying thing.
"The years are hurrying to make people old, and the bridge is still in the dream." After retirement, I was fascinated by the traceability of traditional culture and art, and the promotion of bridge culture. However, whether it is a speech on social activities or a small talk in daily life, it is always inseparable from the "Centennial Mountain Bridge" that has worked for forty-two years, and it is inseparable from the bridges that have been built.
In the past five years of retirement, when I have traveled to the magnificent mountains and rivers of the motherland countless times, I will always encounter those bridges unexpectedly. I remember going to Hangzhou in 2018 to participate in the conference, after visiting the West Lake, I took a special detour to see the Qiantang River Bridge. Gazing at the spectacular bridge, recalling the storms and rains that the bridge has experienced in the past hundred years, I am full of emotions. At the end of 2019, I passed through Qingdao, although I only stayed one night, I let my friend drive to accompany me for a ride on the Qingdao Bay Bridge to find the memories left when the bridge was built. The bridge crosses from the sea, people walk on the bridge, and the heavens and the earth are so vast and vast. In 2020, I went to Hohhot to attend the conference, and I took time to go to Ordos to visit the Dongsheng Bridge and the Kangbashi Bridge, which were built more than a decade ago. The grassland is flying rainbows, reflecting the rich and amorous hot land. Every time I go to Zhuhai, I always squeeze in time to take a bus from Zhuhai to Hong Kong as much as possible, just so that I can walk back and forth on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and see the bridge again. On the bus, even if you nervously adjust the angle along the way, and look at the once familiar local details on the bridge, everything in front of you is fleeting...
Although he was the builder of many bridges, after the opening of the bridge, he could only look at the bridge in the car, and could not calmly overlook the surrounding scenery as he did in the past. In fact, I was mentally prepared for this, so I also boldly let it go. On April 29, 2009, a moment before the opening ceremony of the Chaotianmen Yangtze River Bridge in Chongqing, I sat cross-legged on the bridge deck in the center of the bridge gate and took a photo with a slight "declaration" of the builder of the bridge, which remains to this day.
On July 31, 2015, Beijing and Zhangjiakou won the right to host the 24th Winter Olympic Games. Holding the event requires a series of large-scale transportation facilities, and the China Railway Mountain Bridge Group, which I have served, has won the bid for the Guanting Reservoir High-speed Railway Special Bridge, the Guanting Reservoir Highway Suspension Bridge and the 16 steel bridges with typical landscape significance of the Yanchong Expressway, with a total target steel consumption of 51,000 tons.
The Site of the Huailai Bridge in Zhangjiakou is not far from Beijing, and the project manager Liu Yan happened to be my colleague when I participated in the construction of the Runyang Yangtze River Bridge in Jiangsu Province twenty years ago. Therefore, for more than two years, I have visited the bridge sites distributed in the Guanting Reservoir and the Yanchong Expressway many times, photographing the majesty of these bridges from the ground, water surface and air, leaving as many video and text materials as possible in the construction process. At that time, I thought that after the completion of the bridge, I must take the high-speed rail to Chongli to see the Winter Olympics and experience the feeling of crossing the bridge.
In April 2021, the dream came true. The high-speed rail Proud Zi Fuxing, starting from Beijing North Railway Station, roared all the way, Qinghe and Changping stations flashed by, and in the blink of an eye, they came to the Nankou Tunnel under the cliff on the south side of Badaling.
And now, it's all here! The Beijing-Tibet High-Speed Railway and the Beijing-Zhang High-Speed Railway go in opposite directions, and the Beijing-Zhang Railway and the Beijing-Zhang High-Speed Railway intersect here, and history and reality are deeply integrated, telling the vicissitudes of the past century.
More than a hundred years ago, Zhan Tianyou led the pioneers of Chinese industrial workers to wade through mountains and rivers, break through the heavy mountains and mountains, steep mountains and deep streams, and rely on the national spirit of fighting for the Chinese and the sledgehammer pickaxe in his hand to build China's first self-designed, constructed, and managed trunk railway, the Beijing-Zhang Railway, breaking the monopoly of foreigners in building China's railway. Founded in 1894, the "Shanhaiguan Bridge Factory" built 121 large and small railway steel bridges for this railway in the four years from 1905 to 1909. There are single-hole small bridges across mountain streams, and there are steel bridges with continuous holes across large rivers, the longest of which is the Huailai Railway Bridge. To this day, on the cultural square of China Railway Shanqiao Group, there is still a statue of Zhan Tianyou.
The Beijing-Zhang Railway carries the arduous exploration of the Chinese nation's industrial rejuvenation, opens a new era of China's railway bridge project, and witnesses the great journey of the Oriental Dragon from its rise to comprehensive rejuvenation. On December 30, 2019, the Beijing-Zhangjiang high-speed railway was opened to traffic. From the breakthrough of independent design and construction to the world's most advanced level, from a speed of 35 kilometers per hour to 350 kilometers, the Beijing-Zhang line has witnessed the development of China's railways and also witnessed the leap of China's comprehensive national strength.
The galloping Fuxing drove out of the tunnel with great momentum, and another tunnel came to the face, and the huge roar brought the infinite excitement of a century-old bridge building brand.
Outside Qinhuangdao, in the hinterland of mountains and seas, there is China's oldest, largest and brilliant bridge building enterprise - China Railway Shanqiao Group. Born in 1894 during the Western Affairs Movement, Shanqiao once built China's first steel bridge, the Luanhe Railway Bridge. After the completion of the bridge, more than 300 technicians faced dismissal on the spot. Li Hongzhang, who was then the minister of Beiyang, took advantage of the "foreign affairs movement" to retain these steel bridge manufacturing talents and established the "Shanhaiguan Bridge Factory.". This is the first railway bridge manufacturing enterprise in China's national industry, which is the predecessor of today's China Railway Mountain Bridge. In 1922, Wang Gemei, a major representative of the Communist Party of China and the leader of the early workers' movement in the north, came to China Railway Mountain Bridge and established the earliest enterprise party organization in China, implanting red genes for Shanqiao.
Spanning three centuries and after a century of baptism, Shanqiao has long grown into a national team for bridge building, building more than 3,200 landmark bridges and creating countless "China's first" and "world's largest". Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, as well as The German Bridge, the Swedish Bridge, the Verrazzano Strait Bridge in New York, the Largest Bridge Project on the "Belt and Road" Bangladesh Padma Bridge...
The Fuxing roared through the Guanting Reservoir High-Speed Rail Bridge at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour, and I tried to see the magnificent posture of the eight-span truss arch bridge. However, this effort was so futile that their figures swept by. However, in order for the revival of these ten seconds to drive safely and smoothly, the builders have paid too much and too much...
"'The world is the best of things, but to balance its end, every defeat is easy to become difficult' - Zhan Tianyou's famous words engraved in front of the zhan Tianyou Memorial Hall, but also inspired the builders to build the Winter Olympic Bridge more than 700 days and nights ..."
A century of inheritance, the Winter Olympics set sail. The 16 steel bridges on the key nodes of the Transportation Hub of the Winter Olympics must be completed in just two years, and the difficulty can be imagined.
Whether it is the Beijing-Zhang high-speed railway Guanting Reservoir Special Bridge and the Yanchong-Chongqing High-speed Cross-Guanting Reservoir Suspension Bridge, or the many landscape bridges represented by the "Five Ring Bridge", there have been breakthrough improvements in structural form, bridge steel material and assembly and welding technology and technology. The construction conditions in the alpine mountains are extremely complicated. "The world is the most difficult, but to balance it in the end, every defeat is easy and difficult." —Zhan Tianyou's famous words inspire builders.
In the headquarters of Shanhaiguan Company, technicians work day and night to transform and draw process drawings; the world's first bridge welding robot developed by the company has been successfully applied to the manufacture of steel box girders on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, and now it has played a big role in the Winter Olympic Bridge; the concept of "Green Winter Olympics" and the special requirements to ensure that the source of drinking water in Beijing are not polluted, prompting Shanqiao people to innovate the construction process, assemble the steel girder section on the shore, and then transport it to the center of the lake to hoist in place, minimize water operations, and avoid pollution of the lake water and ecological environment by debris All environmentally friendly paints are used on the bridge, which does not cause any pollution to the water quality; from the beginning of the project, a third-party water quality monitoring unit is hired to conduct real-time monitoring...
The project department, which is 400 kilometers away from the headquarters, is the pioneer team of the company stationed at the front-line construction site of Huailai Bridge. Xie Daoxuan, chief engineer of the post-80s project department who has received me many times, summed up the more than 700 days and nights between the lofty mountains and mountains in Beijing and Zhang as "fighting with cold, urgency and danger". "Think about it, it's still snowing on April 26, and the earliest snow in winter is September 15." The period of meeting the construction conditions is very short, how to guarantee the construction period?!
At every coordination meeting, the faces of the project managers are always full of anxiety, urgency, urgency and coldness. Beijing-Zhang high-speed rail urgent, Yanchong high-speed rapid! The meeting seems to revolve around these few words: how far has it been accomplished? Can it be done? When exactly will it be completed? What is the remedy for incompleteness? No reasons, no excuses, just solutions!
The experience of participating in bridge engineering construction for many years has made me deeply understand that "urgent" is the characteristic of China's bridge engineering construction in recent years - there is no unhurried project. "It took less than 8 months for the Beijing-Zhang Railway Guanting Reservoir Special Bridge to be completed, and the amount of engineering is 16,000 tons!" And a railway bridge that I participated in six years ago, 20,000 tons was completed in 3 years, and this ratio speed came out. Xiao Xie recalled, "Yanchong's expressway is even more urgent, with 38,000 tons of engineering completed in 10 months, and the people who coordinate on the spot are on the verge of collapse every day."
Liu Yan and Xiao Xie like to call those thrilling days "the years of burning passion". After the end of the Winter Olympic Bridge project, Liu Yan, who has more than 20 years of experience in bridge construction, was sent to Nanjing Changtai Bridge, and Xiao Xie was on the Qingdao Bridge Project. They said: "Looking at the beautiful Olympic rings, orange-red steel beams, my heart is beautiful!" Although we are still on the road to engineering, leaving our families behind, we have no regrets about our choices. ”
"Since 2018, I have crossed the Daodaoxiong Pass along the Badaling Expressway countless times, and at that time, I paid great attention to the construction of this high-speed rail viaduct. First the flat seat piers are poured, then the Optimus Prime is raised, and then the bridge erector can be seen easily connecting the huge pieces of reinforced concrete beams into a line... The builders sleep in the open, work overtime, interpret the greatness of creation with labor, and weave brilliant dreams with hard work. ”
There are also countless employees who have added luster to the construction of the bridge, and they have not been to the site of the Winter Olympic Bridge so far. "Whenever I see the beautiful Five Ring Bridge on TV, I really want to touch it on the spot, even if I stand in the distance and look at it..."
Yes, every section and every section of the Winter Olympic Bridge, just like their children, warmly "pregnant" in their hands, watching them be sent away, growing up, Peugeot. Although Qinhuangdao and Zhangjiakou are not far away, they can only be watched on TV – when the demand for bridges in the country and the world is growing explosively, they still build bridges every day in addition to building bridges.
At this moment, the eyes of the world are focused on the Beijing Winter Olympics, the "Ice and Snow Five Rings" Bridge, the "Infinite Ring" Xinglinbao Bridge, the "Feihong Lingdu" Brick Tower Bridge, and the Beijing-Zhang high-speed railway Guanting Reservoir Special Bridge, including the nine bridges with unique landscapes, brilliant blooming, stunning the world. A series of steel rainbows, unique shape design, and ice and snow scenes along the line leave an unforgettable winter Olympic journey for the world.
When you take the Beijing-Zhang high-speed railway Fuxing and cross the Guanting Reservoir Special Bridge with great enthusiasm, as long as you take out your mobile phone and board the bridge cloud platform, the operation of the life cycle of this bridge is all between the palms of your hands. From the era of high-speed to the era of intelligence, the Beijing-Zhangjiang high-speed railway marks a milestone in the construction of another "smart bridge" for China's railways.
Not only bridge manufacturing and operation and maintenance, 5G signaling, wireless charging, intelligent lighting adjustment, barrier-free facilities... The speeding Fuxing intelligent EMU makes people directly feel the benefits brought by "black technology".
In the past hundred years, from the steam locomotives of the Beijing-Zhang Railway to the diesel locomotives, to the electric locomotives and high-speed EMUs, the changes in locomotives and trains reflect China's increasing scientific and technological innovation strength. A hundred years ago, the maximum span of a single hole of the Beijing-Zhang Railway Bridge was only 30.5 meters, and now the maximum span of China's railway bridges has exceeded 1092 meters, becoming the largest in the world. Every hundred meters increase in the span of the bridge is a big step taken by human beings.
Orange steel beams, blue sky, turquoise lake water, yuli wind power, green mountains, ice and snow... They weave colorful dreams. Mountain bridge red, Winter Olympic blue. Bonding the soul, bridge dream Yiyi...
Guangming Daily ( 2022-02-09 16th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily