Knowing that his son SaFu was going to bring his newlywed daughter-in-law to visit, Sa Zhenbing, the former head of the navy, was very happy, and the Sa family had children who had finally grown up and could be released; He asked the merchant marine school canteen to prepare a table of drinks, saying that he was going to invite guests, and the person in charge of logistics asked him who he wanted to invite, and Sa Zhenbing smiled but did not answer.
At dinnertime, Sa Zhenbing asked his son, who had returned from studying abroad, to sit with him (which was against etiquette in the late Qing Dynasty and early Minchu), and summoned several proud disciples to accompany him.
Sappho, who was sitting in the chief, was uncomfortable, but he knew that his father's arrangement must have a deep meaning. Sure enough, before the dish was served, Sa Zhenbing raised a glass and solemnly said to his son Sa Fujun: Ru studied railways in the United States, I cultivated naval talents in the country, after which the father and son settled, each for their own affairs, Ru must not come to me for the future affairs, this feast is Ru, I wish you self-reliance!
It turned out that Sa Zhenbing was engaged in such a play, which was not only to remind his son not to rely on Lao Tzu in vain, but also to urge his son to be self-reliant and contribute to the country.
Sappho listened, mixed feelings, this road is really not easy, the next few days will be alone. Since then, his life has been closely linked to china's railway construction.
Safu was born in 1886, his father Sa Zhenbing joined the Qing Navy, busy with official duties, father and son rarely see each other once a year; Safjun and his sister have been living with their grandmother's house since childhood. It was not until after the defeat of Sino-Japanese Jiawu that Sa Zhenbing was dismissed from his post and returned to Fuzhou as a school teacher, and the family was rarely reunited. Unfortunately, they did not enjoy the joy of a few months, and their mother Chen Shi died; Out of love for his deceased wife, a generation of Injesa Zhenbing did not remarry, and the two children could suffer.
Shortly thereafter, Sa Zhenbing was hired by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangjiang, to serve in Shanghai as the chief officer of Wusong Fort, and was promoted to the rank of self-strengthening army assistant. Sa Zhenbing took Sa Fu, who had lost his mother's love, to Shanghai to go to school. He first entered the Huaying Academy to study English, and then was admitted to St. John's College.
In order to let his son increase his knowledge and learn advanced foreign technology to serve the motherland, in 1903, Sa Zhenbing sent the 17-year-old Sappho to study abroad, first to the United States to study st. Louis High School, in 1905 transferred to Yokohama, Japan to study Japanese, the contentious Sappho was admitted to purdue university in the United States in 1906, graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering.
After graduating from university, He originally planned to continue his studies; at that time, Zhan Tianyou went to the United States to investigate and recruit talents; he heard that his old friend who was also an old friend of Mawei Ship Administration and the son of Minister of the Navy, Sa Zhenbing, was studying railways in the United States, so he actively contacted Sa Fujun and urged him to return to China to engage in construction. As long as it is a talent, it will be promising!
Sa Zhenbing, who was once the head of the Qing Navy, also placed great expectations on his son who had achieved success in his studies, so he had a banquet at the beginning of the article to make his son the chief.
In fact, as soon as Safu returned, he followed Zhan Tianyou to participate in the later construction of the Beijing-Zhangsui Railway, and his solid knowledge base and practical spirit were quite appreciated by Zhan Tianyou.
At the beginning of 1911, Sappho was invited by Zhan Tianyou to participate in the construction of the Cantonese-Han Railway in Guangzhou, where he served as an intern engineer and Zhan Tianyou as the chief engineer.
In order to let Saffrough improve the level of technical practice and comprehensive management ability as soon as possible, Zhan Tianyou transferred Sappho's work almost every six months, so as to be familiar with the whole process and key links of the construction of the railway.
In just one year, Sappho has been promoted to three levels in a row, from a trainee engineer to a helper engineer to a deputy engineer, and he personally supervised the two difficult bridge and tunnel projects of the Qujiang Bridge of the Guangdong-Han Railway and the Gaolian Village Tunnel, which won the miraculous feats and did not live up to the cultivation and expectations of Master Zhan.
In 1913, Sappho was transferred to the Sichuan-Han Railway to be responsible for the surveying of the Yichang-Chongqing section; In 1916, he was transferred to the Hanyi section as the section chief, responsible for the construction of the new road, Sapphoe has paid a lot of effort for the preliminary work of the Sichuan-Han Railway, but unfortunately, the Sichuan-Han Railway was dismounted in the middle of the way due to problems such as funds and current situations. It was not until December 2010, when the Yiwan Railway was opened, that the dream of Chinese century was finally realized.
In 1918, the famous Sa Fujun was invited by the Yunnan Gebi Railway Company to serve as the chief engineer of the section from Jijie to Lin'an (Jianshui).
At the beginning of the 20th century, when Yunnan did not have a decent long-mile highway, there was a 465-kilometer-long Yunnan-Vietnam Railway (Yunnan section) in southern Yunnan, which was built by the French colonists at that time in order to plunder Yunnan's rich mineral resources, which lasted for 7 years and employed more than 200,000 migrant workers across the country, including nearly 80,000 people who were tortured and killed. People stained the Nanxi River with "blood, and the corpses paved the Dianyue Road; A thousand mountains are full of white bones, and thousands of blood and tears flow" to describe the blood and unbearable construction of the road.
The Construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway by the French made many people of insight in Yunnan feel that their sovereignty had been lost, and they jointly demanded the construction of the (old) Bi (Se zhai) Lin (An) Shi (Ping) Railway, which belonged to the Yunnan people themselves.
In 1915, the Construction of the Bishi Railway, invested by local merchants in Yunnan, in order to prevent the French from coveting the mineral resources of Yunnan through the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, and considering the construction cost, it was decided to implement a gauge of 600 mm of inch rail, so that it could not be directly connected with the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway with a gauge of 1000 mm, and the French wanted to transport things to the outside world, and had to consult with the Chinese.
The total length of the (old) Bi (Sezhai) Stone Railway is about 180 kilometers, and it is implemented in stages and stages; The Gebi (Gejiu ~ Bisezhai) section was first started in 1915, when domestic railway technicians were in short supply, so they had to hire the Frenchman Nifu Lishi as a road construction engineer; When in 1918, when it was ready to open the Ji lin (JiJie ~ Lin'an) section, the railway company hired Sappho as the chief engineer, one is convenient communication, the other is the lower cost, and the third is that Sappho is at a high level.
At that time, banditry and plague were rampant in Yunnan, and Sappho was not afraid of hardships and dangers, personally leading a team to survey and design the route for optimal combination.
After comprehensive analysis, Sappho believes that after the opening of the old Bisezhai section, due to the problem of narrow gauge and road width, its slow speed and low transportation capacity will certainly not meet the needs of the future economic development of the area, and it will not be conducive to the future expansion of the railway with Yunnan and Vietnam; For the sake of long-term planning, he boldly suggested that the line subgrade, bridges, culverts, tunnels, etc. from Jijie to Lin'an (Jianshui) and even later extend to Shiping, are all designed according to the standard of 1000 mm gauge (also known as meter gauge), while the track is still laid according to the 600 mm gauge, and when the conditions are ripe in the future, it can be easily expanded into meter gauge, which can save a lot of money.
Sappho's pragmatic and visionary design was endorsed and adopted by the railway company's management and general meeting of shareholders. After the completion of this section of the railway, Mengzi's first-hand man Yin Qinguangdi sighed: "The monthly salary of the Sa engineer is only 400 yuan, and soon after the difference, the road survey is well-organized, while the Ni engineer's monthly salary is 900 yuan, and the repair is long, and the results are very little." ”
Later, when the Linping (Lin'an ~ Shiping) section of the railway was built, although Sapphodu had already gone to build roads elsewhere, the successors still carried out according to Sapphojun's standards.
The Bishi Railway created a number of Chinese railways in that year, namely: the smallest track equipment (narrow track, small car), the longest construction time (lasted 21 years), and the best operating efficiency of a private railway.
However, the good thing is that the expansion of the track was not carried out until more than 50 years later in 1970, because of the good foundation, the Kunming Railway Bureau was completed in only 10 months, and the old section of the French Chicken Street had to be discontinued in 1990 due to congenital deficiencies and failure to transform. Locals still say that Sapphoe is also a high-ranking person, saving a lot of money for the Yunnan Railway 50 years later.
In 1922, Sappho was appointed deputy director of the Hankou Department of the Pinghan Railway, an engineer of the Beijing-Hankou Railway, and had grown into the top talent of the domestic railway system at that time.
On January 1, 1923, China took back the Jiaoji Railway, which had been forcibly occupied by Japan after german management in the Central Plains of World War I, and in view of Safjun's talent, he was transferred to the evaluation committee of the Second Department (Jiaoji Railway Part) of the Lu Case Aftermath Supervision Office, and participated in the reception of the Jiaoji Railway.
In the process of acceptance, Sappho cooperated with Yan Deqing, and his position on safeguarding the interests of the nation and the country was extremely firm, and he argued on the basis of reason for the unreasonable demands made by the Japanese side in the evaluation of railway assets, and directly pressed the final compensation from 45 million yen to 40 million yuan, which was commended by the Beiyang government at that time.
After the jiaoji railway was withdrawn, Sappho was appointed as the director of the public works department of the Road Bureau. Because the Germans reduced the cost of construction, the bridges and lines of the Jiaoji Railway were quite weak, and because the Japanese used large locomotives to speed up the plundering of resources and grab profits after the Occupation, the road damage became more and more serious, and later the Japanese knew that Jiaoji Road would be returned to China, and there was almost no investment in maintenance and maintenance; After the railway was recovered, the poor road conditions and safety hazards were shocking, and the Japanese took it for granted that at that time, Chinese was unable to repair and manage the Jiaoji Railway, and then they had to ask them to come back at a high price and return it to them for operation.
In the face of the mess, Sappho rose to the occasion, showing his heroic nature, and immediately organized personnel to conduct a thorough investigation of the lines, bridges and buildings under the jurisdiction of the Jiaoji Railway, while planning maintenance and renovation funds; He also personally led engineers and technicians to change the line according to the standard specifications, replace the rails, sleepers and slab beams, etc. What is even more rare and valuable is that Sappho is immersed in hard work and does not care about political affairs, and his work style has won the trust and praise of all sides.
The use of cranes to repair the Jiaoji railway bridge
At that time, the political situation in Shandong was unstable, and the Northern Transportation Department and the shandong local faction both wanted to control the leadership of the Jiaoji Railway, so that in just a few years, the director of the railway bureau changed four or five times, and Safu was all low-key, hard-working, and excellent technical level, and none of them even talked about his background in the transportation department.
Zhifeng War, Zhejiang Feng War and other civil wars repeatedly infested the construction, this project was not completed until 1927, for the then 4 years of Jiaoji Railway renewal and maintenance, not only to the Japanese who wanted to sit and watch the joke with a strong response, but also let this traffic artery through the hinterland of Shandong be able to operate normally, to continue to promote shandong's economic prosperity to make a great contribution, Safu has been praised by the authorities of the government, the world is even more praised by safu "gonggai Jiaoji railway".
In 1929, Sa Fujun, who had both ability and political integrity, became the director and counselor of the Department of Management of the Ministry of Railways of the National Government of Nanjing. In May 1930, Sappho was officially appointed by the Ministry of Railways of the National Government of Nanjing as the chairman of the Jiaoji Railway Administration, and also served as the deputy director of the Railway Technical Standards Approval Committee.
In 1933, Sapphodu presided over the construction of Asia's first railway ferry (Nanjing Shimonoseki to Pukou Ferry), which long connected Ninghu and Jinpu roads, and Japanese journalists praised it in the "Yomiuri Shimbun" as "beautiful and unparalleled in East Asia"; It was not until the completion of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in 1968 after liberation that the railway ferry slowly withdrew from the stage of history.
In 1937, after the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Communications of the Republic of China merged into the Ministry of Communications, Safu was appointed as the technical supervisor of the Ministry of Communications and the director of the Road Administration Department, climbing to the peak of his life and career, and was one of the four major technical supervisors of the railway department during the Republic of China period; It should be known that the technical supervisor is the chief engineer, and the technical supervisors who have served as the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Railways since the Republic of China are outstanding railway experts, such as Zhan Tianyou and Yan Deqing.
In the smoke of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Sappho led a group of railwaymen to successively build the main arteries of southwest transportation such as the Yunnan-Burma Railway, the Syrian-Kunming Railway, and the Sichuan-Yunnan Railway, and at the same time rectified the reclaimed Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, innovated the remaining French railway rules and regulations, and unified it with China's railway standards. These down-to-earth achievements condensed all the painstaking efforts of Sapphojun, and it played a very important role in accumulating strength for the Chinese people in the rear of the anti-Japanese war and sending a large number of people and goods to the front line to resist the Japanese Kou
In 1941, in order to prevent the Japanese invasion from Vietnam, Sappho was also ordered to investigate the demolition of the (old) Bi (Se Zhai) Stone (Ping) Railway. Shen Chang, then director of the Sichuan-Yunnan and Binyue Roads Bureau, advocated the demolition of this section of the railway, and neither the Bishi Railway Company nor the shareholders praised it, and Sapphoju judged the situation and decided under pressure to dismantle the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway only to Bisezhai and retain the Bishi Railway; At the same time, the steel rails removed will be transported to build the Yunnan-Burma and Syrian-Kunming railways.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Sappho, who was authoritative on the railway, was transferred back to the Ministry of Communications of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing, and still served as a technical supervisor and director of the Road Administration Department. He wrote nearly 30,000 words of "China's Railway Engineering in the Past Thirty Years", with his more than 30 years of actual combat engaged in railway work, summarized the development process of China's railways, and explained professional issues such as the formulation of China's railway construction standards and various norms, which can be called an important document in the history of China's railways.
In early 1949, before the Nationalist government was defeated in Guangzhou, he appointed Sapphodu as executive deputy minister of the Ministry of Communications, but he insisted on resigning, and resolutely broke away from the Kuomintang and went to Kunming to avoid the entanglement of agents until liberation.
After the liberation of Kunming, Liu Bocheng, chairman of the Southwest Military and Political Committee, said in a telegram to Premier Zhou that SaFujun was "honest and honest, upright and selfless, conscientious and straightforward in his work, and all the personnel in the southwest railway circles all claim to be seniors and have credibility and status in the railway circles." He also proposed that he be appointed as the newly established deputy minister of the Southwest Ministry of Transportation and deputy director of the Southwest Railway Engineering Bureau, and the central government immediately approved this proposal.
Since ancient times, the mountains and rivers between Chengdu and Chongqing have been blocked, and the traffic is extremely inconvenient; Since the beginning of the last century, the people of Sichuan have raised funds to build railways, but from the Qing Dynasty to the Kuomintang for decades, spending countless people's fat and people's anointing, until 1949, it was still not paved, and the railway dream of the Sichuan people still stayed on the drawings.
After the founding of New China, the first railway built by the Chinese people who were masters of their own affairs was the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway. Deng Xiaoping personally appointed Sa Fujun as the chief engineer of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway, and major technical issues were decided by him.
As the administrative leader and technical director of the Southwest Railway Engineering Bureau, Sappho, who is more than a year old, has worked day and night to devote a lot of effort to the survey, design and construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway. Sappho was honored to be able to personally participate in the construction of the first railway in New China, saying: "38 years ago I participated in the survey work of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway (then known as Chuanhan Road), but only today I dare to say that it will be able to be built, and it must be very well repaired.
At that time, the enthusiasm of the people of the whole country was high, and they mobilized together to participate in the construction of the people's railway, and more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians gathered and distributed in various sections of the Chengdu-Chongqing Line, and carried out construction non-stop. In the past, the Kuomintang could not arrest people when they built roads and arrested Ding, but after liberation, people rushed to come and rush to do work, and after completing the tasks assigned on the day, they refused to go back and demanded that they continue to work overtime.
In October 1951, xinhua daily published an article written by Safujun entitled "The Growth of the People's Railway", which read: "I have been engaged in railway construction for decades, and it can be seen from the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway that as long as we build our railway, as long as we are under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, there are no difficulties that cannot be overcome, as long as we have organization, leadership, and regular workers, and inspire the wisdom of the working people, and we have full confidence in repairing the people's railway." ”
During the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea occurred, and Sappho actively responded to the call and donated all the two thousand US dollars of the "severance payment" issued to him by the former Kuomintang, which caused a sensation. The Southwest Railway Engineering Bureau held a mass meeting for this purpose, and Sappho spoke about why he donated so much money, and the scene was touching; This completely aroused the fighting spirit of hundreds of thousands of road construction migrant workers, the chief engineers all did this, and the three armed forces did not work hard.
On April 10, 1952, Sa Fujun's father Sa Zhenbing died of illness, and the state made an exception to arrange a special plane to send him back to Fujian for mourning. This shows the contribution and importance of Sa Zhenbing and Safu father and son to the country.
On June 13, 1952, the 505-kilometer "super project" - chengdu-Chongqing railway, was completed in only two years; On July 1, the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway was officially opened to traffic, and the stations along the railway line such as Chongqing Caiyuanba Railway Station and Chengdu Railway Station Square were full of people and red flags, a jubilant scene.
Chairman Mao wrote an inscription for this: Celebrate the opening of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway and continue to work hard to build the Tiancheng Road.
This is the first railway in the history of China's railways that was completely designed and constructed by Chinese himself and built entirely with domestic materials, especially it was built in the southwest of the Great Southwest with late liberation time and backward economic conditions, which is a miracle, and Sappho has played a great role in it.
The completion of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway has changed the pattern of transportation in Sichuan, and has great historical significance for the recovery of the national economy in Chongqing and Chengdu in the early days of the founding of New China, and even the entire southwest region, and has also accumulated valuable experience for the construction of the new China railway, and opened the prelude to the restoration of economic construction in New China.
In December of the same year, the 66-year-old Sappho was transferred to the director of the staff office of the Ministry of Railways, at the level of deputy department, but he still kept an eye on the Baocheng (Baoji to Chengdu) railway under construction. As a senior in the railway engineering field, Sapphojun, whether he is an official in the political circles or a chief in the engineering bureau, attaches great importance to the cultivation of young juniors, and has brought out a large number of elite soldiers.
Unfortunately, Sappho was not able to see the Baocheng Railway completed and opened to traffic, and on February 7, 1955, Sappho died of illness in Beijing at the age of 70 and was buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.
Sappho's outstanding contributions to the construction and management of China's railways are always worth remembering. Compared with the long-term failure of many elites who have gone abroad for further study, they have made wedding clothes for other countries, and they are not able to boo.