This article was published in sanlian life weekly, no. 26, 2020, the original title of the article is "Yunnan-Vietnam Railway: In the Landscape of History", it is strictly forbidden to reprint it privately, and infringement must be investigated
The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway no longer has a full line of passenger traffic, but it can still feel its charm through different modes of transportation. Along the century-old Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, what unfolds in front of you is a picture of the combination of scenery and history, and the wish in your heart is that this railway can be used and preserved forever.
Chief Writer /Qiu Lian
Intern Reporter /Tian Zhongling
The "Dian section" of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, with a length of 465 kilometers, departs from Kunming and passes through mountains, canyons, shoals and rivers to reach the border estuary (Photo by Wang Lu)
Between 1903 and 1910, led by the French, a Yunnan-Vietnam Railway linking Vietnam was built in Yunnan Province, China. Its total length is 854 km. The "Dian section" is 465 kilometers long, stretching from Kunming in the north to the mouth of the small border town in the south, and then connecting to the railway in Vietnam, all the way to the Vietnamese port city of Haiphong. The gauge of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is 1 meter, which is different from the 1.435 meter gauge used in most countries and regions in the world, so it is also called "meter gauge". It is the oldest surviving meter-gauge railway in China and still in operation.
In 2003, taking into account factors such as geological disasters along the way and the inability to make a profitable passenger reduction, the passenger trains in Yunnan Province of the Yunnan Railway were suspended. There are still freight shipments, but due to the dwindling volume of freight, only two pairs of freight trains per day from the midpoint city to the estuary are maintained. The only train that can be taken today is also in Kaiyuan City – in 2018, the local government and the Kunming Railway Bureau negotiated to turn a 11.61-kilometer-long meter-gauge line under the jurisdiction of Kaiyuan into a rail transit train, which has both commuting functions and tourism.
To experience the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway more, it is necessary to combine self-driving and hiking methods to carry out a node-like experience. This is exactly the plan designed for our Yunnan-Vietnam Railway trip: first drive south from Kunming to Kaiyuan to take this meter gauge, and then drive all the way south through the key railway points such as Bisezhai in Mengzi City, Herringbone Bridge and Baizhai Bridge in Pingbian County to finally reach the estuary. On the way back, take the old and Jianshui railways, because there is a section of the Bishi (大旧-Bisezhai-Shiping) railway. Influenced by the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, between 1915 and 1936, the Gebishi railway was invested and built by local private capital. Now, the Jianshui to Tuanshan section has been developed as a tourist train project, which is a relatively successful sample of activation and utilization.
The yunnan-Vietnam railway as a whole is a complete legacy. It transitions from Kunming at an altitude of 1895 meters above sea level, through mountains, canyons, shoals and rivers in the middle, from a plateau mountain monsoon climate to a humid and hot tropical rainforest environment, and finally reaches the estuary of only 76.9 meters above sea level. This railway is connected by a magnificent and unusual scenery, and behind it is the difficulty of building the railway and the exquisite use of construction technology. As a traffic lifeline connecting the southwest region to foreign countries, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway has interpreted many important events in China's modern history, which has spawned the national economy of Yunnan and witnessed the rise and fall of some towns along the way. With the passage of time, when the transportation function of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is gradually dispersed by other railways, the role it has played and the value it has also made people think, in the future, the entire Yunnan-Vietnam Railway can be properly protected and utilized.
Kawaguchi Station is the last stop before an international intermodal train enters Vietnam (Photo by Wang Lu)
The first experience of the meter gauge
In the saying "Eighteen Monsters of Yunnan", one is "the train is not as fast as the car", which is used to describe the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. When we first stopped, we had a profound understanding. All the way from Kunming to Kaiyuan, we planned to catch the sightseeing train from Kaiyuan Station, but when we entered the city, we were stuck at the toll booth and missed the departure time. We had to continue to chase the train. After parking the train and walking along the wooden boardwalk over a ridge, I was able to greet the train at the "South Cave" before the terminal station "Big Tower".
Every year between May and October, due to the rainy season, the speed of trains on the meter track must be controlled at about 25 km / h. This speed is not much different from the average speed of the meter gauge when it was opened to traffic that year. However, at that time, it was possible to increase the speed when passing through a gentle area like the Mengzi Plain, and now it is necessary to control the speed of the whole process for safety. Amid the rumbling sound, the train moves slowly. When you meet the bend, you can also see the body of the train in front of you through the window at the back. Or sit in front and see the carriage at the back like a big fish swinging its tail. This is a visual effect that you will never have by taking a high-speed train.
From Namdong to Data, you will experience the second largest exhibition line on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. The so-called "exhibition line" is a circuitous upward route designed when the train is driving in the lofty mountains and mountains because the slope is too large to pass. Later, with the maturity of tunnel technology, the train was able to pass through a fairly long tunnel directly to the other end of the mountain, eliminating the need for the meandering of walking close to the mountain and drilling in and out of the short tunnel. The curved section of the entire Yunnan-Vietnam Railway accounts for 53%, the minimum curve radius is 80 meters, and the maximum slope is 30 ‰. This kind of curved and steep slope can be seen in this section of the line.
The design of the exhibition line allows people to get as close as possible to the landscape. Sometimes the two mountains stand on the left and right of the carriage, forming a threatening and oppressive force, only half an arm apart can touch the uneven rock wall, which can't help but make people inhale the cold air, sigh fortunately not excited to stick their heads out of the car window; sometimes there are branches that run out of the car next to the plants as if to reach into the carriage, frightening people to hurry to dodge, and the actual trees are just trimmed to the length of the train. The windows are half open, and a cool wind blows in, sometimes bringing in the fragrance of leaves and flowers, sometimes the smell of earth and rocks. The carriages we rode in, modeled after the past, were arranged with leather seats in the classical style. It reminds me of an old photograph I saw with Pei Yifeng, a French collector in Kunming, where Guerlin Louis, a French engineer working in Vietnam's coastal phong, traveled to Kunming in 1934 on a train on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway with his wife, daughter and Vietnamese nanny. He used his camera to record his family and the customs and customs along the way. In that photo, the family sits in a similar leather seat in the carriage. The wife in the white lace dress stared at the camera, while the young daughter looked out of the car window with an excited expression, already deeply attracted by the landscape outside the car window.
The Red River and the Nanxi River meet here, hence the name of the estuary. The opposite bank of the China-Vietnam Railway Bridge (left) is Vietnam (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
After the train arrives at the tower, it will make a turnaround. The front of the locomotive is a Dongfeng Type 21 diesel locomotive, which has two cockpits, and as long as the front of the locomotive is wrong from the next railway line back to the rear, it can continue to drive. While waiting, I observed the tracks. It is said that it is a meter gauge, and the feeling in the carriage is only that it is narrower than the average carriage. The French chose the meter rail that year, the most important thing is the cost saving consideration - and the track is also equipped with steel pillows to prevent termites and rain erosion, the distance between the tracks is short, and the building materials are saved accordingly. Trains traveling on meter gauge are lightweight and flexible, and the locomotive traction does not need to be too large. So far, 70% of the railway mileage in Southeast Asian countries is meter gauge.
On the way back, you can see the tunnels and bridges you just missed. The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is famous for its numerous tunnels and bridges, with a total of 155 tunnels and 465 bridges. The short 11-kilometer stretch of the route passes through 6 tunnels and 3 bridges of various shapes. The peculiarity of these tunnels is that a considerable part of them are "unlined", that is, there is no cement to reinforce them, thanks to the local hard rock formations, which give the shape of the tunnels a primitive rough feeling. The train traveled slowly enough to allow one to take a closer look at the layered structures of the rocks, the red or green colors that came out due to the content of certain minerals, and the black imprints that had been stained by the passage of steam locomotives in the past.
In the city by the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, children are happy to play by the railway (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
The seven-hole bridge passing through is the only elevated porous stone arch bridge on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. Interestingly, it does not cross the water, but across a rice field. It was this "dryland bridge" that allowed it to survive the Japanese bombing. In 1940, Kaiyuan was bombed 11 times by Japanese aircraft, five of which were aimed at the nearby Xiaolongtan Bridge, because they believed that the "DryLand Bridge" was easier to recover after it was destroyed. Another Muhuaguo Bridge is the only steel truss girder bridge on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway that maintains its original appearance. Its upper and lower transverse linkage rods are connected by a four-grid mesh truss, so that the bridge body is grid-like geometric pattern, also known as the Big Flower Bridge. A Yunnan-Vietnam railway enthusiast who focuses on bridge research told me: "At that time, the components of the bridge were transported from France by sea to Haiphong, and then through the Red River to the Wild Consumption Wharf in Yunnan, and then from the wharf to the site by mule and horse." This determines that the weight of each component does not exceed 100 kg, and the length cannot exceed 2.5 meters, otherwise the man cannot carry the horse on his back. These limits truss steel beams can only be 51.5 meters long. If the span of the two sides of the strait is greater than this length, it can only connect the bridge. Therefore, there are stone arch bridges on both sides of the Xiaolongtan Bridge, which is a combination of East and West. "In the eyes of the bells, the charm of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway lies first and foremost in its form on the earth." This is the most intuitive. Accustomed to riding on the railway on the plains, you will immediately realize its difference. ”
The train returned to Kaiyuan Station. When the train started in July 2018, tickets were hard to come by for the first three months. The rise of Kaiyuan is directly related to the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, which is a city pulled by train. Kaiyuan people also have a strong train complex in their hearts. Although Kaiyuan Station has been out of service for many years and now has only 3 to 4 rail trains a day, its platform is always open to the public during the day. People chatted on benches waiting for the bus, walked on the wide platforms and walked their dogs. The train station is always a place where they feel at home.
Kaiyuan: The train past
The long-distance rail train passes through a plaza called 1909, a train culture theme park created specifically to complement the line. Before the full line of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was completed in 1910, the Kaiyuan section was opened to traffic ahead of schedule on May 1, 1909, from Xiaolongtan Lantern Mountain in the north to The border between Yangjie and Mengzicao Dam in the south, with a total length of 59 kilometers. 1909 was the year when the train met in this small place, then known as "Ami", and it was also the node at which its identity metamorphosis took place. At the top of the Phoenix Mountain next to the square, you can see the factories around Kaiyuan City, as well as the Phoenix Lake and wetlands carefully leveled nearby. This seems to be a microcosm of Kaiyuan's past and present: the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway has allowed Kaiyuan to grow into an important industrial city in southern Yunnan by relying on rich coal resources, and now the traditional overcapacity is working hard to transform into a green economy.
"Ami" was not originally on the line of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. The French established the right to build roads in Yunnan through the Sino-French Contract of 1885 and the Statute of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in 1898. The survey of the railway's line selection began in 1897. At the beginning, the French envisioned the "Western Front" plan, which was to go up the Red River from the mouth of the river to the barbarians, and then along the ancient post road through Mengzi, Jianshui, Tonghai, and Yuxi to Kunming. The route passes through economically more developed areas and is relatively easy to recruit. But it gave up because of the difficulty of construction - in a straight line distance of only 40 kilometers to Mengzi, the route needs to pass through the vast Ailao Mountain "Ten Thousand Steps Ladder". On January 25, 1904, the Governor of Indochina officially approved the use of the "Eastern Front". For the first time, Ami appeared on the drawings of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway.
In 1931, the then governor of Ami County took the meaning of "stretching out on all sides and connecting Guangyuan" and changed the name of the county town to Kaiyuan. Due to its midpoint position, Kaiyuan has become an important station on the Yunnan-Vietnam railway line. The terrain of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is complex, and the passenger car travels between Kunming and the estuary for two days, and the intermediate guests must stay overnight in The distance, the vehicles must be inspected, and the train drivers must be replaced. The French then built a set of fully functional supporting buildings on the north-south Yangzheng Street in front of the station. On the west side of the street, there are two-story small buildings lined with Accommodation for French managers, clubs for leisure and entertainment, and foreign hotels that receive dignitaries and dignitaries; next to the station on the east side of the street, there are houses for operation and management such as stationmaster's rooms, machine garages, and turntable cars; at the north end of the street are logistics management areas such as the general manager's office and the French Hospital, and there is also Annan Elementary School at the southern end. Although the railway station at that time was a kilometer northeast of the county seat of Kaiyuan County, the surrounding area was more developed than in the city. "There are more than ten large and small hotels in the station, and there are many French and Annam people (Annam is the ancient name of Vietnam). There are only residents and small shops in the city, and it is unusually cold. Xue Shaoming, a passenger who arrived at Kaiyuan Station in the 1930s, wrote.
Inspectors must inspect key sections of the road before the train comes (Yu Chuzhong photo)
In fact, there are a considerable number of Vietnamese who come to Kaiyuan along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. One of the locomotive maintenance engineers I interviewed, Leong Sai Loong, who was hired after retirement, still maintains Vietnamese citizenship. His grandfather's generation came to Yunnan by train from Vietnam's An Pei province in the 1920s to maintain the railway near the Station of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. "After the railway was repaired, Vietnamese came here to work as train drivers or do railway maintenance. There is also doing small business. "A small roll of flour wrapped in rice skin and stuffed with meat is quite popular in Kaiyuan today, and it is a flavorful snack brought by the Vietnamese to sell.
Yangzheng Street in front of Kaiyuan Station is now renamed Caiyun Road. The road is still lined with units of the railway system. A number of French-style buildings, including the main body of the station, were destroyed in the construction of the city, and only a few remained in their original form, and the machine garage was one of them. Hidden in a railway family quarter, it is now only used as a parking lot, which is really a bit of a big deal – it has a huge span of steel roof. When it was first built in 1909, the arched door opening made of stone was lined with three rails, which could be repaired by six locomotives at the same time.
This garage is closely related to Cai Yi's ability to successfully launch a patriotic uprising against Yuan Shikai in Yunnan. During Yuan Shikai's restoration of the imperial system, Cai Yi, who was the governor of Yunnan, was transferred back to Beijing. At first, Cai Yi still had expectations for Yuan Shikai, but later he was deeply stung by Yuan Shikai's series of acts of betrayal and glory, and secretly formulated the idea of launching an armed uprising in Yunnan. In November 1915, Cai Yi secretly fled Beijing to Japan, planning to take the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway back to Kunming. When Yuan Shikai learned of Cai Yi's actions, he sent people to pursue and kill all the way from south to north along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. At the estuary, Bisezhai and other stations were dodged by Cai Yi. Arriving in Kaiyuan, Cai Yi was arranged to stay in a western hotel. Yuan Shikai instructed Zhang Yikun of Zhixian county at that time to poison Cai Yi with poisoned brandy at the hotel. After Cai Yi learned about it in advance, he hid in the garage of the machine to escape the disaster, and finally successfully reached Kunming.
Not only has the station formed a bustling and lively neighborhood, but the opening of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway has also contributed to the development of the local mining industry in Kaiyuan. In 1917, Kaiyuan Tongxing Company raised funds to mine coal in Xiaolongtan, and in the following ten years, 13 private coal companies developed in Xiaolongtan Mining Area. It is undeniable that at that time, because the operation and management rights of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway were in the hands of the French, there were many checkpoints on the way out of the coal mine, and there were too many taxes, but this was changed with the Chinese government's 40-year early recovery of the right to operate and manage the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in 1943. Kaiyuan's industrial layout accelerated after 1949. The convenience of transportation and resources provides the basis for hydropower and thermal power generation, and electricity as a new energy source solves the power problem of other factories. In the 1950s and 1960s, Kaiyuan was famous for its top ten factories and mines in the country.
The curved section of the entire Yunnan-Vietnam Railway accounts for 53%, which has the characteristics of steep curves and steep slopes (Photo by Wang Lu)
"If you use one word to describe the Kaiyuan people, it is pride. Because of industry, but also because of the railway that laid the foundation for industry. "Before the reform of the railway agency in 1997, the Kaiyuan Railway Branch was subordinate to the Chengdu Railway Bureau. It manages all the narrow gauge railways from Kunming in the north to Hekou in the south and Shiping in the west, and can give orders to all the narrow gauge railways in Yunnan. Kaiyuan has a nickname called 'Iron Half City', which means that people in half the city work on the railway. The railroad system contracted every aspect of people's lives, with its own schools, cinemas, and hospitals, which were larger and better quality than local institutions. ”
Yet history seems to be a joke on Kaiyuan. Many years after the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway ceased to carry passengers, in 2014, another KunyuHe (Kunming-Yuxi-Hekou) quasi-rail railway connecting Kunming to Estuary was fully opened. Just like the story of the location of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway more than 100 years ago, it is repeated, only this time the quasi-rail railway chose to build water and bypassed the distance. The advantage of Jianshui is that it is densely populated and the tourism industry is developed, which ensures sufficient customers and goods. The Kaiyuan people were not convinced. Local media wrote: "The distance between Kaiyuan and Jianshui is only a few tens of kilometers, but the temperament is completely different. Kaiyuan is modern, fashionable and inclusive; Jianshui is old and Sven, but it is a bit rustic. When The Kaiyuan people dance waist dances, drinks foreign wine, and wears suits, the Jianshui people may still be singing folk tunes. "But this has not changed the fact that Kaiyuan lost the railway, and the people of Kaiyuan need to run to the nearest Mengzi station to take the train from now on." Driving far, that is, the train is driving farther and farther. "What is intriguing is that the quasi-rail railway does not pass through the long distance, but the management work is still responsible for the long distance train section and the engineering section. Such a relationship of ownership seems to be taking care of the glory that belongs to the railway in the hearts of the People of Kaiyuan.
Today's urban rail transit train has become the emotional sustenance of The Kaiyuan people nostalgic for the past. The new Mi-Mong (Maitreya-Mongzi) high-speed railway is under construction, which will once again change the fate of Kaiyuan.
Bisezhai Station preserves a very complete French-style station building (Photo by Wang Lu)
Bise Village: A legend
The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway turned Kaiyuan into an industrial city, but it could not profoundly change the fate of Bise Village. When it comes to the rise and fall of villages along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, no one is more dramatic than BiseZhai. Time has stagnated on the red tiled yellow walls and wooden shutters of the Bisezhai Station, and also on the three-sided clock and curly vines that have drifted across the sea, and the former "Little Paris of the East" has become a prosperous old dream. The French collector Pei Yifeng described the landscape of the bisezhai stations exactly like those of the old stations in France. However, outside this yellow building complex, the surrounding area is still a village house made of stones, which is the magic of the bise village.
Why is it called Bise Village? Driving through Mengzi from Kaiyuan to this village 12 kilometers outside mengzi city, my mind was full of associations of "blue color", and I only saw hills with red clay and mountain rocks. There was originally an older name called "Po Xin" here, and there were more than a dozen families living here. Later, due to the ravages in the wall, the gentry in the city took a mock name "tick village". It is said that the French built the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway through the village, and only changed its name to a more elegant bise village when deciding on the name of the station. At that time, there were two lakes outside the village that had not disappeared, the Long Bridge Sea and the Datun Sea, which may really give people the feeling of a million acres. In short, the two annoying Chinese characters instantly become poetic.
Bisezhai is another special station on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in addition to Hekou Station. What has created the special status of Bisezhai is not only the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, but also because the "Bishi Railway" meets here. After the opening of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, Yunnan natives saw the convenience of connecting the world by train. They also wanted to build a railway of their own. At that time, the large tin produced in gejiu city was of high quality and favored by the international market, but the Yunnan-Vietnam railway did not lead to gejiu, and a large number of tin mines could only be transported by horse to Bisezhai station, which was not convenient. Therefore, the tin mine owners of Gejiu, Shiping, Jianshui, Mengzi and other places jointly wrote a letter requesting the construction of a railway to connect with the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. The Bishi Railway, centered on the old city of the "Tin Capital of the World", reaches Jijie Station in a northeasterly direction, where it is divided into two, one to the east, through Mengzi, to the Bisezhai Station of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, and one to the west, leading to Jianshui and Shiping County.
The three-sided clock at Bisezhai Station is exquisitely designed, and the original is collected at the Yunnan Railway Museum in Kunming (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
The Bishi Railway uses narrower gauges than the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, with a gauge of only 600 mm. This is out of the dual consideration of resisting foreign invasion and reducing costs. In the rugged terrain of Jijie Street to an old section, the actual speed of the train is only about 10 kilometers. If the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is a train that is not as fast as a car, then a Bishi Railway is a block that is better than walking. "Even if you go down and soak up the pee, you can also rush to get into the car." At that time, people teased. It was prescient that the railway from Jijie street to Shiping section, the chief engineer Safu, required to build a road according to the meter track and pave it with inch tracks. This laid the groundwork for the recovery of the right of way of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, all of which were unified into meter rails for direct transportation.
With the blessing of these two railways, the village that was once lice and insects have been transformed into the absolute center of cargo transit. The goods that are reloaded to the inch rail are mainly coal, coke, crude oil, mineral building materials, wood, grain, salt, and daily industrial products; the goods that are reloaded to the rice rail are tin, flue-cured tobacco, and agricultural and sideline products. The trade of a large number of goods has created conditions for openness and prosperity for Bise Village. Not only has the Beisei customs and post office of Mengzi Customs set up here, but companies from various countries have also set up offices or warehouses here, such as the Asia Water and Fire Oil Company, the Persian Company and the Mobil Oil Company in the United States. When US President Richard Nixon visited China for the first time, he also asked Premier Zhou Enlai about the address of the water, fire and oil warehouse in Asia Minor. Shops, hotels, cafes and other trendy places are also readily available, and Bisezhai even built yunnan's first tennis court, which villagers have been drying for a long time after it is abandoned.
The status between Bisezhai and Mengzi has changed one after another: during the Ming and Qing dynasties, Mengzi was already a sino-Vietnamese trade hub. After the Sino-French War, France opened Mongolia as a treaty port, and in 1889, it officially established the Mengzi Customs. Since then, 80% of the province's import and export goods have been distributed in Mongolia. However, when the Bise Village, which occupies the advantage of the two lines, became more and more prosperous, mengzi on the Bishi branch alone fell into depression. Mengzi has become a reference for setting off the bise village: "What Mengzicheng can't buy, the bise village can buy." ”
It is also because many of Mengzi's businesses have moved to Kunming after the construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, and there are empty houses in Mengzi City, which provides convenience for receiving Southwest United masters and students. In 1938, as the war against Japanese Aggression spread, it forced a temporary university consisting of Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University to move from Changsha to Kunming. Teachers and students went in three ways, one of which was from Changsha to Guangzhou via the Guangdong-Han Line, to Hong Kong, then by boat to Haiphong, Vietnam, and then by railway from yunnan to Vietnam to Kunming. However, kunming school buildings are tight, Mongolia has its own Bishi Railway and Yunnan-Vietnam Railway connecting Kunming, and there are many idle houses, the United University decided to let students from the Faculty of Letters and the Law Business School continue to move to Mengzi. So the Bishi Railway appeared in Zhu Ziqing's article. In the Miscellaneous Records of Mengzi, he wrote: "It is good for Mengzi to be small, and it is good to have few people." People who are accustomed to seeing the big city will feel like toys when they see the circle of Mengzi, just like people who are accustomed to sitting on ordinary trains, when they first step on a small blue stone train, they will feel like toys. ”
Article 24 of the Constitution of the China-Vietnam Railway stipulates: "In the event of a war between China and other countries, and the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway does not observe the outside world, it shall be dispatched by China." On September 9, 1940, the Nationalist government demolished 177 kilometers of rail from the mouth of the river to Bise Village, except for the herringbone bridge, in order to prevent the Japanese from invading Vietnam using the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. Bisezhai Station was retained, and goods had to be transferred to the Bihe Highway to reach the estuary, while the Bishi Railway remained open. Zhao Zhengqiang, a villager born in 1942, saw the last glory of this place. He recalled to me what he had seen in his childhood: "The platform of Bisezhai is piled with goods such as rice, salt, sesame oil, cotton and alkali, and it is necessary to transfer the 'Lifu' from the meter gauge to the inch track 200 meters away, or turn to the truck and take the road to continue forward." At this time, bandits are most likely to loot, and there are always bandits on the nearby hills looking at the goods. "After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the railway from Hekou to Bisezhai was repaired in 1957, but at the end of 1959, the interchange station between meter gauge and inch rail was changed to Yujiaopu Station, no longer passing through Bisezhai. BiseZhai went to the cold, from a hub status to a fourth-class small station where only slow trucks stopped.
Yang Juxiang, deputy director of the Bisezhai Village Committee, told me that until the 1940s, the staff of the Bisezhai station was maintained at more than 1,000 people, there were 300 or 400 family members, and there were about 1,000 active "Lifu" on the platform, which absorbed a large number of laborers in the village. "There is also an old lady, listening to her said that when she was young, she married the inspector of Bise Village from outside, and began to live in the staff dormitory built by the French, did not collect rent, rented a house outside and lived in a family subsidy of 6 yuan a month, in fact, 6 yuan is enough to pay 3 months of rent. The monthly wage income of ordinary workers is 20 to 30 yuan, which can be said to be 'heavenly' compared to the employees of Mengzi County, especially the villagers who have been farming for generations. "After the function of the Bisezhai station shrank, the villagers regained their livelihood from planting, and now mainly rely on growing grapes and greenhouse vegetables as a source of income. Feng Xiaogang's movie "Fanghua" was filmed in Bise Village, bringing tourists here. Some villagers have started a business of renting military uniforms to take pictures. On weekends and holidays before the epidemic, the rental cost of ten yuan a set can earn thousands of yuan per day.
Perhaps because the bise village faded out of people's sight prematurely, its French-style station complex has been well preserved, not only escaping the destruction of the "Cultural Revolution" era, but also because of the remote rural corner and not affected by urban expansion and large-scale construction, it has become the most complete architectural scenery on the Yunnan-Vietnam railway line. The French-style tiles fired in Vietnam still shimmer with the luster of the pulp, and the three-sided clock on the platform with the name of the mechanic Paul Garnier is still walking, allowing people on the platform and people in the waiting hall to see time at the same time — its authenticity is not in Bise Village, but in the Yunnan Railway Museum in Kunming, which continues to record the years to come.
The herringbone bridge is between the cliffs of the two mountains, more than 100 meters away from the stream below, which is simply an incredible location to build a bridge (Photo by Wang Lu)
Screenside: Wonders in the midst of danger
Bidding farewell to Mengzipingba, where bise village is located, entering the territory of Pingbian County, we came to the most dangerous and beautiful part of the entire Yunnan-Vietnam Railway scenery. The railway and the Nanxi River accompany it all the way to the Border between China and Vietnam. Can't sit on the train to experience, just listening to the train driver's description is also vivid. "This journey is almost always a cliff on one side and an abyss on the other. After passing through the station, there is a place called 'Tiger's Mouth', where two boulders face each other one by one, and the trains pass through the middle, as if escaping from the tiger's mouth. Once a leader wanted to follow us to feel this line, and halfway through, he was scared and said that he was going to get off. Chi Jinsuo, a veteran driver with 20 years of driving experience in the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, told me, "There is a saying that describes this journey most appropriately, 'the line of snakes, the crawling train, the heroic driver, the passenger who is not afraid of death'." "This section of only 86 kilometers long, the altitude will suddenly drop from more than 1800 meters to more than 70 meters, so you have to constantly go through the slopes." The driver must control the speed, otherwise either go uphill and not go for a ride, or go downhill to slip, it is time to 'herd sheep'. This can lead to accidents. ”
Driving on the highway of Pingbian County, you can only experience the beauty rather than the danger. The road is located at the bottom of the Valley of the Nanxi River, and the railway is attached to the mountainside, and when you look up, you can occasionally see a silvery track between the tunnels. The landscape of the valley I saw was probably no different from what the Frenchman Georges Malbot saw more than 100 years ago. In 1906, the accountant of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway Outsourcing Engineering Company wrote a letter to his wife at his wife's station, saying that "the mountains stretch, the ravines and the waterfalls" are simply the Swiss Alps. Outside of work, Ma erbot is a photography enthusiast. He took many precious pictures during the construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. One of them reflects how the famous "herringbone bridge" was built – two 355-meter-long bridges with a total weight of more than 5,000 kilograms were carried to the site in groups of two workers, lined up in hundreds of meters.
Although the pictures of the bridge can often be seen, only when you arrive at it can you understand why it is the construction project that best represents the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. Suspended between two mountains, more than 100 meters from the stream below, it is simply incredible to build a bridge in this position. At that time, the French encountered a problem when building roads: before the railway was along the Nanxi River, but between the two stations of Kugu and Bodujing, the Nanxi River formed a large slope, and the railway had to go around the mountain to form a "several" shape of the fold to reduce the height. This required the erection of a railway bridge to cross the cliffs of the four forks of the river valley, a tributary of the Nanxi River. The French Yunnan-Vietnam Railway Company sent the geological and hydrological information near the Sicha River back to China and solicited draft designs from the whole of France. 20 days later, a proposal from Paul Bourdon, a director engineer at the French engineering company Badinuel Engineering& Construction, was adopted, which became the flip-flop bridge.
People of all ethnic groups set up stalls on the Yunnan-Vietnam railway line to gather
Paul Bourdain had previously designed a Weiao Bridge in France, and the two bridges have similarities in how to merge the dragon, and the herringbone bridge is more subtle - the equivalent of the "human" word one and one stroke of the two bridge base brackets fixed the bottom by a spherical support, and at the same time can be rotated, the upper end is pulled by pulleys and winches with chains. As the chains relax, the two bridge bottom brackets slowly converge. The bottom of the bridge looks like two slender feet inserted into the mountain, but there are actually three spherical fulcrums under each foot, like three powerful toes, forming a stable structure of a triangle. The bridge part is assembled in the tunnel on both sides, and then the bottom pulley slides to the center. Completed in 1908, the herringbone bridge, like the Eiffel Tower in France, is a work of the heyday of steel frame structural engineering.
Follow the steps on the hill next to it, pass through a section of railroad tracks and then through a tunnel to reach the herringbone bridge. Since the date of its construction, the bridge has been garrisoned by troops, militia or police for nearly a hundred years, and when the train passes, passengers must lower the window and close the curtains to prevent them from watching. At the head of the bridge, there are now special bridge guards, who are on duty 24 hours a day, and tourists can visit the bridge when the train is not passing.
Standing on the bridge and looking around, the abyss below makes people's legs soft and dizzy, and it is not difficult to imagine the great sacrifice when repairing the bridge. In order to be able to open their eyes on the cliff, the workers needed to hang in mid-air with a rope tied around their waists. And because of the strong wind, once the clothes are hung on the rocks or branches, it is easy to cause accidents, and the workers are shirtless. According to records, more than 60,000 regular workers were recruited during the construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, and 12,000 people died due to construction accidents and epidemics. The 67-meter-long herringbone bridge has killed more than 800 Chinese road workers, an average of 12 deaths per meter, which is a staggering number. The French did not hesitate to pay heavy sums of money, so that the laborers bet their lives.
Xianghuiqiao Station on the Bishi Line is a Sino-French building. At the stop station on the right is the "Jianshui Ancient City Small Train" (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
The area around the herringbone bridge is still dangerous and is a high incidence of rocky landslides. Zhang Wenhai, a staff member of the Kaiyuan Bridge Road workshop who is responsible for line maintenance, told me that just two days before we arrived, 34 kilometers down from the herringbone bridge, a 4-ton boulder had just fallen, and it needed to be chiseled by machine and then manually cleaned. According to Chi Jin, a train driver, his biggest encounter since his work was 3 kilometers ahead of the herringbone bridge. "It's a pass there. I saw the water flowing down the hill from the cab, and shortly after stopping in time, the falling earth buried the rails there. I was more than 30 meters away from the accident site. There was later a shed to prevent falling rocks, and it was safer for the train to drill through below. "We sometimes meet patrolling on the railway. Their job is to patrol the line twice before the train comes. They carry shovels with them, which can remove a small amount of gravel, and have walkie-talkies and red and yellow flags in their backpacks, and in case of emergency, they need to raise red flags to stop trains in advance.
The Pingbian area is complex and inconvenient, and people have always had a deep dependence on train travel. Fu Shikai, a railway photographer who once walked along the railway line, recalled that when he walked the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in 2007, he could still see nearby residents picking up trains. "Especially after the evacuation and school, the children have to go to school farther away, and they will intercede with the freight conductor in order to stay in the carriage without goods." Later, the road conditions improved, many people from the local ethnic minorities bought motorcycles to travel, and the phenomenon of picking trains gradually disappeared. Although the train no longer plays a role in the lives of locals, the deep imprint it has left can still be seen: there has always been a scene of "one station and one market" along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. This situation now exists only at The White Crane Bridge Station in Baihe Township, which is a long and rare mountain flat. On Mondays, nearby villagers such as the Yi, Miao and Yao still come here to catch the market. Stalls of daily necessities, fruits and vegetables are placed next to the railway. When the train arrived at the front of them at a very slow speed, the stall owners moved their positions, and when the train left, it was as usual.
The "Jianshui Ancient City Train" is basically full on the weekend, and it is a relatively successful tourism project (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
Estuary to Jianshui: The Future of Industrial Heritage
The further you go in the direction of the estuary of the final station, the lower the altitude and the hotter and humidier the air becomes. The turquoise Nanxi River and the muddy Red River eventually converge, and the estuary is named after its geographical location. It has the appearance of a small border town, many shops on the street use bilingual signs Chinese and Vietnamese, and the most lively commercial center is close to the China-Vietnam Railway Bridge. There is an old building of hekou customs established in 1886, and a post office established in 1897 is still used as a business office for China Post. It was here that Malbot sent postcards and letters to his wife Bronx expressing his thoughts. If it weren't for the temporary closure of personal access due to the pandemic, the streets here would be bustling with Vietnamese vendors selling tropical fruits and snacks, and the doors of transit companies would always be bustling.
Follow the French-style street next to the Nanxi River, all the way to Hekou Station. After passing through here, trucks bound for Vietnam pass through the last tunnel in China (the French number 1 tunnel) and pass through the China-Vietnam Railway Bridge to Vietnam. The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was built from south to north, and the China-Vietnam Railway Bridge became the first project to be completed. It is a bridge that has gone through vicissitudes and has been destroyed three times in history. The most recent was partially blown up in the 1979 self-defense counterattack against Vietnam and was not reopened until 1993. In the middle of the 76-meter bridge is the national border between China and Vietnam, and the two countries each manage half of it.
The most important border station now is not the estuary, but the mountainside station 6 kilometers from the estuary port. When the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway opened in 1910, there was no mountainside station, and it was not until 1957 that the station was added to handle international intermodal transport between China and Vietnam. International intermodal trains have to complete border inspection procedures here, and then replace Vietnamese locomotives to pull to the national border. Yang Pengfei, deputy director of shanbei station, told me that the volume of this meter rail of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway can basically only rely on the Yunnan Yuntianhua Red Phosphorus Branch in Kaiyuan to maintain operations - the sulfur needed by the Red Phosphorus Company to make fertilizers is transported from Vietnam, and the fertilizer products it manufactures are then transported to Vietnam through the rice rail. The two pairs of trains that run on the meter gauge each day serve the Red Phosphorus Company. In the past, there were rice, coal, ore, timber and other types of goods on this rice track, but with the opening of the Kunyuhe quasi-rail railway in 2014 and the improvement of the road network, fewer and fewer cargo owners chose rice rail transportation.
"Give you a few numbers and you'll know why people don't choose meter gauges." Yang Pengfei said, "A train on quasi-track can pull 3,000 tons of cargo, while two locomotive heads on the meter track can carry a maximum load of 1,500 tons." From us to the next stop, Lahadi, the meter track takes more than three hours, and it takes an hour and a half to drive. It's like you've arrived at a place for a meal, and the train hasn't even passed yet. "However, for the red phosphorus company in Kaiyuan, it is still the most appropriate to use rice rail transportation, because Vietnam is a rice track, and Kaiyuan City only has rice track." If it becomes a quasi-rail after importation, it is equivalent to two reloading, which is not cost-effective. "Rice rail and this red phosphorus company have become a relationship of lips and teeth."
So what should be done about the future of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway? It has become almost a consensus to revitalize and utilize it, to slowly reduce the role of transportation, and to continue to maintain operations in the form of tourism development. At the forefront of this is the Bishi Railway, which is connected to the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. In 2015, the Jianshui government and the Kunming Railway Bureau cooperated to lease the operation of this section of the line and create a project called "Jianshui Ancient City Small Train". It selected a section of the original Bishi Railway from Jianshui to Tuanshan Village. We decided to turn around and look at Jianshui on the way back to Kunming from the mouth of the river.
The wonderful thing about this line is that not only is riding a small train a new experience for many people, but each stop it stops has something to see: the starting station Jianshui is originally an ancient city worth visiting in depth, with temples, old houses and ancient wells. Shuanglongqiao Station has a seventeen-hole bridge built in the Qing Dynasty, listening to the explanation, circling the lake for a week, just half an hour of parking time. The next station is Xianghuiqiao Station, the style of station architecture is a combination of Chinese and French. After seeing the pure French architecture on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway Line, you will immediately be attracted by the elements of traditional wooden buildings such as the roof of the mountain, the beam type and the bucket type, and understand the good intentions of this private line in the design. There are also small cafes and exhibition spaces in the station, where you can stop for a while. The terminal station, Tuanshan Village, is the home built by the Zhang family in Jiangxi after the old tin picking. In the ancient houses listed, there are villagers who continue to live, and the atmosphere of life is strong. When we took this line, it was the weekend and the little train was full. The staff of the local cultural and tourism bureau told us that in the first few years, it was a loss-making, and now there are finally signs of profitability.
Jianshui has rich tourism resources, but the same development method is difficult to achieve in Kaiyuan. Many people don't consider the industrial city a tourist destination, so three months after the long train opened, when the enthusiasm of the locals slowly cooled down, it was actually in an awkward state of unclear definition between commuting and sightseeing. "Unfortunately, it is a mountain-piercing route, and it is more difficult to feel the complexity of the terrain when riding than the turquoise railway on the plains." The bell said. Compared with the minimum 100 yuan ticket for the Jianshui small train in the off-season, Kaiyuan still sets up a 10 yuan ticket for commuter car positioning, which makes it a private collection for railway travel enthusiasts.
Enthusiasts of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway want more stations to form a series between each other. "Just like if Kaiyuan is connected to Bise Village, there will definitely be more people coming to ride." Bells thinks so. But it involves coordination between different local governments and how benefits are distributed. "The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is the only narrow-gauge railway in China, which has gone through 110 years and is definitely worthy of full protection." Another railway media person, Luo Chunxiao, told me. He had been invited to participate in the discussion of the possibility of full-line tourism development of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, but in the end it was still impossible. "Local governments have great enthusiasm, but railways are state-owned assets. How can we not cause the loss of state-owned assets? In addition, the railway is so old, and some places are vulnerable to natural disasters, if passenger transport is resumed, how to ensure passenger safety? ”
Although it is inevitable that some people will have some words in mind about the protection and utilization of the current Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, everyone feels that it is not wrong that regardless of whether it is passenger or freight, the train must always be able to run through. The northern end of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, which I was unable to reach, between Kunming and Kaiyuan, was not even driven by trucks this year because there was no factory demand. It also raised fears that it would become the first part of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway to disappear. "The train is running, even if it is small, the soul of the railway is there." An abandoned railway is not protected. Railways should always be polished. Wang Fuyong, vice president of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway Research Association, said.
(Thanks to He Junyun, Liu Hongbo, Liu Jianhua, Wang Yuhui, Xiang Yunbo, Cui Xiongtao, Qi Dong, Huang Qing for their help for this article)
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<h4 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Tips along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway</h4>
Yiliang: There are relatively complete French-style station buildings, such as water towers, platforms, auditoriums, locomotive maintenance depots, railway hospitals, etc., without exception wearing "French yellow". The office building in the depot still uses French tiles from a hundred years ago.
Panxi: Located between Mengzi and Kunming, which has customs offices, it used to be a pick-up place for shrewd merchants to pick up goods halfway and evade customs duties. The railway station house in the surviving southern French architectural style and the century-old camphor tree left over from the French operation period.
Inspection Department: It retains the French-style station building, the old supply and marketing cooperatives in the 1970s, and the site of the earliest thermal power plant in Yunnan. There is an ice bar opened by Vietnamese descendants next to the railway entrance, which sells ice porridge and papaya cold powder that are quite popular among locals.
Zhicun: In an unused yard at the station, a locomotive 180-degree U-turn turn was hidden in the grass. The other turntable is at Lahadi Station. This turntable is very lightweight, and it is possible to make a locomotive U-turn with the strength of only two people. In the alley next to the station, there is a small two-storey building where Ho Chi Minh once lived in the 1930s and 1940s, which is now a private house.
Wantang: Climb to a high place, and if you are lucky, you can see the wonders of the train passing through the Wantang Waterfall. In the past, when there were passengers, in time for the flood season, the conductors had to remind the passengers to close the windows to avoid being splashed by water droplets. You can also walk along the railway to baizhai bridge. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, baizhai bridge was bombed nine times by the Japanese army, and one of the bombs hit the passenger train from the mouth of the river to Kaiyuan on the bridge, killing and injuring them. When it was rebuilt in 1957, the piers were no longer made of the original steel tower piers, but were made of stone blocks.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > more exciting reports can be found in this issue of the new issue "Green Train: History and Landscape", click on the product card below to buy</h1>
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【Sanlian Life Weekly】2020 No. 26 1093 Green Train: History and Scenery ¥15 Purchase