Draft: Zhang Yujia
On December 30, 2019, Pingtang County, Qiannan County, Guizhou, aerial photograph of the Pingtang Special Bridge. On the same day, the Pingtang Special Bridge was completed and opened to traffic. Courtesy of Visual China
In September 1993, a French photographer photographed the Miao people walking on a dirt road in Guizhou. Courtesy of Visual China
Many Guizhou people are familiar with the origin of the first highway and the first car in Guizhou.
In 1926, Zhou Xicheng, then chairman of Guizhou Province, ordered the construction of the Guiyang Ring Road, and mobilized students above the third grade of Guiyang Primary School to participate in road construction, and each person had a dime a dime as a reward.
The following year, Chow chow bought an open-top car from Hong Kong. The car was transported by water to Sandu County, Guizhou, and then dismantled, and more than 200 migrant workers shouldered shoulder to shoulder, and it took more than 10 days to arrive in Guiyang and reassemble.
Wuling, Wumeng and other four mountain ranges to restore Guizhou mountains, this is the only province in the country without the support of the plain, 93% of the territory is mountainous. Throughout the ages, people have left a lot of sighs and yearning for the "road" in Guizhou. Wang Yangming of the Ming Dynasty sighed when he was degraded to Guizhou: "Even the peaks are in the sky, and the birds are not clear." ”
Also because the roads are difficult to pass, the beautiful scenery and rich mineral deposits in Guizhou are hidden in the mountains and are little known.
A journalist who worked in Guizhou in the 1980s remembers that a trip from Guiyang to a remote district or county sometimes took six days to get back and forth.
In recent years, foreigners who have come to Guizhou are amazed by the road in Guizhou, and it takes only three or four hours to get from Guiyang to the farthest county. Behind the "natural barrier to change the way" is the efforts of countless builders.
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When New China was founded, the length of roads in Guizhou was less than 4,000 kilometers, and only half of them barely maintained traffic.
In December 2012, the Guizhou Provincial Government proposed the "Three-Year Highway Conference Battle": by 2015, the county-to-county expressway will be connected, and the expressway will have a mileage of more than 5,100 kilometers. At the time, Guizhou had just over 2,600 kilometers of highways — the result of 26 years of construction.
The pressure spread to the front line and became a tense construction period, and the road construction workers worked in two shifts 24 hours a day.
Chen Benjian, deputy general manager of Guizhou Datong Road and Bridge Engineering Construction Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Datong Company"), remembers that during the "three-year conference war", he often got up at 6 o'clock in the morning and could not go to bed until two or three o'clock in the morning the next day. He heard that in the north, highways usually take 5-7 years from project establishment to completion. During the "three-year battle" in Guizhou, the period was shortened by 1-2 years.
Chen Benjian feels that he is "always in a hurry" and that "the end of one project is the starting point of the next project".
Chen Benjian, 36, remembers that when he was a child, his hometown was all mud roads, and when it rained, the road was particularly difficult to walk, and the mud splashed on the sides of his pants legs could be one centimeter thick, so much that he could scrape it down with a knife.
Open the way in a place where there is no road, and the difficulties in it are unimaginable to ordinary people.
Chen Benjian said that before building the road, making measurements is the first step, and the surveyors have to trek through the primeval forest and large mountain ravines, carrying tripods, walkie-talkies, knives and wooden stakes to cut the edges of the road. Guizhou's land resources are particularly precious, and they must be careful not to cut across the boundary.
In the original uninhabited places, poisonous snakes and poisonous insects are not uncommon. Wang Qian, chief engineer of the sixth branch of Guizhou Bridge Group, heard that once, a colleague was sitting in the office of the project department, and suddenly felt that something was moving on his back. The colleague said to himself, "What's on my back?" "Reaching out, I found a poisonous snake in my hand.
People who have been soaking in the front line of the project for many years are also accustomed to making fun in suffering.
Wang Qian remembers that sometimes the project department built temporary housing on the mountainside, and the flat land was not enough, so a platform was propped up with steel pipes, and people lived on this suspended platform. There was a board room just built above the reservoir, and when the reservoir swelled, someone found that the fish were swimming to the bathroom. Occasionally, when people are idle, people throw fishing rods from the window, but they also enjoy themselves.
On December 31, 2015, Chen Miner, then secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee, announced that guizhou's goal of "county-to-county expressway" has been fully realized, and Guizhou has become the first province in the western region to have a county-to-county expressway. This is obviously not the end of the year – in September of that year, the curtain was drawn on the three-year battle of rural road construction in Guizhou.
"West of the West"
From 2016 to 2020, He Kezhong, a discipline inspection commissioner of Chase Company, will visit Jiamian Township in Congjiang County almost every month, sometimes staying for a month. Some people call this extremely poor township the "western part of the west", which is almost the most backward area in Guizhou. Jiamian Township is a township supported by Chase Company.
He Kezhong found that compared with the highway, the technical difficulty of the rural road is not large, but the climate in Jiamian Township is extremely harsh, which brings great obstacles to the project.
The local people often remind them that the sky is clear now, but there may be a sudden rainstorm; the heavy rain has fallen for two hours, and it may suddenly be sunny again. Exposure alternates with torrential rain, the mountain heat expands and contracts, and landslides and mudslides often occur.
Construction personnel need to pay close attention to the weather, as long as they see the weather changes, they must immediately withdraw to a safe place, after the rain, they must observe for a while to see if the weather is stable and then go to construction.
In the three or four years of construction in Jiamian Township, He Kezhong has lost count of how many landslides he has encountered, three or four times for the big ones, and countless for the small ones.
He Kezhong has been in a leadership position many years ago, but he is used to running the engineering site. "You can't sit in your office listening to reports and reading materials, that won't solve the problem."
After the collapse, he and his colleagues went to the collapse to check it out. After going up, first confirm whether the evacuation route is safe and whether the selected point can be safely withdrawn. The mountain may collapse again at any time, and the fine pieces of mud and stones will slowly fall, which is a sign that a landslide is about to occur, and if the sound of mud falling is urgent, the situation is very critical.
Every time the collapse body is inspected, several people go up together, and people remind each other while surveying the scene that if there is an unexpected situation, as long as the reaction is slightly delayed, the consequences will be unimaginable.
Before the construction in Jiamian Township, He Kezhong had been working for nearly 30 years. He traveled through 88 county-level administrative regions in Guizhou and thought he was very familiar with the situation in Guizhou. But when he arrived in Jiamian Township, there were still many situations that surprised him.
Jiamian Township is more than 100 kilometers away from Congjiang County, and the road was difficult to walk in the past, and many people in the township had never been to the county seat. Even to catch the market, it takes eight or nine hours to get there. After the road is repaired, it only takes 1 hour.
The natural resources of Jiamian Township are scarce, and the terraces are small, and people plane food in these narrow terraces. He Kezhong remembers that when he first arrived in Jiamian Township in 2016, the local people did not even know the renminbi they were holding. Villagers bundle vegetables into small handfuls and sell them for 1 yuan each. He Kezhong took 10 yuan and wanted to buy 10 handfuls of vegetables, but people did not accept it, insisting that he give 10 pieces of 1 yuan. It turned out that the other party had never seen the 10 yuan bill, afraid of being deceived. Many villagers are accustomed to bartering, such as exchanging a few eggs for a bag of washing powder, and have never seen a larger denomination of yuan.
By the end of 2019, more than 30 villager groups in Guizhou had been hardened.
In the past few years of building roads and helping the poor in the township, He Kezhong and his colleagues have taught the villagers to learn technology and management, helping them obtain a stable income, and he has witnessed the great changes in the extremely poor townships.
"Wherever there is a road, the development is relatively fast"
The expressways in Guizhou often connect one tunnel after another, and one bridge after another. Also because of the need to open roads and build bridges, the cost of each kilometer of highways in Guizhou is as high as more than 100 million yuan.
The numerous difficult bridges have created the name of Guizhou's "Bridge Museum" and pushed China's bridge construction technology to a new height.
In 2016, the construction of the Pingtang Special Bridge was started, and Guizhou Bridge Group was one of the participating units. Wang Qian, chief engineer of the project, found that during the construction process, they gradually entered the blank field.
This time the bridge needs to be poured at a high altitude to pour large volume concrete, high altitude, high label, large volume of these three points superimposed, Wang Qian found that there is no corresponding norm in China, everyone can only grope while doing. The biggest challenge with large-volume concrete is preventing cracking. It was July and August, the sun was shining, and the concrete heated up quickly during the pouring process, sometimes reaching more than 70 degrees Celsius. The high altitude wind is large, the concrete surface heat dissipation is fast, the internal and external temperature difference control is difficult, and the risk of cracking is high. Sudden rises and drops in temperature can cause concrete to crack, which can affect the quality of the project. Wang Qian and the members of the quality control team thought of various methods: cement and sand and gravel materials were bought a week in advance and put into the tank to cool down; ice cubes were bought from Guiyang 200 kilometers away, mixed with ice; during the concrete transportation process, in order to prevent heating, each tank truck was wrapped with geotextiles and sprinkled with water, and the concrete was pumped from the ground to the top of the tower.
Yue Lin returned to her hometown of Guiyang after graduating from Hokkaido University in Japan, and soon after joining Guizhou Bridge Group in 2016, she began to participate in the Pingtang Special Bridge project. She sometimes feels that solving a problem on a construction site is like doing research in school, and the chief engineer has a new idea, just like the mentor proposes a topic, and the young people verify the feasibility. It's just that the experimental conditions at the site are far more rudimentary than those in the school laboratory.
Wang Qian and members of the quality control team also invented a "sandwich biscuit-style" insulation template. In order to test its thermal insulation performance, they asked the on-site workers to weld two 1-cubic-meter water tanks using waste steel plates, and put one of the water tanks into a box made of insulation formwork. Yue Lin and the team members used the basin to bring warm water of more than 40 degrees Celsius, filled two tanks, and then monitored the change in water temperature for 24 hours. By laboratory standards, this experimental process is far from rigorous. But the effect was soon apparent: the water tank without the insulation template dropped to room temperature after about 1 hour, and the water temperature of the other tank only dropped a little.
The problem of concrete was solved, and new problems were encountered in hoisting. Guizhou Bridge Group is responsible for the construction of a 320-meter-high main tower of the Pingtang Special Bridge and its superstructure, but the terrain here is narrow, and the transportation of large components such as steel beams is very difficult and difficult to erect. The two hoisting methods commonly used in bridge construction have been rejected because the terrain is too narrow or the structure of the bridge is special.
"Is it possible to put together an entire section on the flat ground in advance, and then find a device that can lift it, and can walk, rotate, and erect?" At the panel discussion, this bold idea was proposed.
In the past, when bridges were built, steel beam components were hoisted to the erection position one by one. Nowadays, a section is first put together on the ground, and then the nodes are docked, connecting the multi-segment steel beams like building blocks. This reduces the cantilever high-altitude work points from the original 6 to two, and the cantilever end of the high-altitude construction personnel are controlled below 6 people, effectively reducing the engineering risk.
Through continuous exploration, the conceived equipment was born, and the steel beams of the upper part of the Pingtang Special Bridge were successfully closed. Yue Lin was very proud: "If I talk to an expert about this bridge, it is enough to talk about this craft." ”
Standing on the observation deck, the PingtangTe Bridge protrudes from the mountains and spans more than 2,000 meters. When the air humidity is high, the entire bridge is shrouded in clouds.
Guizhou, a mountainous province shrouded in clouds, has also become a "highway plain".
In the past 3 years of participating in the construction of the PingtangTe Bridge, Yue Lin has grown from a graduate to a senior engineer, and she feels that she is very lucky to be able to participate in this world-class project as soon as she graduates.
After more than 30 years of practice, He Kezhong, an old traffic man, felt more and more a sense of awe for his profession, he said: "I caught up with the best period of guizhou's traffic development, and I was fortunate to participate in the whole process, which is the luckiest thing in my life." ”
Chen Benjian sometimes passed by the places where he had built roads, and he would find that the towns were no longer recognized. "Wherever there is a road, the development is relatively fast."
Guizhou has already driven on the highway.
Resources:
"County-to-County Expressway - Guizhou Bending Straight New Starting Point"
"Beautiful Rural Well-off Road - Guizhou Rural Highway "Double Pass" Construction Tour"
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Li Yajuan Source: China Youth Daily ( 2021-06-15 03 edition)
Source: China Youth Daily