At noon, I had time to visit the China Railway Museum, and I could not help but think about the various arduous efforts and achievements of the people of my land since modern times, going forward and following, and creating and developing the railway industry.
Zeng Yun: There is only one major event in the history of modern human civilization, that is, the Industrial Revolution.
Looking back at history, from the perspective of cultural evolution, the leap from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization is actually quite accidental, and most civilizations on the earth, following the melody of their own evolution, may have been wandering outside the door of industrial civilization. However, the earth is too small after all, once a certain region takes the lead in breaking through to the era of industrial civilization, other cultural circles are also like being pressed the fast-forward button, only to plunge into the "strange circle" of industrialization, otherwise it will be difficult to continue to live happily in the global village.
The invention of the train and the railway is one of the hallmarks of industrial culture. On September 27, 1825, the world's first steam locomotive, driven by Stephenson himself, departed from Ikourain Station and arrived at Stockton Station about 7 hours later, a short 31.8-kilometer journey that heralded the fury of human penetration. Less than three hundred years later, people who have entered the era of high-speed rail can easily experience a driving speed of 300 km / h. Compared with the successive thousands of years of human history, the evolution of civilization in the past few hundred years is really called "a great change that has not been seen in thousands of years".
Perhaps due to the long-term leadership in the previous stage of history, the people of our land and our people unfortunately fell behind at the beginning of industrialization, thus deriving a series of tragic events.
The west tide is moving eastward, and the people of the ancestors have the knowledge to pay tribute to the railway and the matter repeatedly.
In 1877, Guo Songtao wrote to Li Hongzhang lamenting: "Clocks and watches and toys are owned at home; the genus of woolen foreign cloth is all over the poor countryside and remote areas; the customs of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as for giving up the state's coins, but exclusively using foreign money, and the price is high, indifferent to those who are ignorant of their wrongs." When they heard of the construction of the railway telegraph, they were distraught and obstructed, and even saw foreigners and machines as public outrage..."
Li Hongzhang's letter to Guo Songtao said: "I have tried my best to meet gongdi, and the interests of the Railway have been extremely chen ... The canal means that the two palaces cannot determine this big plan... The gentry banned the foreigner machine, and finally could not let it go..."
However, the self-improvement movement of the late Qing Dynasty, although the results were bare, finally took the first step.
In 1912, Sun Yat-sen, who had left the provisional presidency of the Republic of China, met with Yuan Shikai, who was then the provisional president, in Beijing, and Sun Yat-sen said: "President Yuan is very talented, and he is extremely hopeful that he will be president for ten years, and he will be able to train millions of troops, and the railway he will run at that time will be 200,000 miles, and the income can be determined to be 80,000 yuan per year, and he can meet in various countries." Although the events were not harmonious, this incident still became one of the most symbolic events in China's modern history.