If you deserve the help of the country, there will be poetry if you don't go to the border.
The mountains and rivers in the border of Yunnan, the scenery is born by the mountains, which is picturesque and stacked like a screen; The scenery is cloudy and mist, faint and moist like rain.
However, the verses that sway on the Red Clay Plateau are not only lyrical scenes. For many years, especially in modern history, there have been many times in which territory and homeland, dignity and suffering, watchfulness and hardship...Condensed into the deep and deep memories of thought, let the heavy history linger for a long time, and the passionate and desolate echo. Until the founding of the People's Republic of China, the five-star red flag fluttered high in the border pass, and between the overlapping shadows of time and space for decades, the spring breeze turned into rain, the mountains and rivers changed dramatically, and the beauty and wealth redefined this land
A soldier of a brigade of the Army in the Southern Theater looks out over the border.
Start with the "weirdness" of the Yunnan Railway.
When it comes to Yunnan, there are indispensable versions of "Yunnan 18 Monsters", and there is a "strange" called "trains do not pass through the country and abroad". This is a period of vicissitudes more than a hundred years ago, and those treacherous memories sealed in the cracks of history still make people feel indescribably embarrassed.
The construction of railways in Yunnan preceded the construction of roads. In 1910, when there was no inch of highway in the province, a railway about 466 kilometers long was opened in Yunnan. Almost at the same time, another railway "dotted line" through the Hengduan Mountains was neither groundbroken nor marked on the map of China, but it appeared on the map of the United Kingdom.
All history is traceable. If you open the border map, you will find that the direction of these two railways is that they both cross the Yunnan border to the mouth of two Southeast Asian countries, and these two neighboring countries have long been British and French colonies.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, groups of "explorers", "travelers" and "merchants" from all over the world poured into Yunnan, and the abundant products and abundant resources of the frontier became the target of their coveting.
First, the French forced the Qing to agree to their prerogative to build railways; Then the British used the "average power" as an excuse to coerce and induce at the negotiating table; Immediately afterwards, Germany and the United States put forward "investment" requirements, which are called "construction assistance"...No matter how you talk about it, in the end, you will always try to see the dagger: if you don't agree, "you will send a ship to do it again."
Before the talks, they had already unscrupulously begun to survey the border areas of western and southern Yunnan. They have a huge number of people.
10. Nearly 100 horses, wherever they go, mineral resources, geological rivers, forest distribution, economic conditions, etc., are all in its "exploration", and draw a route plan and longitudinal map.
It stands to reason that the railway is the symbol of modern industrial civilization, and Sun Yat-sen described it as "the mother of civilization and the source of wealth". The railway plan to cross Yunnan and directly reach the coastal seaports of Southeast Asia was clearly conceived by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in his "Strategy for the Founding of the People's Republic of China".
But when the railway was opened, the local people were not happy. On April 1, 1910, a French steam locomotive roared into Kunming. Not only were the local people shocked by this "steel monster," but even the students of the Yunnan Lecture Martial Arts Hall who had received education in new knowledge and were "a place to study martial arts for those who led troops to the frontier defense," "there were also those who cried loudly," and some people pulled the trigger of their guns on the locomotive.
The unbearable dilemma of "borderless defense".
Qingshan reviewed the plate layer by layer, panting back and forth and his legs trembled. This is the description of the mountain road by the people of all ethnic groups in the mountains. The Ailao Mountains, Wuliang Mountains, and Nushan Mountains in the Yunnan Frontier have carved this rich and magical land into a dangerous place.
The "Mengman Ancient Road", "Mayuan Ancient Road", "Tea Horse Ancient Road", "Yunnan-Yue Ancient Road" that generations have stepped on with their footsteps...The ancient roads that crisscross and are all just passages for a single horse; Even the official road "Five Feet Road", which began in the Qin and Han dynasties, is only five feet wide, less than two meters.
The beautiful is the mountain, the dangerous is the mountain, and the difficult is also the mountain. If you have been walking on the thousand-year-old post road, the closed frontier will never be able to get out of the predicament of poverty and backwardness. There is no doubt that we need roads to strengthen innovation, and we also need to introduce advanced technology to build roads. However, the great powers will build roads and roads, as a rope for our nation and a straw to devour our blood.
The French colonizers made no secret of the fact that they gave priority to the purpose of building railways - the right attached to the railways, so that China could be "divided up and not known"; In his report to the country's parliament, the French "traveler" Gudelmont was even more explicit: "When the Yunnan Railway is completed, it will sweep through Yunnan like a bag to get something." ”
Military historians have verified that in the art of war in the early years of Europe, there was no expression such as "soldiers and horses have not moved, grain and grass go first". European soldiers in the Middle Ages went out to fight, basically carrying some salted meat and cheese, and the supply method of "walking all the way and grabbing all the way" has long been Xi.
They brought this "convention" to the Yunnan frontier. They relied on the strength of their ships and their guns, and nakedly wrote the word "plunder" into all treaties and contracts, from territory to resources, from economy to defense, from finance to commerceThe greed of his appetite and the ugliness of his eating made the ** in charge of the negotiation of related affairs in the Qing Dynasty sigh helplessly: "There is a shame between resignation and giving." ”
In 1903, in the "Regulations of the Sino-French Yunnan-Vietnam Railway" signed under the French gun, the right to operate the railway and its income had nothing to do with China for 80 years; The land on both sides of the railway and around the station was owned by the colonists; Railway management does not hire Chinese....In short, the Chinese must not be questioned about the railways that have been built on China's borders.
As soon as the British colonists saw the red eyes, and the French seized the Red River valley in southern Yunnan, they extended their hands to the Nu River valley in western Yunnan. Without saying hello, he organized the "Yunnan Railway Company" and even set up a "British Consulate General in Yunnan" in the provincial capital, whose main business was to build the "Yunnan-Burma Railway."
In the eyes of the British, who saw themselves as conquerors, there was no sovereign territory for the vanquished. In 1905, after they completed the surveying and mapping according to their own plan, they did not inform the Qing ** at all, and unscrupulously marked the "dotted line" of the Yunnan-Burma Railway on the map published by the British.
Later, due to the resistance of the people of all ethnic groups along the way, and the fact that the Qing Dynasty was about to collapse in the revolutionary tide, the "Yunnan-Burma Railway" was shelved. The "dotted line" that the British talk about themselves has become a shame marked on the map.
Building a railway is just a false shot, but the real gold in the bag can be scavenged, but it is not "empty". The Chinese government raised about one million taels of silver for the construction of the railway, and with the withdrawal of the British, not a penny was left behind. This plundering has undoubtedly made the already economically backward frontier even worse.
Although Yunnan is despicable, and the size is not owned by the state, it can not bear to sit idly by and watch it be lost. The Yunnan gentry generously and indignantly called the Qing **, calling for "strong resistance to foreign humiliation". However, the colonizers were not only profiteers, but also ambitious invaders.
While they are squeezing maximum profits, they have an even more sinister strategic purpose, which is to deprive our country of defense. However, the old China, which was "borderless and defenseless," could not be "powerful" at all. As a Yunnan poet wrote: "The steam engine crushes the shame of a nation." ”
Both roads are ruined".
The Primer on the Border, published by Oxford University, describes it this way: "Maps are made according to power relations, and borders are scars, visible histories of violence." ”
These two histories about the earliest railways in Yunnan are like two "scars" on the Yunnan frontier. However, with the evolution of history, these two "scars" will once again burst out of blood and accept a new round of sword sharpening.
In 1939, World War II broke out, and the bullying French colonists encountered even more powerful "bandits"—in Europe themselves, they fell to the German fascists; In Southeast Asia, they surrendered the management of the railways under the coercion of the Japanese fascists. The gates of the Great Rear of China then opened.
In the face of the crisis of white-knuckle pressing, China finally took action to implement military control on the railway. As a result, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway has become the only international railway transportation line for international aid to China.
The Japanese invaders saw it as a thorn in their side. In 1939 alone, by virtue of air superiority, nearly 700 sorties were dispatched to carry out indiscriminate bombing of railways. Our people paid great sacrifices for this to ensure the smooth flow of the railway, which became a meritorious channel in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War.
However, with the complete retreat of the French, the Japanese army under the city intensified its attack on Yunnan, and attempted to use the railway as a springboard to invade our country from the rear. In the midst of the crisis, only the strong man broke his wrist - the railway bridges and important tunnels in Yunnan were all blown up by the Chinese side, and nearly 200 kilometers of railroad tracks were dismantled.
Rail traffic was cut off, and the mountains formed a natural barrier. In the end, the soldiers and civilians of the Yunnan frontier resisted the enemy outside the country and stubbornly defended the southern gate of China's rear. In 1945, the Japanese surrendered.
According to the Potsdam resolution, the Japanese invading army surrendered to the squadron at the head of the railway bridge. It is said that the Japanese generals sighed when they were surrendered: "I finally set foot on the end of the railway, but I came to suffer the humiliation of the defeated army..."”
Compared with the feat of destroying roads in southern Yunnan to protect the country, the story of building roads in western Yunnan first and then destroying roads is a thrilling historical tragedy.
The route chosen by the Yunnan-Burma Railway is known as the "golden gap" between the mainland and South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. In the appeal of people of insight, in 1938, the Yunnan-Burma Railway was planned to be restarted and started again.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, large swathes of the country were lost, and many important transportation lines also fell into the hands of the enemy, and China's wartime economy was in danger of being pinned down and strangled. At this time, the strategic channel value of the Yunnan-Burma Railway was highlighted, and the construction project began to speed up - the original engineering bureau of Yunnan Province was upgraded to the "Office of the Ministry of Communications"; Dozens of well-known railway experts took the initiative to ask for orders and rushed to the frontier from home and abroad; The $10 million "Yunnan-Burma Railway Public Bond" became a "patriotic **".
The most impressive thing is the more than 200,000 migrant workers and 80,000 railway employees who have been urgently recruited. The economy of the Yunnan border region was already stretched, and since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there have been more than a dozen armies on the front line of the border alone, and they have already emptied their families by "conscripting troops, grain, mules and horses." Therefore, in order to ensure the number of migrant workers, even county ** public officials are also recruited.
Difficulties are difficulties, but the country is in difficulty, so how can we not go. The industrious and simple people of all ethnic groups in the frontier applied for the draft and paid great sacrifices. According to statistics, due to landslides, floods, illness and fatigue, there are 100,000 migrant workers.
Although next to the blade, the people and horses are boiling, and they are not willing to wrap their feet. By the spring of 1942, the earthwork of the Yunnan-Burma Railway had stretched for more than 800 kilometers in the mountains, about half of which had begun to lay tracks, and the bridges, tunnels and stations along the way had been completed. After listening to the report of the US ambassador to China, Roosevelt also exclaimed: It is comparable to the "Panama Canal".
It's a pity that the tragedy repeats itself again - in 1942, the Anglo-Indian coalition and the squadron suffered a crushing defeat on the battlefield in Burma, and the Japanese army pursued all the way into China, making the war that was still thousands of miles away burned to western Yunnan in a few months.
When I woke up, the vanguard of the Japanese army had reached a distance of more than 100 kilometers from the railway. The joy of accomplishing a great job instantly turned into the fear of the enemy taking advantage of the road to attack. In the past few days, more than 40 urgent telegrams were sent from Chongqing, the content of which was the word "bombing" -- a restriction on the destruction of tracks, roadbeds, bridges, and tunnels within one month.
Amid the sound of explosions, within a month, only more than 100 kilometers of the 800-kilometer Yunnan-Burma Railway was left from Kunming, and all the rest collapsed among the canyons and rushing rivers.
The sad bowels have been broken, and the hanging eyes should be worn. Railway experts and migrant workers were stunned - years of hard work, how many hardships, and the sweat and blood shed were wasted like this? In the rainy season, the surging rivers and everyone's weeping are intertwined, which can be described as the misfortune of the country and the nation.
In the darkness of the night, the fighters were on patrol.
Officers and soldiers of the Jinji Mountain outpost prune fruit trees.
Steel gun Yongzhi, stick to the road of happiness for all generations.
The old appearance of mountains and rivers has been renewed. In the decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the once "remote and barren land" of Yunnan has long been rid of poverty, and it has become colorful and charming.
The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, which was in an old state, and the Yunnan-Burma Railway, which was destroyed in the war, have long been "cultural heritage". With the construction of the "bridgehead" and the formation of a comprehensive opening pattern along the border, the "big channel" facing South Asia and Southeast Asia has been fully put into construction, especially the implementation of the great concept of the "Belt and Road", so that the border Yunnan has stepped into the era of high-speed rail from the "meter-gauge steam locomotive" to the era of high-speed rail, and has 7 high-speed railways and 8 inter-provincial railway lines, including the "most beautiful railway Yunnan-Tibet line".
The most touching thing is the border railway, which has gone through hardships.
Let's look at today's Yunnan frontier, which extends 5 outbound railways. There is a very modern model of "Lancang-Mekong Express + cross-border e-commerce"; There is a large channel of China-Laos Railway + China-Europe Railway that spans thousands of miles; There is the highest in China and the 7th in the world, with a length of 35 kilometers of Gaoligongshan Railway Tunnel
The vastness is endless, and the sails are the trade winds. "Back then, the colonizers used railroad artillery to break down our gates, plunder my resources, and squeeze my wealth. Today, China's railways are traveling thousands of miles at the majestic gate of the country and the mighty and majestic passes, and China's high-speed railways are galloping, telling a new story of the country's wealth and border strength, and the country's strength and people's prosperity.
The existence and development of railways are inherently closely linked to national defense. As far as the eye can see, there are horse sentry posts, firearms battalions, cantonment posts...The names of each station are themselves a history of the border and the railway. Yunnan is densely packed with mountains, forests and rivers, and the tunnels and bridges on each railway line are almost stacked on top of each other, so protecting their safety and smoothness has become an important responsibility of the armed police and border guards; The militia of all ethnic groups are even more mindful of their family and country, regard the railway line as a lifeline, stand guard in the wind and rain, and hundreds of sentry posts are as strong as steel nails, so that the railway is "stronger than the mountain and smoother than the river."
A border guard is training.
When we were the "pioneers" in the construction of the railway, there was not even a place for a tent on the steep cliff, but our border guards "connected the rails with their bodies and laid sleepers with their bodies" to build China's steel road with their steel bodies. Xiong Hanjun, an 18-year-old soldier, died in the construction of the railway bridge, and his comrades buried him next to the bridge pier. Since then, every train passing by has to honk for 18 seconds, and Yunling Plateau will always remember this "forever 18-year-old" soldier.
Guan Guohua's father was an old railway soldier who became famous in the Baihushan Tunnel, which opened more than 2,300 meters; 10 years later, Guan Guohua became a member of the female militia squad, standing guard in the Baihushan Tunnel, patrolling the tunnel bridge with big braids; Today, her children were admitted to the Railway Institute, and the modern railway construction has a "new era of people".
The border railway has been running all the way, and you can see the practice of winning battles everywhere. A unit is conducting railway loading training to improve delivery capacity; A certain unit has just completed a program for transporting new and veterans, which is a part of the military-civilian joint training; A certain unit carried out party history and military history education in the "railway site", and the young soldiers listened to the past that was not as good as smoke, and fell into deep thought...
From the No. 102 boundary monument of the China-Vietnam Railway Bridge to the No. 105 boundary monument of the mountainside border railway station, the railway companion boundary monument is just 10 kilometers. There are border passages and border crossings on the road. During the interview, I followed the soldiers along the road to investigate, and the hot wind blowing in the banana forest at the border gate and the whistle of the international train filled my ears.
In this situation, the pride of being a border guard spontaneously arises, and a couplet at the gate of a certain border guard battalion also pours into my eyes at this time
The railway is the string, plucking the century-old history;
Steel gun Yongzhi, stick to the road of happiness for all generations. (Zheng Shuyan).
*:China**Net-People's Liberation Army Daily.