Chapter 649: Shu Road is Difficult
The heavy snow fell more than a foot thick. The sky and the earth were foggy. I walked along the railway construction site for more than 40 kilometers, and only heard the roar of various machines, but I could not see the figures or the work stations.
As soon as I entered Lingguan Gorge, I felt panicked. This mountain gorge, on sunny days, does not see the sun all day long; walk along the curved transportation lane, and whenever you look up, you can only see a piece of sky as big as a palm.
At present, the strong wind of snow is rolling around here, surrounded by people, and it is really hard to move forward!
However, work here has been very stressful recently, and people are working everywhere in the wind and snow.
Generators, hoists, concrete mixers and air compressors, shock valleys.
The dim fireballs are the countless electric lights. They can't see the wires like spider webs in the sky; they can't see the iron buckets carrying materials running back and forth along the elevated cableway mounted on the mountainside.
Yuwen Wen opened his eyes, took back his thoughts, and looked at the information on the case in front of him.
These materials are information about the railway from Luoyi to Chengdu. Although it is just a summary, it is still very thick. Yu Wenwen looked at the information and the terrain described in the information, and couldn't help but think of a text he had learned.
"Walking in Lingguan Gorge at Night".
The text "Walking in Lingguan Gorge at Night" always leaves a place in his memory, not because he is eager to learn, but because in that era, his elders and the Baocheng Railway had intersections.
In the 1950s, the construction of the Bao (Baoji) Cheng (Chengdu) Railway started. Countless workers fought between the mountains and ridges, and built this railway that crossed mountains and ridges with their blood and sweat, making the "difficulty of Shu Road" a history.
This is a great project. One of his elders was born on the construction site of Baocheng Railway, so the word "Baocheng" is in his name.
In the text "Walking in Lingguan Gorge at Night", "I" met a seven or eight-year-old guy at the Lingguan Gorge construction site of Baocheng Railway (rest dormitory). His sister was born on the construction site and her name was "Baocheng".
It is precisely because of this origin that he was deeply impressed by the text "Walking in Lingguan Gorge at Night". Now, when this railway "started construction again", he really made him feel deeply moved.
Baoji is now Luoyi and Chengdu, Qizhou, and it is still the Chengdu whose name remains unchanged for thousands of years. The route, due to the terrain limitations, is basically the route, and the project difficulty will never be low.
The Baocheng Railway in history seems to have been built for four years, but now it will take three years to complete.
The construction period is so fixed, not because Yu Wen Wen is arrogant, but because the times are different: in order to build railways, slave labor can be used on a large scale.
The slaves captured by countless slave-capturing teams were used on the construction site of the Longyou Railway (Lanqian Railway). It is precisely because of these labor forces that the construction progress of the Longyou Railway was guaranteed.
Now, the railway from Luoyi to Chengdu also needs to use a large amount of slave labor. When the railway is completed, the slave laborers who are still alive will obtain civilian status according to the rules.
Yuwen Wen drank a cup of tea, looked at the railway entering Shu in the route map, and remembered Li Bai's "The Road to Shu is Difficult".
The road to Shu is as difficult as climbing to the blue sky.
However, to make the road to Shu completely turn into history, it is not enough to have determination alone, and it has to pay a price.
If you want to get it, you have to make a contribution. If you want the railway to be built quickly, you have to fill your lives, otherwise the railway will be transformed out of thin air?
Filling the lives of the people will only bring chaos in the world. Then filling the lives of slave labor will have relatively fewer side effects, but infamy is inevitable.
Yuwen Wen felt that as a ruling person, he should have the courage and determination to take responsibility. He made up his mind to completely open up the Shu Road and let the trains be connected to Shu and Guanzhong. The earlier the better.
Therefore, you cannot let your son or grandson bear the infamous that may be present in the future. It is enough for him to bear these infamous.
So, what are the infamy that may be?
Yuwen Wen came up with a sentence: Every sleeper on this railway represents a life.
This is not a random thought of Yuwen Wen, but a basis: in the middle of the 19th century, when America was overhauling the railway, a writer lamented that "under every sleeper of the railway, there was an Irish worker's body lying across the body."
When Amelia was overhauling the railway, the fate of the Irish workers in the road construction was tragic, but the fate was even more tragic by the Chinese workers.
Chinese workers are more diligent and more efficient than Irish workers. They can work for twelve hours a day and have low requirements for diet. They sleep in a tent at night, and still work with them the next day.
The Pacific Railway in America extends westward from the central part, with a total distance of more than 3,000 kilometers, spans the mountains and ridges of the Rocky Mountains and a large Gobi desert. It is planned to be completed in fourteen years.
This is still the completion time planned for the construction at the east and west ends, but because the labor force is not strong and the construction period is greatly delayed, so the Chinese workers were introduced.
Chinese workers were hardworking and greatly accelerated the construction progress of the railway. In the later stage of the project, it was said that Chinese workers accounted for more than 80% of the total number of workers.
The construction progress of the railway has been greatly accelerated, and when the Pacific Railway is completed, it is more than half ahead of the planned time.
But the price is that Chinese workers suffer heavy casualties, which is equivalent to every time they lay a sleeper, one Chinese workers will sacrifice their lives.
However, the sacrifices and contributions of Chinese workers were not mentioned in a single word of the congratulations from all walks of life at the opening ceremony.
Celebrities from all walks of life took a train to drive on the steep cliff section, and were amazed at the sight of being shuttled through the clouds, but no one told them who built the road.
In the speech at the celebration meeting, the host praised this railway that can be called a world miracle project. Thank you for your thanks, but no word mentioned the contribution of Chinese workers.
No one attributed the early completion and opening of the Pacific Railway to the hard work of Chinese workers. People may have heard of the tragic experiences of Irish workers, but they have never heard of the even more tragic experiences of Chinese workers.
Why is this happening?
Thousands of words are summed up in one sentence: If you fall behind, you will be beaten.
If you fall behind, you will be beaten. The only six words contain the blood and tears of humiliation for a hundred years, so Yuwen Wen has always kept it in mind.
The current situation of the difficulty of Shu Road must be completely reversed, and the railway to Shu must be available. The sooner it is built, the better. So, what is the mere reputation?
When the railway is opened to Chengdu, even if Tubo becomes larger in the future, expands southward on a large scale, and invades Shu, it will be defeated by the defenders of Shu, supported by railway transportation lines;
When a railway is opened between Chengdu and Kunming, even if Nanzhao appears in the future, facing the Nanzhong defenders supported by railway transportation lines, they will not cause any major storms, and the same is true for the Qianzhong area;
When Kunming and Jiaozhou Long built a railway, Jiaozhou would no longer be separated from the Central Plains. Anyone who dared to cause trouble would face the sea and land attacks from the imperial army and enter a desperate situation.
Therefore, no matter how difficult the road to Shu is, it must be overcome. No matter how difficult the railway to Shu is, it must be repaired.
Yuwen Weng Youshi had a preliminary estimate that the railway from Chang'an to Chengdu and Kunming had a mileage of at least 6,000 miles, and it would take about several decades to complete it in stages.
However, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and he will walk the most difficult part of the road at the beginning.
Thinking of this, Yuwen Wen continued to read the information, and the railway bridge design drawings and the road maps of Panshan Railway were vividly displayed on paper.
It seemed as if the construction site of the railway entering Shu was right in front of him.
A young child's voice echoes in his ears:
Chapter completed!