2003-10-02 15:50:54 Xinhua 『Article content sent by MMS』
24 kilometers west of Tanzania's capital, Dar-es-Salaam, there is a graveyard of Chinese relatives in the exotic green mountains, where Chinese specialists who sacrificed their lives for the construction of the Tanzan Railway rest in peace. Here. During the month of interview here, the reporter has been there three times to pay homage. Each time, the sky was shrouded in heavy overcast clouds, which made people a bit breathless. On the last occasion, when we were about to leave the cemetery, it was pouring with rain - strangely, in the dry season of Tanzania, which is hot and has little rain, the weather has suddenly become like a sob.
Loyal bones buried in foreign mountains
"There were 64 workers who died assisting the Tanzanian-Zambian Railway in one ****, and another one died on a ship sailing from China to Tanzania, so it was actually 65 in one ****. There are 47 here and another 17 in Zambia." Zhou Wenying, the interpreter of the Tanzanian Railway's Chinese expert group who led us here, told us. The whole cemetery is about the size of three basketball courts, surrounded by a 1-meter-high brick wall. In the corner of the cemetery, we found several cows grazing leisurely. The Tanzanian government has provided special guards for the cemetery, and the grass in the cemetery is lush - it seems that no one has come to tidy it up for a long time. In the center of the cemetery, dozens of white-painted cement tombstones stand neatly and serenely - only about 50 centimeters high, but proudly pointing to the sky. Some of the tombstones still had wreaths in front of them - although they had been stripped of their luster by the sun and the wind and rain, they still showed the thoughts of their loved ones from afar. I do not know who left a rose in front of a tombstone, the petals have faded, slightly shaking in the wind, the sadness spread all over the cemetery at the same time also seems to take us back to more than 30 years ago that era full of glory and dreams.
Hard environment and life
Why did they come all the way to this foreign land? That seems to be the source of all the stories, and to trace it we must go back to 1965. On Feb. 17 of that year, China welcomed Tanzanian President Nyerere. Nyerere and Zambian President Kaunda were eager to build a railroad between the two countries so that the newly independent and landlocked Zambia could ship its own copper ore overseas without having to go through Western-controlled Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), and Nyerere wanted a railroad to bring minerals out of southern Tanzania and develop the economy. Nyerere looked to the West and the Soviet Union for help, but both were rebuffed - no one seemed willing to spend the enormous effort and money on a railroad that would be difficult to build and would bring little benefit. So Nyerere approached the Chinese government with an attitude of trying. To Nyerere's surprise, when he tentatively asked Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou for assistance in the construction of the Tanzanian Railway, he received a generous agreement.
In 1968, the first batch of Chinese engineers arrived in Dar es Salaam to start the survey work. In order to complete the survey mission, the surveyors have to use their feet step by step to the railroad will pass through the route at least three times: the total length of the Tanzanian Railway is 1860.5 kilometers, which means that the surveyors in April 1968 to June 1970 two years in the African savannah and the primitive forest at least 5,581.5 kilometers. Full of wild animals, mosquitoes and diseases, the African primeval forest was once known as the green desert, which in the long history, blocked the African culture and advanced technology exchanges, now, the Chinese surveyors but with the "green mountains people have not yet old, this side of the scenery is unique," the boldness of the air from here to traverse. "Sparsely populated, with many wild animals, and malaria is prevalent. There is a tsetse fly that bites a person and they fall asleep and never wake up. There was also a small worm that sucked blood from one's pores." The past is still clear in Lao Zhou's mind: "At that time, soy sauce was a luxury; we ate soy sauce paste, mixed with water, and eating fresh vegetables once was like New Year's Eve. There was also little water available for drinking, all stagnant pools, the color of the water was milky white, boiled and drank still diluted."
It took people who had built the Great Wall to build a railroad like this
On October 26, 1970, tens of thousands of Chinese road builders came to Tanzania and kicked off the construction of the Tanzanian Railway with local workers, who faced the same hardships as the surveyors. "This place is very hot in the hot season, and some drivers who drive construction machinery sit on chairs for a long time, and the lower part of their bodies even vesicose due to the heat and sweating. But that's how it was, and it was very hard for them to stay out of the line of fire in order to meet the deadline." Du Jian, the current head of the Chinese expert group for the Tanzanian Railway who arrived in Tanzania in the late 1960s, told us, "Many of the places where the railroad passes through are swampy. At that time, we Chinese, road builders and technical workers, were really not afraid of suffering and death, and we were as close to the local workers as family. When we came across a rotten mud puddle we all jumped in together, and we didn't think about such and such diseases." Just as Chinese experts and technicians encountered the cold reality of Africa, an air of skepticism and ridicule began to fill the world - those countries that had once refused to build railroads for Tanzania and Zambia began to express strong skepticism about China's ability to build the Tanzanian Railway, as well as speculation about China's motives for aiding Africa. To their surprise, on October 23, 1975, the Tanzanian Railway was completed a year ahead of schedule and began trial runs and operations, and on July 14, 1976, a handover ceremony was held for the entire line. It is still an exciting moment to recall. "We had a feeling of victory. We not only overcame natural difficulties, but also the slanderous words of some people, and finally built this railroad. At that time we felt proud to be a Chinese." Speaking here, a smile appeared on Lao Zhou's face. Lao Zhou also told us that a western engineer was overwhelmed with emotion after visiting the railroad, especially the difficult sections like the Mumma section. He said that the Chinese people are amazing and only those who have built the Great Wall can build such a high-quality railroad.
Along the railroad, the Chinese also built stations, locomotive factories, office buildings and other ancillary facilities for Tanzanian and Zanzibar countries free of charge, and assisted locomotives and repair equipment. It was the largest development assistance project provided by a single country in the world at the time, but the Chinese brought much, much more. "The role of this railroad was very big, and people still think about its role and significance until now; it was a very big project, and we learned a lot from it." The Tanzanian Branch Chief of the Tanzanian Railway Authority told us.
Everything here comes from China
Daniel, a driver for the Chinese expert team on the Tanzanian Railway, confirms the words of Director Nari Tolera: it was then that Daniel learned to drive an excavator and a car in the tunneling team of the Tanzanian Railway, and after the project was over he joined the Tanzanian Railway Authority, where he has been driving for the Chinese experts. "The best thing I learned working with the Chinese was to stick together and help each other. The Chinese are the best, we have meals together." Daniel, who is able to converse in simple Chinese, even sang for us the song of the time: "Determined, not afraid of sacrifice, remove all difficulties ......" The imprint of China is thus forever branded in the hearts of these foreign people.
China's mark has also been left on the vast land of Africa: the sleepers inscribed with the words "made by the Chinese people*** and the country" have been stretching from Dar es Salaam to Zambia. Walking through the Dar es Salaam train station, you will feel a sense of familiarity: not only the architectural style of the building, but also the look of the windows, the doors, and even the asbestos tiles on both sides of the platforms and the concrete block floors have a Chinese flavor - everything here comes from China, down to the smallest screw. You can hardly imagine that two countries that had virtually no contact with each other before the 1960s would suddenly burst into such deep affection in a flash, so much so that one country, while still struggling on its own, gratuitously provided the other with more than a billion yuan in funding and equipment, as well as the tombstones on that stretch of green hills.
Nearly 30 years on, everything at Dar es Salaam station is as good as new, with not even a tiny crack in the neat walls, and the Dongfanghong train, built in 1975, still running well. Three trains a week now leave Dar es Salaam for Zambia. The carriages of the train are unusually crowded, even the toilets and restrooms are packed with passengers. For most ordinary Tanzanians, the Tanzanian Railway is still their first choice to reach southern Tanzania as well as Zambia. However, embarrassingly, even though it is the only train on this railroad, it is still often late, and the train we were on was 40 minutes late from departure. It is said that on certain sections of the line, the train will also stop, and travelers are forced to walk a long way forward with their luggage to take the train waiting in front of them. "We should invite the Chinese back" "This railroad is badly managed and often unpunctual." A Zambian steward said to us, shaking his head. However, being late is just the tip of the iceberg of the Tanzanian Railway's problems: in fact, from the day it started to open, the Tanzanian Railway has been seriously under-utilized, and has never even reached its designed capacity of 2 million tons per year. "The highest capacity of the Tanzam Railway was in the second financial year after the handover of the railroad, when more than 1,270,000 tons were transported, and this record has not been broken yet." Team Leader Du Jian told us. Since the 1980s, the volume of the Tanzanian Railway has been declining, from 1 million tons a year in the 1980s to 600,000 or 700,000 tons in the 1990s. Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in the world, also does not have the financial resources to continue to invest in the Tanzanian Railway. Another aspect of the problem is that Tanzanian railroad's long line is burdened with too much pressure: the Tanzanian Railway Authority is a huge state-run enterprise, which not only has to pay for the health care and welfare of tens of thousands of staff members, but also has to provide a huge amount of money for the education of each staff member's children. One staff member told us that it is sometimes difficult to meet some of the top managers in the office, as they are always traveling, because "the travel allowance is up to $150 per day". Today, more than 20 years after its official opening, the Tanzanian Railway has reached a crossroads - it is becoming a huge burden and no longer a symbol of pride. Commissioner Nari Tolera says he welcomes the Chinese government's continued financial and technical guidance to the railroad. And a passenger we met on the train put it more bluntly, "After the Chinese pulled out, this railroad has been very poorly managed, and we should bring the Chinese back because the Chinese are very good, they are the ones who built this railroad back then, they know this railroad very well, they know how to do it, and the Chinese are very friendly, they are sincere to people, they have talent , know the technology." (Reporter Fei Maohua Shi Peng Bi Jianzhong)