Dian-Burma Railway Memorial

Author: Peng Jingfeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-05-01
Features: Unearthing History: A Tragic History of a Railway – Since the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, countless intellectuals had advocated for the construction of this railway. From winter 1938 to spring 1942, tens of thousands of engineering technicians and over 300,000 Yunnan laborers were involved in building the railway, which started in Kunming and extended to the China-Myanmar border. However, just as the tracks were about to be laid, Japanese invaders entered western Yunnan, forcing the laborers and technicians to shift from construction to demolition. The "Yunnan-Myanmar Railway" thus died prematurely. This is Peng Jingfeng's latest, following five full-length novels, three short story collections, two essay collections, and one biographical literary work. At the age of over seventy, the writer Peng Jingfeng, by chance, discovered that the "Yunnan-Myanmar Railway," after more than 60 years of construction, had never been restored due to complex historical reasons along the China-Myanmar border. The hard work of hundreds of thousands of people had long been forgotten, and until now, no publicly published article had described this subject. Driven by a sense of historical responsibility, he visited railway sites in over ten counties along both east and west routes, searched for and questioned many individuals, and revised the manuscript twelve times. With detailed materials, sincere emotions, and fluent writing, he created "A Painful Memory, a Tragic History of a Railway, an Aborted Great Project, and an Unforgettable Railway Affection," titled A Memorial to the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway. This work fills a gap in modern Yunnan history, leaving readers deeply moved and fostering patriotism!