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 campaigned 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 "Burma-Sichuan Railway" thus died prematurely. This is Peng Jingfeng's latest (: documentary literary work), following his five full-length novels, three short story collections, two essay collections, and one biographical literary work. At the age of over 70, the writer Peng Jingfeng, by chance, discovered that the "Burma-Sichuan Railway," after more than 60 years of construction, had never been repaired 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 covered this topic. Driven by a sense of historical responsibility, he visited the former railway sites in over ten counties along both the eastern and western routes, searched for and questioned many people, and revised the manuscript 12 times. Using detailed materials, sincere emotions, and fluent writing, he wrote "A Painful Memory, a Tragic History of a Railway, a Great Project That Died in the Womb, and an Unforgettable Railway Affection," titled 《》. This book fills a gap in the modern history of Yunnan, leaving readers deeply moved and fostering patriotism!