This article was published on FT Chinese Network. (The author's public name "Miaotang Jianghu" recently published "Understanding Macroeconomics". This article is one of his series of travel notes "South of Colorful Clouds")
Bisezhai is the filming location of "Youth". But Bisezhai has far more connotations than "Fang Hua". I went up to the hillside of Bisezhai, and there was a vast farmland and lake in front of me. It was clear water and blue sky, and the scenery was pleasant. It turns out that this place was not called Bisezhai at first, but it was called "Poxin" according to the custom of Chinese aborigines. Later, a Frenchman came here and saw the scenery of the mountains and the sea, so he named it "Bise Village". Therefore, there are far more French elements in Bisezhai than Chinese elements.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, China's door had been pried open by the great powers. Foreigners traveled thousands of miles to China to build railways and develop resources. Yunnan was originally a small corner in the middle of nowhere. It is not the frontier of reform and opening up in China's territory, but it is often the border where the imperial court exiles imperial convicts. But the power of technology has played a magical role here. After the French won the right to build the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, the rear team became the front team, and Yunnan suddenly became China's gateway to the West.
When Chinese people write history now, they often emphasize that the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway is the blood and sweat of Chinese laborers, and say that there are several Chinese workers buried under every meter of sleepers. With the technology and labor protection conditions at that time, I fully believe in the lives and sweat of the working people in China. But this kind of propaganda hides a very economical problem and misleads people today: If the construction conditions of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway are so difficult, why do Chinese workers voluntarily work for foreigners? The only logic is that maybe if these Chinese workers don't build railways for foreigners, their living conditions will be even worse! Thinking about it, it was in the borderlands of Yunnan in the late Qing Dynasty. The so-called land was not three feet flat, agricultural production was extremely underdeveloped, and people’s lives were very difficult. It should be a reasonable inference. The average level of the labor market, otherwise how could these Chinese people be willing to risk their lives to build railways?
Today, one hundred years later, the Chinese have high-speed rail technology in their hands and export it to the world. There is a joke about our Chinese head of state visiting the UK: The Queen of England asked the minister, what are the foreigners doing here? The minister replied: Help us build the railway! This kind of result is the result of hard work of generations of Chinese people over the past 100 years, and this kind of learning started from the moment the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was built.
In 1910, the entire line of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was opened to traffic, and in 1913, the construction of the Ge (Gejiu) Bi Railway began. This Gebi Railway is the first private railway in Chinese history. It was the wealthy local businessmen in Yunnan who saw the huge profits brought by the railway. At the same time, in order to compete with foreigners for the railway market share, they built a branch railway. The purpose was to sell the Gejiu tin mine and other resources to the international market. However, perhaps because the merchants did not have enough economic strength, the Gejiu Railway was repaired with a "inch gauge" with a gauge of only 60 centimeters, so the speed of the train was very slow. The "Trains are not as fast as cars" mentioned in the Eighteen Monsters of Yunnan should refer to this narrow-gauge private railway; while "the trains do not connect domestically to foreign countries" refers to the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. These two monsters can be said to vividly depict the historical scene of a backward agricultural country being forced to open its doors and strive to catch up. From the perspective of economic growth, the absorption of foreign capital and the introduction of advanced technology are often combined. Blindly rejecting foreign capital, thinking that the entry of foreign capital represents the loss of the country's interests, is actually a zero-sum game thinking that does not conform to the market economy. win-win fact. As for the recognition of this fact, we will not be able to truly understand it until almost a hundred years later during the reform and opening up.
In any case, the Gebi Railway opened to traffic in 1921. In this way, Bisezhai became the meeting point of the two railways. It suddenly became the role of the largest station along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. All kinds of resources waiting to be transported abroad, such as tin, fur and rice, filled the warehouses, the whistle of the train, and the porters' horns kept going day and night, and businessmen from France, Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan came one after another, Foreign firms, restaurants, department stores, and post offices were set up here. More than 40 pairs of trains stop here every day, pulling people to load goods, washing cars and adding water. Its degree of openness and prosperity is second to none in southern Yunnan, and Kunming and Vietnamese enviously call it Little Paris.
The current Bisezhai Station basically preserves its original appearance. The entire station was undergoing protective renovations when I arrived. Girls like the old French style. On the train station platform, under the old French clock, various shapes are recessed, directing the accompanying royal photographer to take pictures of their most satisfying moments; children are very fond of being able to climb on the railway tracks Climbing up and down without any danger is more interesting; many adults are holding the hand of their children, walking one high and one low among the winding railroad tracks stretching into the distance. Looking from the back, it is a good picture. (The author's public name "Miaotang Jianghu" recently published "Understanding Macroeconomics". This article is one of his series of travel notes "South of Colorful Clouds")