When it comes to city landmarks, we think of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, Xiaomanyao in Guangzhou, and Jiefangbei in Chongqing. Can a two-story hut also become a city landmark?
This building is called the General Building. It is located in a park in Golmud, Qinghai. It has only two floors and is less than ten meters high. It is the first modern building in the history of Golmud. It was named in memory of General Mu Shengzhong who was working in the office at that time.
Why commemorate this general? It starts with the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and the construction of Golmud. Golmud is the largest county-level city in my country. It is located in Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province, with a total area of nearly 120,000 square kilometers. Golmud is a Mongolian transliteration, also known as Guolimao and Garmu, which means "a place with dense rivers". Although the history of human habitation can be traced back tens of thousands of years ago, until more than 60 years ago, it was still only a regional concept, and there was no city.
After Tibet was liberated, due to the fragility of the local natural economy and serious food shortages, the Central Committee ordered the Northwest Bureau to form a Tibet Transportation Corps to transport grain into Tibet to relieve the crisis. General Mu Shengzhong was the person in charge at that time. In 1953 and 1954, he organized two camel teams to transport grain. They walked 1,500 kilometers and lasted 54 days. Dozens of pack workers and 26,000 camels had to pay a heavy price to transport the grain to Tibet. He realized that relying on primitive transportation methods to complete the long-distance transportation task on the plateau was by no means a long-term solution, so he came up with the idea of building the Qinghai-Tibet Highway.
Therefore, after returning to Beijing, General Mu took the initiative to ask for the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway. After sending people to investigate the feasibility of the route, he reported to the central government again on the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway. Finally, he was signed and approved by the Prime Minister. On May 11, 1954 On the 1st, Mu Shengzhong led the road construction team reorganized by the Tibet Transportation Corps to start the construction of the Golmud-Lhasa section of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway in Golmud. A road-building army composed of 19 cadres and more than 1,200 migrant workers overcame many difficulties and repaired the road to Hoh Xil on July 30. On December 15, the road was repaired to Lhasa. So far, the Golmud-Lhasa section of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway has been fully opened, with a total length of 1,283 kilometers, which took 7 months and 4 days. Under such harsh conditions, it is really a miracle in the world that it was built so quickly.
What does this history have to do with this small building? Because there was no Golmud city at that time, in order to facilitate the construction and management of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, an office was built here, which is the two-story building in the picture above. It is not only the first building in Golmud, but also the The place where General Shengzhong lived and worked.
Stepping into the general building, what we saw were precious cultural relics used by General Mu and the others. On the wall were black and white photos reflecting the long time ago, as well as quotations from generals full of sonorous oaths. Through these simple objects and black-and-white photos, we can personally feel the difficult journey of the road-building army in the Kunlun Snow Mountain and the vast Gobi, and we can also truly understand the revolutionary feelings and great achievements of the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries.
In order to commemorate this great father of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, Golmud specially built the General Building Theme Park with the General Building as the core, and built a Tianlu Memorial Tower commemorating the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The height is 39.16 meters, implying two heavens. The sum of the mileage of the road (3916 kilometers), there are also sculptures commemorating General Mu Shengzhong in the park, the group sculpture "Loyal Soul of Road Construction" reflecting the hard work of the road construction army at that time, and the sculpture "Casting Swords into Plows" reflecting the military pioneering. The sculpture "Majestic Kunlun" reflecting Kunlun culture, and the sculpture "Harmony" reflecting national unity, etc.
Golmud was born and prospered because of roads, and now it has become the second largest city in Qinghai Province after Xining, the provincial capital, with criss-cross streets and row upon row of high-rise buildings. The General Building has also become a famous local patriotic education base. There are many tourists who come here to commemorate the old general who built the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
