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The friendship rails

By Liu Haile: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China Pictorial, September 27, 2011

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One deserted sleeper train at the platform at Dar es Salaam railway station [Maverick / China.org.cn]

From the platform, I saw several old deserted trains resting on the tracks. Every tie on the track preserved a nameplate that read "Made in the P.R. China." The platform resembled those in China’s remote areas except that it was more deserted and empty.

The square in front of Dar es Salaam Railway Station features a monument commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway. Erected on July 19, 2001, the monument is actually part of a Chinese-made locomotive carriage with the trademark "Dongfanghong" and a nameplate with Chinese characters that reads "Made by Sifang Locomotive Factory, P.R. China, in 1973." Although simple and archaic, the monument inspires nostalgia for past decades.

In the 1960s, leaders from Tanzania and Zambia asked Western countries to help them build a railway to link the two countries so that Zambia-produced copper could conveniently reach the Indian Ocean, but their pleas were rejected several times. Finally, they turned to China for help. Although China itself was underdeveloped at that time, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai agreed to lend a hand.

Construction of the railway lasted nearly a decade, from 1967 to 1976, during which time the Chinese government provided an interest-free loan of 988 million yuan, nearly 1 million tons of materials and equipment, and nearly 50,000 engineers and technicians. At the zenith of the project, more than 16,000 Chinese builders worked at the construction site. Also, dozens of Chinese workers actually sacrificed their lives for the project.

After its completion, the railway became a major artery linking eastern, central and southern Africa and played a significant role in accelerating economic and social advances in the region.

After years of research on the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, Jaime Monzon, an American Africa historian, asserted that local residents wisely developed a "roadside market economy" along the line that helped them rise out of poverty, and such a benefit was even unexpected by the original designers and builders.

Statistics show that per capita daily disposable living expenditure of local residents already surpasses one US dollar.

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