Steam engines came into being during the Industrial Revolution, and steam locomotives that could run on tracks came into being.
Railway transportation is a land transportation method in which locomotives pull trains and vehicles on two parallel rails. Now, China's railways are very developed, especially high-speed railways, which can go abroad and become a banner of Made in China. However, when railways first appeared in China, they caused a lot of controversy. By the end of 2019, China's railway operating mileage will reach more than 139,000 kilometers, ranking first in the world.
In 1876, the British company Jardine Matheson built a light railway between Zhabei and Wusongkou in Shanghai, China. This was the first railway in Chinese history. However, this railway was quickly demolished. The Qing government believed that the location of this railway was too important (second only to the Gyeonggi region), so it purchased the railway from the British for a large sum of money and quickly destroyed it.
However, the emergence of this railway still brought a certain shock to the Qing Dynasty.
After that, everyone in the court had their own opinions and argued endlessly about the construction of the railway. Supporters, represented by Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang and other feudal officials, believed: "The construction of railways is beneficial to the country and the people, and is a necessary step for the country's reform and prosperity." ?The opponents, although they had only one reason, still silenced these top heavyweights in the court: ?Smoke hurts crops and shakes mausoleums?. Crops are related to people's livelihood, and tombs are related to the incense of ancestors. Once such a reason is given, who would dare to risk the disapproval of the world and insist on building a railway? However, the progress of history will not stop because of some conservative and backward ideas. As the Westernization Movement spread across the country, a large number of military and civilian enterprises sprung up across China.
In particular, the establishment of the Beiyang Navy made the construction of railways urgent. The ships of the Beiyang Navy require a large amount of coal to power them every day. If traditional transportation methods such as manpower and mules are adopted, there is no way to meet the operational needs of the ships of the Beiyang Navy. Therefore, the construction of railways must be put on the agenda to transport coal from the Kaiping Mining Bureau, where it is mined, to Dagukou, Tianjin, which is hundreds of miles away. In this case, the Beiyang Navy ships anchored at Dagukou can replenish fuel in time. ?
In 1881, with the repeated efforts of Li Hongzhang and other Westernizationists, China's first self-built freight railway, the Tangxu Railway, finally started construction. At the beginning of the construction of the railway, due to the Qing government's order prohibiting the operation of steam engines on the railway, many funny scenes appeared on the railway. For example, there were times when transportation workers drove donkeys and horses to pull coal cars and slid on the railway. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world. However, later, with the full support of Li Hongzhang, Chinese technicians began to develop and design locomotives themselves. A year later, the Tangxu Railway began to open to traffic, and the first "Dragon" locomotive designed and modified by the Chinese themselves ran on this railway. As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning. Now that the first railway has been built, it is easy to build more railways.
In 1886, Li Hongzhang petitioned the Qing court, requesting that the Tang-Xu railway be rebuilt and extended on the grounds that the distance between the Tang and Xu railways was too short and would delay coal transportation and affect the use of ships. The Qing court agreed to his request, so this time the Tang-Yan Railway, an extension of the Tang-Xu Railway, was built. The next year, the Qing government once again built the Tanglu Railway, an extension of the Tangxu Railway, extending to Beitangkou of Lutai.
After the completion of these three railways, the coal mined by the Kaiping Mining Bureau can be continuously transported to various parties. The construction and operation of railways, instead of harming crops and destroying mausoleums as conservatives said, actually brought huge benefits to all parties. This time, it's the conservatives' turn to shut up.