Ｅｔｅｒｎａｌ Ｍｏｎｕｍｅｎｔ ｏｆ Ｆｒｉｅｎｄｓｈｉｐ Ｂｕｉｌｔ ｗｉｔｈ Ｓｗｅａｔ， Ｂｌｏｏｄ ａｎｄ Ｌｉｖｅｓ

The Tanzania-Zambia Railway with a total length of 1，860.5 kilometres starts from Dar es Salaam， capital of Tanzania in the east and ends in New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia in the west. The Chinese experts， engineers and technicians did all the work of exploration， survey and designing and also assisted the Tanzanian and Zambian governments to organize the execution of the construction. The surveying and designing of the railway started in May 1968 and its construction in October 1970. The whole project was completed and handed over in July 1976.

The railway was a colossal project involving cutting 22 tunnels， building 320 bridges，93 stations and other buildings with a total floor space of over 370，000 square metres and excavation of 88 million cubic metres of earth and stone which could circle the Equator more than twice if they were used to build a dyke with height and width of one metre respectively.

To built this railway， the Chinese Government provided an interest-free loan of 988 million RMB yuan， shipped about 1 million tons of equipment and materials. The number of technicians and workers of various kinds dispatched for the construction was about 50，000 (person/times)， and in the peak period， the number of Chinese workers and staff working at construction site was as many as 16，000. 67 Chinese laid down their precious lives.

The conditions for constructing the railway were hard and dangerous. The railway ran through areas with very complicated geological structure and varied topography including plains， hilly lands， high mountains， large canyons， torrential rivers and dense primeval forests. Some sections of the railway were in the seismic belt and black clay belt. Some sections of the railway bed， foundation of the bridges and tunnels were swampy mud and drifting sand. Many areas were stretches of desolate and uninhabited land where wild animals roamed about. The weather was hot， and in the dry season rivers were dried up， resulting in a scarcity of water. In the rainy season there was dense rainfall and torrential rain often caused disastrous floods. Listening to the Chinese experts who had personally taken part in the construction speak of the past hard time， one could see all sorts of feelings well up in their minds. In December 1967 an exploration group sent by the Chinese Government put forward a proposal on the basic trend of the railway line and the chief technical requirements of its construction. In May 1968 China dispatched a 680-member surveying and designing team there. After two years of intense work， it successfully finished the task of surveying and designing of the whole railway. In order to complete the surveying， the surveyors had to walk at least three times through the route that the railway would pass. The total length of the railway was 1，860.5 kilometres， which meant that the surveyors had walked more than 5，500 kilometres in the vast African prairie and primeval forests during the two years from April 1968 to June 1970. These African primeval forests with roaming wild animals， swarming mosquitoes and other dangerous insects spreading diseases were once called “green deserts”. An old surveyor told me: “In these scarcely populated primeval forests， there were many wild animals and malaria was spreading. There was a special kind of fly named Tsetse fly there. If one was bitten by it in his sleep， he would never wake up. Once during our survey we went into a dense forest， one of my colleagues was unfortunately attacked by a large swarm of poisonous wasps. He could not get away from them. He was covered all over with bruises， and poison penetrated his whole body. He died because it was incurable.” That past experience is still fresh in the minds of the old surveyors. “At that time soy sauce was a luxury. What we used was soy sauce paste. When eating， we just diluted it with water. We felt as if we were spending the Spring Festival if we had some fresh vegetable for the dish. Drinkable water was scarce. There were only stagnant pools with cream-colour water. Even if the water was boiled， one would still have diarrhea from drinking it.”

After the completion of surveying and designing， groups of builders went to the construction sites. They traveled thousands of miles to Tanzania and Zambia which were far from their motherland， and camped in barren mountains. Their working conditions were extremely hard. Over their heads was the scorching sun and under their feet were hot rocks. Sometimes the rocks were too hot they would pool cold water into their boots. Even when their feet were swollen， they didn’t stop working.Sometimes downpours damaged makeshift roads for the construction and flooded down electricity poles. Whenever they could not build roadbeds， they would build small bridges and culverts. Some American once said that it would take at least 25 years to complete the construction of the railway. Through hard work， the Chinese experts， engineers and technicians together with Tanzanian and Zambian constructors only spent four years and a half to complete the construction of the whole railway.

Up till now， the Tanzania-Zambia Railway has been in operation for fully 30 years. It has made great contributions to strengthening mutual political trust， achieving economic results of mutual benefit between China and African countries and between the Chinese and African people and won common development. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Sino-African diplomatic relations， the world-famous Tanzania-Zambia railway， a project of cooperation with historic significance in the Sino-African relations， is worthy to be written again in letters of gold.