China Youth Network Golmud August 15th(Reporter Lu Guanqiong) There are thousands of roads in the world, but there is such one, which makes countless young people dream and make up their minds to take a trip in this life. It is the Qinghai-Tibet Highway leading to the roof of the world.
As people know, this road is full of mystery, because it is hard to walk, across the snowy area and stretches over the plateau. But few people know that it was a general who pioneered this "heavenly road" at the earliest, and his life was integrated with this road!
"Life is bound to die, but there are roughly three kinds of death in life, which are nothing more than old age, illness and death. I don’t want to lie in bed and die of old age and illness, but I am willing to die in a combat position. "
In the autumn of 1994, when his ashes were scattered by his family to the vast Kunlun Mountains, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Wan Li suddenly began to snow all over the sky. Wrapped in silver, the loyal soul is gently covered. Throughout his life, he realized his last wish to sleep with the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and returned to this place where he fought bloody battles.
His name is Mu Shengzhong-the father of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway with outstanding achievements, General Tianlu, and the founder of Golmud, a military city. He led officers and men to cut off 25 snow-capped mountains, which lasted for 7 months and 4 days, built the highest highway in the world and wrote the legend of a city and even a country.
In the spring of 1953, Tibet encountered an unprecedented food famine, and tens of thousands of PLA troops entering Tibet were in danger of running out of food. The Northwest Bureau of the Communist Party of China decided to set up a grain transportation column, and Mu Shengzhong, then political commissar of the Tibet detachment of the Northwest Military Region, was ordered to take on the arduous task of transporting grain and supplies to the troops in Tibet.
The team set out from Golmud, Qinghai, freezing cold, howling wind, lack of oxygen in the plateau, starving, trudging up and down the snow-capped mountains and canyons, and turning over the Kunlun Mountain to fight the disease. It took more than seven months to go back and forth, transporting 2 million Jin of grain, at the expense of more than 30 people, and more than 4,000 camels fell down one after another. All this hurt Mu Shengzhong’s heart.
He had a strong idea: to aid Tibet’s construction, we must build an unimpeded road!
This year, Peng Dehuai just returned from the Korean battlefield. Mu Shengzhong took the opportunity to go to Beijing for a meeting and went to see the old chief specially. During the talk, Mu Shengzhong reported to Mr. Peng the difficulty of transporting grain from Qinghai to Tibet with animals, and suggested that the road must be repaired!
"This is the second time you have walked into Tibet. Can you build roads on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau?" Peng Dehuai is also thinking about this issue after hearing Mu Shengzhong’s briefing. He walked to the front of the map and stared at the western half of the motherland for a long time, sighing: "Such a large area of land is a blank of roads!"
With the approval of the central authorities, Mu Shengzhong began careful preparations. In May 1954, the Qinghai-Tibet Highway finally started. Thousands of construction workers live in tents, drink ice water and chew dry buns together in a deserted place, working day and night. Many people suffer from strange diseases and are covered with purple spots because they have not eaten vegetables for a long time.
The plateau is short of oxygen, and there is no time to delay. They used picks, shovels and hammers to dig through frozen soil and sand-stained stones, and built a wooden bridge in the Rift Valley in three days by using earth methods. Mu Shengzhong also personally ventured to test the quality of the bridge by car. He moved the stone road in the biting ice water, and his feet were so swollen that he couldn’t even put on his shoes … …
In October, the road construction team drove up the Tanggula Mountain, the "life forbidden zone". The mountain pass is more than 5300 meters above sea level, and the oxygen content in the air is only half of that in the mainland. Not to mention working, even walking on it will make you feel dizzy, chest tightness and asthma. Because of the bad weather, road builders are often attacked by hail. Whenever the snow comes, they cover their faces with shovels; When hail comes, cover your head with a tin bucket or a clay basket. The army of road builders fought here for 20 days and nights with amazing perseverance.
During this period, Mu Shengzhong didn’t leave the construction site for a day. He threw a sledgehammer during the day and slept in a tent at night. His lips were chapped and his face was black and purple. Just then, the superior sent a telegram to inquire about the loss of thousands of camels in the transportation corps. Emotional Mu Shengzhong grabbed a sledgehammer and dumped it for seventy or eighty times in one breath: "If there is a road, how can so many camels die?" The determination to build the Qinghai-Tibet Highway cannot be shaken. Even if I die, I will head for Lhasa! "
In fact, at the beginning of the determination to build a highway, someone asked Mu Shengzhong, where is Golmud? Mu Shengzhong thrust the spade into the soil and replied, "Golmud is at your feet. Where is our tent, where is Golmud! " Perhaps, from the beginning, he was determined to lay down his life to keep his promise. When building roads, Mu Shengzhong once carved "Mu Shengzhong’s Tomb" on his spade. He told his comrades, "If I die on this road, this is my tombstone. Wherever the road is built, please bury me … …”
In barren and cold areas, everything is creation. Many place names along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway were originated in Mu Shengzhong, so they go wherever they are built. For example, the famous Tuotuo River. Because of the sand, when people go into the river, the sand immediately covers their feet like a shoe cover. Mu Shengzhong named this river "Taotao River", and the translator translated it into "Tuotuo River". There are also "Snow River", "Little Jiangnan", "Twelve Steps Mountain" and "Freezing Spring" … … Mao Zedong also praised these place names for their revolutionary optimism.
And some place names are for remembering. On the way to the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, a camel worker surnamed Han in Ningxia died of illness and fatigue, which made Mu Shengzhong burst into tears. "Good brother, you left too early! The worst days are over, and Lhasa is just around the corner. I wanted to put a big red flower on you in Lhasa, but you didn’t even wait for this day … … This place is called Hantan! "
In order to carve out this road leading to the roof of the world, more than 3,000 martyrs stayed in the snowy plateau forever.
Under the leadership of Mu Shengzhong, the Qinghai-Tibet Highway is more than 1,000 kilometers long from Golmud to Lhasa, which was successfully completed in just seven months and four days, creating a miracle of the new China highway construction. The opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway has put an end to the modes of transportation that Tibet has used for thousands of years, such as plank roads, zip lines and camel backs, and changed the long-term closure of Tibet.
In 1982, Mu Shengzhong, who was over 70 years old, returned to Golmud. He wanted to see the Qinghai-Tibet Highway that haunted him. Standing on the Kunlun Mountain, the white-haired general charged: "After my death, you scatter my ashes on the Kunlun Mountain, and let the rumble of cars on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway accompany me to sleep." In 1994, the old general "returned" as he wished and finally merged with the snow-capped mountains.
Golmud, born of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, has developed into the second largest city in Qinghai Province. China Youth Network reporter Lu Guanqiong photo
American traveler Paul Taylor once wrote in his book Traveling in China: "With the Kunlun Mountains, the railway will never reach Lhasa." Before his death, Mu Shengzhong knew that it was necessary to rely on railways to fundamentally overcome the difficulties in entering Tibet. In October, 1955, Mu Shengzhong led four engineers from Northwest Design Branch of the Ministry of Railways to conduct on-the-spot investigation on the feasibility of building the Qinghai-Tibet Railway for three months. On July 1, 2006, when the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which runs side by side with the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, opened the first train to Lhasa, the old general who was buried in the foothills of Kunlun Mountain must be very pleased.
2014年8月，习近平总书记就川藏、青藏公路通车60周年作出重要批示，要求进一步弘扬“一不怕苦、二不怕死，顽强拼搏、甘当路石，军民一家、民族团结”的“两路”精神，助推西藏发展！
多年来，一批批官兵奔赴青藏线担负起守护天路的重大使命。战士们在可可西里无人区执勤并向途经列车敬礼的情景，还曾被旅客拍下图片，走红网络。
哪怕原野空无一人，也要在战位上不折不扣履行使命。一句“什么都不说，祖国知道我”的忠诚誓言，让人民见证了“天路神兵”的信仰海拔！
远方有多远，蓝天有多蓝？谁坚定的步伐，翻过了十万大山？一代一代，接力前行。问那高原冻土，问那寸寸江河，让人魂牵梦萦的天路，镌刻着多少既平凡又伟岸的中国人的故事……
