Beijing Zhangjiakou Railway

Everyday, there're two trains from Beijing Xizhimen Railway station to Badaling Great Wall at Qinglongqiao Railway Station, where you can see a bronze statue erected by the Chinese government. But who was he?

This railway is very famous in China, known to almost every household, because this railway was the first of its kind designed and built by us Chinese, it was called Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway and recorded in the textbook for primary school pupils.

The chief engineer is Zhan Tianyou, a Yale graduate majoring in Civil and railway engineering, he was born in 1861 in Guangdong Province, and he was very intelligent and interested in machinery at an early age. Upon graduation from the Yale University in 1881, he returned to China and became the Chief engineer in 1905 for the first railway in China, he succeeded in overcoming the gradient problem by switching back the line, and he initially used two locomotives instead of one, one pulling, another pushing the train over this area. The railway was completed in 1909, two years ahead of time. It added a brilliant page in the history of the Chinese Railway Construction.

Therefore, the Chinese government decided to erect a bronze statue at Qinglongqiao Railway Station in memory of his great contribution.