Ruins of the Former Yunnan-Myanmar Railway

The ruins of the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway are located at FenShuiLing, the watershed between two oceans, in HeiMaTang Village, AiHua Town, Yun County, Lincang City, Yunnan Province, beside the Xianglin Second-Class Highway, 15 kilometers from the county seat.

The ruins of the former Yunnan-Myanmar Railway were part of a wartime railway project built to transport military supplies during the War of Resistance against Japan. Construction was halted after the war ended, leaving behind multiple construction sites within Yun County. This location is the most accessible among them.

The Yunnan-Myanmar Railway was constructed in the early stages of the War of Resistance. Its starting point was Kunming North Station (then known as Kunming General Station). The Nationalist Government began construction in December 1938, but work was suspended in 1942 after the loss of western Yunnan. Although the project was massive, the tracks were laid only from Kunming to Anning (and later dismantled), never reaching its intended destination — Lashio in Myanmar. The toil of nearly 300,000 workers ultimately ended in failure, marking a tragic chapter in history.

In 1907 (the 33rd year of the Guangxu reign in the Qing Dynasty), the British consul in Yunnan submitted a note to the Yunnan Viceroy, proposing to build a railway from Myanmar through western Yunnan’s Tengyue into Yunnan, with the railway rights belonging to the British. Given the lessons learned from the loss of sovereignty over the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway (built by the French), both the government and the people of Yunnan were vigilant and refused to cede railway rights to foreigners again. After negotiations by the people of Yunnan, the Qing Government reached an agreement with the British envoy, stipulating that the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway would be constructed in sections by both sides. Yunnan scholar Chen Rongchang, noting that the railway rights had been reclaimed, petitioned the Viceroy to incorporate the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway project into the Yunnan-Sichuan Railway project, renaming it the Yunnan-Sichuan-Tengyue Railway Company, which was later merged into the Yunnan Provincial Highway Bureau. By 1935, surveyors from the Bureau had explored a railway line from Qinghua Cave in Xiangyun County to the Yunnan-Myanmar border, approximately 400 kilometers long, with an estimated construction cost of 18.2 million yuan.

After the outbreak of the War of Resistance, coastal ports and railway lines had fallen to the enemy, and the Nationalist Government relocated to the southwestern hinterland. To secure international aid, in addition to building the Yunnan-Burma Highway, the central government oversaw the construction of the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway, stretching from Kunming in the east, passing through Anning, Yipinglang, Lufeng, Guangtong, Chuxiong, Yao’an, Xiangyun, Midu, Nanjian, Yun County, and Gengma, all the way to Shudada on the China-Myanmar border in the west. Construction began in segments starting December 1938. The eastern section ran 410 kilometers from Kunming to Qinghua Cave in Xiangyun County, while the western section spanned 470 kilometers from Qinghua Cave to Shudada. The entire line used meter-gauge tracks to facilitate connection with Myanmar’s railways, with plans to link up with the Lashio Station on the Myanmar Railway’s Myitkyina Line.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered from all directions to build the railway, and countless lost their lives in the process. Before the war broke out in 1937, Zeng Yangfu, then Vice Minister of Transportation of the Nationalist Government, realized that if the coastal ports were lost, China would be cut off from foreign aid and face grave danger. It was imperative to establish a western transportation route to connect with the outside world as soon as possible. This became the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway, later remembered in the history of China’s War of Resistance for its tragedy and sacrifice. Several renowned Chinese railway and bridge engineers participated in its construction. In 1937, Sa Fugjun, Director of the Transportation Department’s Public Works Bureau, was appointed Director of the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway Bureau. In 1939, Du Zhenyuan, a leading railway expert of the era, personally took on the roles of Director and Chief Engineer of the Railway Bureau. Du recruited a team of top engineers, including Zhang Haiping (Deputy Director), Wang Jieyao (Deputy Director and Deputy Chief Engineer), Wang Juqian (Chief Engineer of the Engineering Bureau’s Works Department), Tao Shuzeng (Deputy Director of the First Engineering Division), Gong Jicheng (later Director of the Railway Bureau), Li Yaoxiang (Deputy Chief Engineer of the Chief Engineer’s Office), Wang Xicheng (member of the Supervisory Office Technical Committee), Lin Tongyan (Head of the Design Section), Lei Congmin (Head of the Technical Unit of the Works Section in the Third Engineering Division), Shi Heng (Deputy Engineer and Section Chief of the Third Division), along with Zhu Baofen, Xia Shunshen, Gu Goucheng, Zhu Qinxiu, Zhou Yonghua, Lu Zhaojun, and others. Nearly all these engineers graduated from prestigious domestic universities and had studied civil engineering or railway construction in Europe and America. For instance, Du Zhenyuan, Wang Jieyao, Wang Juqian, Gong Jicheng, Shi Heng, and Lin Tongyan all graduated from Tangshan Jiaotong University (now Southwest Jiaotong University); Lei Congmin and Lu Zhaojun from Tsinghua University; Tao Shuzeng from Peking University; Wang Xicheng from Jiaotong University; Xia Shunshen from Harbin Institute of Technology; Zhang Haiping from Purdue University; and Zhu Baofen from Cornell University.

As the War of Resistance grew more critical, the construction of the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway was finally prioritized by the Nationalist Government. However, for the Yunnan Provincial Government and the people of western Yunnan at the time, mobilizing 300,000 laborers and supplying food for them was an enormous challenge. The railway passed through remote areas plagued by malaria and insects, where many workers suffered from malaria and gastrointestinal diseases. Moreover, most local Yunnan laborers were opium addicts. The weakened physical condition of the workers, combined with supply difficulties, led to extremely low construction efficiency.

In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Myanmar and subsequently captured key towns in western Yunnan, such as Tengchong, Longling, and Wanping, directly threatening the entire western region of Yunnan Province. To prevent the Japanese from using the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway, authorities were forced to destroy the completed roadbeds, culverts, and other infrastructure on the western section of the railway (the western section of the Yunnan-Burma Highway was also destroyed) to keep them out of enemy hands. As a result, all construction was halted, and the Railway Supervisor’s Office withdrew inland. The Yunnan-Myanmar Railway project fell through, with its eastern section only reaching Anning (due to a shortage of rail materials for the Xuyong Railway, the tracks between Anning and Shizui were relocated in 1944 to the Qujing-Zhanyi section of the Xuyong Railway to support transport to the military airport in Zhanyi). Eventually, the roadbeds of the western Yunnan section of the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway were blasted away. To ensure the smooth flow of the international supply route, authorities decided to construct the Ledo Road (also known as the “Stilwell Road”), which began construction in 1944 alongside the Chinese Expeditionary Force’s counteroffensive into Myanmar. Work on the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway stopped.

After the war, the Nationalist Government was preoccupied with returning to the mainland, taking over territories, and preparing for the anti-communist civil war. With the Yunnan-Burma Highway reopened, the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway lost its strategic value as an international passage and was deemed no longer necessary, leading to the project’s abandonment. In 1958–1959, after the founding of the People’s Republic, the Railway Corps used the pre-war roadbed to lay tracks from Shizui to Chuxiong-Yipinglang, creating what was called the “Kunyi Line.” After the Chengdu-Kunming Railway opened in 1970, the Kunyi Line was gradually dismantled. Only the 12.4-kilometer section from Kunming North Station to Shizui of the former Yunnan-Myanmar Railway remains, known as the “Kunshi Line.” Today, well-preserved tunnels and roadbeds from the Yunnan-Myanmar Railway can still be found in Xishan’s Bijiguan area of Kunming, Lufeng and Yipinglang in Chuxiong, and Yun County in Lincang.