Letting Off Steam Into the Chinese Sunset

TONGCHUAN, China —  Liberation 2368 is a beautiful beast living on borrowed time.

On most days, the huffing, puffing steam engine pants back and forth through the honey-colored hillsides of central China, pulling loads of coal with hacking hisses of complaint. But the end of the line is in sight.

“This engine’s off for a major overhaul next month. They’ll test the pressure of the boiler and if it’s still up to scratch, it’ll go for another year. If not, that will be the end,” says Xiao Tang, a driver of the 45-year-old behemoth.

With barely a tear or backward glance, China is saying goodbye to steam. And when it turns the page, so will we all.

China is the last country still using steam locomotives in large numbers. Their demise will all but close the steam chapter of history--an era that spanned the Industrial Revolution to the Atomic Age.

Liberation, Construction, Victory, Peace, the People--the names of China’s great steam locomotives echo a time when the People’s Republic was young.

After the civil war ended with communist victory in 1949, railroads helped knit the broken country together. On their steaming backs they hauled steel, coal and other building blocks of a new China. They took troops to war in Korea. They shipped rice and revolution to and from far-flung Chinese provinces.

Today’s China of the Internet and mobile phones, of space launches and microwaveable Peking duck in a bag, feels little nostalgia for the past.

Modernization is the mantra now; diesels and electrics rule the rails. Hypermodern Shanghai is building a high-speed train that will ride on a magnetic cushion instead of wheels.

Swedish-built electrics called “New Speed” whisk passengers between the go-go southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, 91 miles in 55 minutes. Chinese trains have become faster, cleaner, more comfortable than ever.

But where’s the adventure?

“Globalization can mean tremendous progress, there’s no doubt about it. But on the other hand, it’s a kind of disease of dull uniformity --one culture, one size fits all,” says Rob Dickinson, a Briton who is loco about steam and travels to China to track down lines where it’s still used.

“The steam locomotive--it’s a living creature,” he says. “You’ve got to look after it. It has individuality.”

Under the communist government, China’s rail network has grown into one of the world’s largest--43,500 miles of track that carried 1.05 billion passengers last year.

But rail had a difficult birth in China.

Although Chinese labored on the American transcontinental track completed in 1869, back in China, railroads were shunned. Chinese feared the tielu--iron roads--would swallow farmland, destroy jobs and, most important, speed encroachment by Western powers eyeing China’s markets and resources.

They also feared railroads would disturb graves and feng shui--the spirits of “wind and water” Chinese believe are essential for human harmony with the environment.

They might have been echoing Wordsworth’s lament in 1844 over plans to run a train through his beloved Lake District, “with its scarifications, its intersections, its noisy machinery, its smoke, and swarms of pleasure-hunters.”

The first track, a nine-mile, narrow-gauge built by the British firm Jardine Matheson in Shanghai in 1876, was bought by the Chinese government, which ordered it torn up.

“To us, railways mean free intercourse, enlightenment, commerce and wealth; to the Mandarins, they suggest rowdyism, the overthrow of time-honored custom and tradition, disturbance and ruin,” commented the North China Herald, a foreign-run newspaper of the time.

Nevertheless, foreign powers forged ahead. Over time, Chinese attitudes changed too. China had 13,500 miles of track when the communists took power. It doubled in 25 years.

When the chaotic Cultural Revolution erupted in 1966, millions of young radicals--the Red Guards--careered around China in jampacked trains, squeezing into luggage racks, between cars, even into toilets. Many trains were powered by steam.

“Chairman Mao, thank you for letting us travel all over the country without paying a cent,” read a Red Guard poster of the time.

Even locomotives got revolution. The Qianjin model, which means progress, was for a time renamed “Anti-Imperialism.”

China was the last country to manufacture steam trains. Production of large locomotives continued until 1988. Smaller ones were produced into the late 1990s. In all, 10,000 were built.

Today, as many as 400 remain, says Fang Shujiang, secretary of the China Steam Engine Assn. Although largely vanished from national lines, they still ply provincial and local tracks, serving mines, steelworks and lumber yards.

In northern China’s Inner Mongolian region, Qianjins haul passengers and goods between the towns of Jining and Tongliao. It’s the last long-haul steam route in the world, Dickinson says. The trains cover the 585 miles in 25 hours.

In India, small pockets of steam rail still function, but regular steam operations ended in February 2000, according to Harsh Vardhan, the Indian Steam Railway Society’s newsletter editor and archivist.

Dickinson says that after China, Cuba and Indonesia come a distant second, with about 100 steam locomotives each that work seasonally three to four months a year at sugar mills. A tiny handful survive in Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Myanmar, he says.

China is “out on its own, which is why so many tour groups go there every year,” he says. “You really are seeing what in the world today is a unique phenomenon. When it finishes in China, there’ll be very, very little left.”

But the sunset of steam can’t come soon enough for train crews in Tongchuan, a dingy mining and cement-manufacturing town in central Shaanxi province.

They drive red-wheeled Liberations, hauling coal from Tongchuan’s mines. It’s dirty, tiring, ear-piercing and lung-burning work, badly paid with long shifts. Even as they acknowledge that steam has unique qualities, they say its time has come.

“When you’re at a standstill in summer, it reaches 50 degrees [Celsius; or, 122 Fahrenheit] in here,” 36-year-old stoker Chen Jianli said in the toasty-warm cabin of Liberation 2368. “But you can’t take your shirt off because if there’s venting steam it will blister your skin.”

Liberations were the first Chinese-made steam locomotives. Production began in July 1952. Tongchuan’s half-dozen are thought to be the last left working anywhere in China.

Riding one at work is like being trapped in the belly of a dragon with heartburn. Every few seconds, the stoker opens the furnace door to shovel in coal, bathing the cabin in fiery orange light. The roar of escaping steam makes conversation impossible. Tunnels quickly fill with suffocating, acrid smoke. The stoker drops to his knees, coughing. Other members of the six-man crew cover their mouths with the collars of their overalls. Can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Can’t see. Can’t think.

And out! The locomotive spews into sunshine at the other end. Breaths are drawn, throats cleared, cigarettes lighted. “It really stinks,” said Bai Jing, 33, a stoker. “After a while, it must be bad for your lungs.”

The locomotives are watered and restocked with coal every day, their pistons and bolts oiled at the start of each 12-hour shift, and their furnaces emptied of coal ash after each trip. Only during overhauls or when they are sidelined are their fires extinguished, so even when not pulling loads, the engines steam and sputter to themselves and their metal cabin floors throb with life.

Drivers listen for any abnormal rattle and wheeze. “I can hear where things are broken, where bolts have come loose,” said Zhou Xingwu, Liberation 2369’s driver.

Train spotters, both Chinese and foreign, may prove to be steam’s saviors of sorts. Tongchuan mine and tourism officials talk about building a museum, preserving some Liberations and even teaching enthusiasts to drive them.

Remaining locomotives are being scrapped, and enthusiasts believe steam will all but vanish within the decade. Zhou, the driver in Tongchuan, gives Liberations there another five years at most.

“I won’t feel pity,” he said. “This is history. Society is forging ahead.”