Opportunities along the rail

The rapid development of a railway network in Jiangxi province has not only lifted the southeastern province's economic status, but also created closer business links with Hong Kong. Li Bingcun and Shadow Li report from Jiangxi.

Huang Changfei, general Party branch secretary of the Beijing-Kowloon railway's Xinfeng railway station, has been working for the railway since 1997. [SHADOW LI / CHINA DAILY]

As the sun beat down mercilessly on Xinfeng railway station on a scorching afternoon, passengers cooled off under swirling ceiling fans in the lounge, waiting for the trains to pull up.

On the platform of the station in Xinfeng county, Jiangxi province, Huang Changfei — the station's general Party branch secretary — was making final preparations for the trains' arrival, with intermittent railway freight carriages passing by nonstop.

It has been more than two decades since Huang, 56, went to Xinfeng — a county in Jiangxi's southernmost city of Ganzhou, which borders Guangdong province to the west — to work on the Beijing-Kowloon railway. As one of the nation's key traffic arteries, the dual-track railway opened in 1996, linking the capital's Beijing West railway station with the Shenzhen railway station in Guangdong. It then connects to Hong Kong's East Rail Line, which terminates at the Hung Hom station in Kowloon.

Huang had previously served with a Chinese Air Force unit in Changchun, the capital city of northeastern Jilin province. In 1997, he went to Ganzhou with a dual purpose — to stay with his wife, and to work on the Beijing-Kowloon railway, helping to realign the tracks for trains to change directions. He initially worked at the nearby Datangbu station, which is also along the railway, before being transferred to the Xinfeng station in 2010.

“I was demobilized and became a railway worker in 1997, the same year Hong Kong returned to the motherland,” Huang recalled.

To celebrate Hong Kong's reunification with the motherland, railways were decorated with colorful flags and banners. Many people watched the handover ceremony live on television on July 1, 1997, to share the joy with their compatriots, he said. “Seeing our motherland take back one of its ‘strayed children’, every Chinese was overjoyed. It also meant our motherland had grown stronger.”

To commemorate the handover, the Beijing-Kowloon railway was set to go into service on Sept 1, 1996. An advanced group of workers was sent to Xinfeng to prepare for the opening of the station — the county's first rail service. About 15 trains passed through the station every day in the early stages of its operation, with vast green fields and lush mountains in its surroundings.