CNR News, Beijing, September 29 — According to a report by China National Radio (Voice of China) of China Media Group, extracting keywords of the era to record the country's growth and progress. Voice of China presents a special feature for the 75th anniversary of the founding of New China, "Keywords of the Era," with this installment focusing on transportation. Keyword highlights: bicycles, expressways, the motorcycle army, China high-speed rail, C919.

　　Wheels spin lightly, bells ring far

　　Enduring marks amid changing times

　　At 8 p.m., in front of the Tiananmen Gate Tower on the north side of Chang'an Avenue, with lights blazing, hundreds of shared bikes, road bikes, and portable folding bikes stream past in a mighty procession. They are not only a leaping scenic line in the city's nightscape but also a vivid footnote to the rapid changes in China's transportation sector and the growing popularity of the green travel concept. Today, this green cycling trend has swiftly swept the country, and as bicycle wheels turn, it has once again awakened long-dormant memories of cycling.

　　Song Guilin, 79 this year, was once the chief engineer of Tianjin Flying Pigeon Bicycle Co., Ltd. As a youth, he repeatedly begged his father to buy him a bicycle. Little did he expect that this small wish would forge an indissoluble bond between him and bicycles.

　　Song Guilin said: "At that time it was a planned economy, and I persuaded my father to buy a bike. Back then, a bike was a luxury item, not like now with so many varieties; there were very few. Later, in 1969, I was assigned to a bicycle factory—it wasn't called Flying Pigeon Bicycle Factory then, but Tianjin Bicycle Factory, a state-owned enterprise. After a month of training there, I entered the machining workshop, and I felt especially honored."

　　In 1981, the State Council convened the National Daily-Use Mechanical and Electrical Products Work Conference and decided to vigorously develop the production of 10 kinds of daily-use mechanical and electrical products, including bicycles. In 1984, China proposed promoting enterprise alliances, expanding the production of high-quality bicycles, and achieving open supply of famous-brand bikes within three years, abolishing ration coupons. Subsequently, bicycle factories and parts factories sprang up across the country, and the industry ushered in unprecedented prosperity. Brands such as "Forever," "Phoenix," and "Flying Pigeon" rose prominently.

　　It was precisely during this period that Song Guilin was transferred to the factory's research section and began devoting himself to the development of new products. In that "golden age" of bicycles, he witnessed how Flying Pigeon bicycles went from lines on design drawings to a bright, galloping sight on the streets, step by step.

　　Song Guilin said: "At that time, some families already had one or two bicycles, and on the streets you saw very few cars; whenever you hit a red light, all the vehicles stopped were bicycles. Why ride a bicycle? First, it could take you long distances, and second, it could carry a lot of goods. In the factory's heyday, there were more than 8,000 workers. In 1981, I went to the research section, responsible for new product development, drawing on large drafting boards every day, pondering and studying exactly what style and structure were needed; one drawing took at least three or four days to complete, and everyone often worked overtime. Until around 1990, we developed nearly 200 new products, with peak annual output of more than 7 million units."

　　The wheels turned slowly, and the crisp "ring-ring, ring-ring" of bicycle bells carried farther and farther, becoming a unique melody of that era. It was also at this time that a far-reaching project was quietly underway in Shanghai.

　　From nothing to something, four years to build a dream

　　The controversy behind China's first expressway

　　In the 1980s, the market economy was just emerging, and demand for transporting agricultural and sideline products between urban and rural areas surged, yet it encountered a transportation bottleneck, and road transport was overwhelmed. At that time, the road from downtown Shanghai to Jiading was only 7 meters wide; a mere 20-kilometer stretch often took one or two hours. Zhang Kuihong, then head of the planning section of the Shanghai Highway Administration, recalled that public calls for building an efficient corridor were growing ever louder.

　　Zhang Kuihong said: "At that time, the road from Shanghai to Jiading was the one with the most prominent contradictions, with a huge traffic volume accounting for 37.01% of Shanghai's six external highways. With such a large traffic volume, it was very difficult to ensure smooth vehicle flow relying on a single 7-meter-wide road."

　　Some proposed building an expressway to solve the problem. However, at that time China had no completed expressways, and with no reference point, "whether an expressway was needed" sparked widespread controversy.

　　Zhang Kuihong said: "At that time our country had no expressways, and the automobile industry was underdeveloped; an ordinary light truck had a top speed of only 80 km/h, while the design speed of an expressway was 120 km/h. Under these circumstances, some said our country should focus on developing mass transit, and that the model of a car in every home was not needed here. After hearing this, the municipal leaders said that reform and opening up had already begun and a market economy was needed, requiring convenient door-to-door transport—time is money—so a trial expressway should be built."

　　In 1984, 42-year-old Zhang Kuihong took on this thorny task, serving as assistant to the commander and deputy chief engineer of the Hujia Expressway construction command.

　　Zhang Kuihong said: "We had never built an expressway. To design a road with a speed of 120 km/h, we needed to solve the issues of driving safety and comfort, which required road builders to ensure a smooth surface and sufficient friction. For example, the flatness requirement at the time was controlled to within 3 millimeters; to this end, we tackled many scientific and technological challenges, and fortunately all were eventually solved. When the road opened and I saw cars driving one after another on this giant dragon across the Chinese land, I was truly exhilarated—the fruits of four years of construction had come to fruition, and we had our own expressway."

　　The completion of China's first expressway not only marked a leapfrog development in the country's transportation infrastructure but also profoundly accelerated the process of urban-rural integration. Against this backdrop, a special group of travelers also wrote a footnote to the transportation development of that time in a special way.

　Motorcycle years, long road home

　　Warmth on the Spring Festival travel rush

　　In 1995, 21-year-old Wu Tianxin left Guangyuan, Sichuan, to work in Fuzhou, Fujian. Soon after, by skimping and saving, he finally owned the first motorcycle of his life. At first, he bought it merely for convenient daily travel. Unexpectedly, over the next ten years, this motorcycle carried his deep affection and longing for returning home during the Spring Festival.

　　Wu Tianxin said: "I wanted to go home to reunite with my parents and celebrate the New Year. But trains at that time required transfers and were relatively slow. If you took the train from Fuzhou, you had to transfer at Wuchang, then buy a ticket from Wuchang to Guangyuan, get off at Guangyuan, then buy a ticket from Guangyuan to our Jiange County, and after reaching the county, transfer again to the town, and from the town transfer again to home—so many transfers back and forth. Riding a motorcycle was more convenient wherever you went; for me, it was a convenient means of travel."

　　However, the so-called "convenient" and "easy" motorcycle journey home was in fact seven days and six nights of bumping along on a motorcycle. Without navigation, Wu Tianxin could only join fellow townspeople, using maps and following various signs and road markers, winding his way to find the direction home.

　　Wu Tianxin said: "We had to set off early and prepare beforehand—food, drink, clothes, and so on, about seventy or eighty jin. At that time we took provincial roads, carrying a map, following the road signs, following our instincts. In winter when it snowed, you couldn't see the road surface at all, and it felt like your very bones were cold. When resting, you had to drink two big bowls of boiled water to feel warm."

　　Starting from the 2000 Spring Festival travel rush, the motorcycle army gradually took shape, with numbers rising year by year. By 2013, the Spring Festival motorcycle army reached its peak of 1.1 million trips. Today, although a few riders still choose motorcycles as their way home, they no longer attract much attention.

　　Wu Tianxin said: "Riding motorcycles used to be popular; now driving cars is popular. Now there are trains from Fuzhou direct to Chengdu that pass through Guangyuan—it's truly a world of difference."

　　Just as Wu Tianxin said, that deep longing for home, which once braved wind and rain and crossed mountains and rivers, has now, with the rapid development of China's high-speed rail, become scenery flashing past outside the window.

　　Independent breakthroughs, leaps in speed

　　China high-speed rail bravely forges ahead on technological innovation

　　In the early 1990s, China's maximum railway operating speed did not exceed 120 km/h, and train travel was full of crowding, stuffiness, and noise. Yet in the same period, developed countries already had high-speed trains exceeding 200 km/h. In 2004, the "Medium- and Long-Term Railway Network Plan" was officially released, and China began independent research, development, and construction of high-speed trains.

　　In 2006, at CRRC Qingdao Sifang, 34-year-old Liang Jianying became the chief designer of the independent research and development project for 300 km/h high-speed EMUs.

　　Liang Jianying said: "I have a deep connection with railways—my father was a railway worker, and as a child I fell asleep to the rumbling of trains. When we set out to build a Chinese brand, we were under enormous pressure because we didn't know whether we had the ability to take on such a technology, but each of us felt like we had a fire burning inside, with tremendous drive."

　　"This fire" also ignited hope for the accelerated development of China's high-speed rail EMUs. In December 2007, the first independently developed domestic EMU with a speed of 300 to 350 km/h was successfully unveiled; in December 2010, the CRH380A high-speed EMU set the world's highest railway operating test speed of 486.1 km/h on the pilot section of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway; in 2017, the "Fuxing" was officially put into operation, and in September of the same year, the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, at 350 km/h, made China the country with the highest commercial operating speed of high-speed rail in the world...

　　Liang Jianying said: "The goal at the time was to overcome the technologies constraining speed increases. We couldn't find mature practices to learn from, so during development we tackled many technological challenges—for example, low-resistance streamlined nose design, carbody airtight strength, airtightness, comfort, vibration and noise reduction, and other related technologies—and we achieved certain breakthroughs in all of them."

　　From youthful bloom to graying temples, Liang Jianying, now director of the National High-Speed Train Qingdao Technology Innovation Center, says she has always harbored a driving determination.

　　Liang Jianying said: "We have built a pedigree-based R&D platform, which lays a solid foundation for continuously enriching and improving the high-speed EMU product spectrum. It also marks the formation of national capability—a R&D system and R&D capability originating in China and applicable globally—enabling our products to keep innovating and giving us the ability to go global."

　　As China's high-speed rail network becomes increasingly complete, China's transportation sector has also begun advancing toward higher and farther skies.

　Flying a thousand miles, a domestic dream fulfilled

　　C919 brings the dream to reality

　　A few days ago, Shang Feng, general manager of the C919 Flight Department of China Eastern Airlines, had just stepped out of the cockpit when a flight attendant handed him a thank-you letter from a passenger; he carefully tucked the letter into his notebook. Since the domestic large aircraft C919 first entered commercial operation, the crew has received over a thousand such letters.

　　Shang Feng said: "When the C919 made its maiden flight in May 2017, many of the crew members on that flight were our good friends. As a pilot of China's civil aviation, I had always hoped that one day we could use China's advanced domestically built large aircraft for commercial flights—that was a dream."

　　Fortunately, on December 9, 2022, Shang Feng, as a crew member on China Eastern's first C919 "debut" flight, witnessed the first delivery flight of the domestic large aircraft. At 11:39 a.m. that day, the C919 painted with the China Eastern logo took off from Shanghai Pudong International Airport and landed smoothly at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport at 12:02 p.m. Those brief 23 minutes were a highlight of Shang Feng's career.

　　Shang Feng said: "This ferry route had actually been flown many times before. But flying this route with a domestically built large aircraft for the first time, with me as a crew member, I was very excited. Before landing at Hongqiao Airport, the tower also welcomed us on this frequency—I think this represents the best wishes of everyone in China's civil aviation for the domestic large aircraft endeavor."

　　On May 28, 2023, the C919 completed its commercial maiden flight and officially entered the second half of commercial operation. Since Shang Feng began flying the C919 in 2022, he has logged over 700 hours and nearly 600,000 kilometers.

　　Shang Feng said: "A good aircraft is built, and also flown. Recently Air China and China Southern Airlines have each received their first C919 aircraft. In the future, we need to further train more C919 pilots, receive more C919 aircraft, gradually expand the route network of the domestic large aircraft, and through sustained safe operation, further feed back operational conditions and suggestions to the manufacturer, further promoting the continuous improvement and upgrading of the C919."

　　Another C919 is slowly taxiing toward the runway, preparing to lift off and embark on a brand-new journey. A passenger wrote this line to the crew: "I have seen countless beautiful sights, but none surpass this contrail that belongs to us."