China News Agency, Yunnan, Qujing, September 4th: China has entered the era of high-speed rail, and low-fare "slow trains" continue to help farmers

  Author Luo Jie

  From July to September every year, Yunnan wild mushrooms are put on the market in large quantities.

At 8:45 a.m., the train arrived at Xiaoxinjie Station in Songming County, Yunnan Province, China on time. 50-year-old vegetable farmer Chen Xingju quickly boarded Kunming with a whole basket of wild mushrooms and a QR code attached to his shoulder bag. Go to Hongguo 5652/1 "slow train" to Qujing, the nearest large vegetable trading place.

On June 2, villagers who were going to Qujing to sell vegetables boarded the 5652 train from Kunming, Yunnan to Hongguo, Guizhou at Wuguantian Station.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liu Ranyang

  Xiaoxin Street is now part of Niulanjiang Town. A station has been established since the construction of the Xu-Kunming Railway in the 1940s, and the surrounding area is prosperous due to the railway.

Thirty years ago, Chen Xingju sold melon seeds for five cents to passengers outside the train window. Now she takes the "slow train" to sell vegetables. The train has brought a way of making a living for the residents along the line like her.

  The predecessor of the 5652/1 train has been running since the early 1980s. Today, this train runs 261 kilometers one way. It starts from Kunming Station and crosses the mountains and mountains of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. It stops at 6 passenger stations and 10 alighting stations along the way. It takes 6 hours to arrive at Hongguo Station in Guizhou Province, and the whole fare is only 36.5 yuan (RMB, the same below), which is a public welfare train.

  From the leisurely pace of the green-skinned train to the galloping speed of Fuxing, Yunnan has moved from the "frontier tip" of China's road network to the "regional hub" connecting the inside and outside of China Unicom.

Entering the era of high-speed rail, there are four "slow trains" that still climb mountains and mountains on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and stop at every station on the winding railway line. It is the most economical and convenient way for residents along the line to live, travel, trade, read, and get married. one of the travel tools.

  "The maximum speed of the updated slow train reaches 120 kilometers per hour, and it is only 'slow' because it stops at multiple stations along the line." He Jing, a conductor of the Kunming Passenger Transport Section who has been on this train for 7 years, is an old acquaintance of the vegetable farmers along the line. , she observed that the regular passengers of the "slow train" are mostly middle-aged and elderly people over the age of 50. With the development of the economy, young people in the villages along the line go out to study and work, while the elderly at home are self-sufficient and sell fresh fruits and vegetables through the railway. , "The most common thing this season is wild mushrooms."

  As soon as they got in the car, Chen Xingju and her fellow villagers packed wild mushrooms into small baskets without stopping.

Songming County has abundant rainfall, mild climate, and wild fungi all over the mountains.

The dried mushrooms, blue-headed mushrooms, and shallot mushrooms that "just came down the mountain" in the basket are their source of income today.

  At the station in Qujing, the vegetable farmers walked fast and rushed to the farmers' market within a 10-minute walking distance.

According to local residents, because most of the vegetable farmers come from the "slow train" around Malong District, a unique "Malong Street" is formed in the market, and because the vegetable farmers have to catch the train back, the "Malong Street" is only 2 times a day. For about an hour, the vegetable farmers shouted hard, and the voices of inquiries and bargaining were endless.

  Fresh wild mushrooms are very popular. Before 1 pm, Chen Xingju, who had sold out the mushrooms, set off on the way back.

"Today's wild mushrooms are sold for more than 900 yuan." Chen Xingju said that before the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia, he made a living by running this train and could earn about 30,000 yuan a year to support his family.

"Now that there is a road in the village, there are more vegetables sold, but we still take the slow train, and the price is only a quarter of the road."

  Chen Xunming, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of Niulanjiang Town, Songming County, said that the income of residents in Xiaoxin Street mainly depends on growing economic crops such as flue-cured tobacco, vegetables and rapeseed. Take it out, get rid of poverty and become rich, and attract young people who experience slow trains into the countryside to promote the development of the local tourism economy.”

  Today, Chen Xingju's family bought a car and built a house for their son.

The railway not only changed her living conditions, but also made her yearn for the outside world.

  "I heard that there is another green-skinned train called 'Hulk', which can go all the way to Laos." Chen Xingju looks forward to traveling on the China-Laos Railway with her husband.

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