Arched above the steel rails and wooden ties are concrete trellises that span in north and south directions for countless kilometers with new high speed trains. The old rails used to carry freight that transported goods all the way from Moscow. This is the last leg of one of the terminals on the Trans Siberian. Vladivostok and Beijing are the others. Pyongyang was going to have a stop but it was interrupted by the war and the Soviets decided to let Chairman Mao deal with the Korean peninsula from ‘50-’53. Stalin actually relayed a message to Mao saying --China can decide to fight on the side of the socialists, but if they end up getting kicked in the mouth by the Americans, that he (Stalin) was not going to help out. So today these rails still have goods, but they are not the ones that help generate power, extract resources or industrialize a nation. They are actually many of the things that are left over from those times of “great leaps” and “cultural revolutions” and “socialist eras.” And the people slanging it have stories and memories that will die along with the dusty goods they are trying to just get rid of. It is a time that will soon be forgotten and most of it has with only small accounts being recorded other than the major movers and shakers of the day. Personal diaries were burned by red guards or just destroyed by their own writers in fear that reprisal might bite them in the ass one day for an opinion that somehow was now too for over the line. On the weekends in Dalian as with across all over China, second hand markets, are rolled out and goods are bought by the highest bidder or sold by the neediest seller.
© branson Q 360 °