（01）
The backwardness of Yantai began with the railway, and when Yantai opened its port in 1861, Qingdao was still a small fishing village. On August 22, 1861 (July 17, Xianfeng 11), the switch was taxed. Yantai Port has since been opened to the outside world.
Yantai opened the port, and Chaoyang Street, which led to Yantai Mountain where I lived as a child, was the most prosperous area in Yantai at that time. At that time, Western powers took the lead and set foot in this ancient coastal town.
Relying on the special status of opening a port in Yantai and the favorable conditions of being the first to come to Yantai, the British bought land in the best part of Yantai Mountain and built a consulate.
Following the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Japan and other countries have also set up consulates on Yantai Mountain, and from the opening of Yantai in 1861 to 1932, a total of 17 countries have set up consulates in Yantai.
In addition to setting up consular offices in Yantai Mountain, Western countries have also set up foreign banks and banks under the mountain to strengthen economic plunder.
Yantai port has an important position in the history of China’s modern opening to the outside world, it was one of the three ports open to the outside world in northern China at that time, and it was the only port open to the outside world in Shandong Province before 1898.
The opening of Yantai and other ports in China in 1861 accelerated the process of semi-colonization of the entire country. At that time, the port economy was active, making Yantai prosperous, with a population of 95,000 in 1909 and 131,000 by 1931.
Yantai had the opportunity to lay a railway in history, and in 1868, the seventh year of the reign of Tongzhi of the Qing Dynasty, Fu Kaisen, a British businessman in Yantai, proposed to the British minister to build a Yantai-Weixian railway.
If it can be built, it may be China’s first railway. However, it backfired. This suggestion sank to the bottom of the sea, and there was no news. Yantai has lost an important development opportunity.
Since then, both Japan and Germany have tried to obtain the right to build the Yantai Railway, but they have ultimately failed due to popular opposition.
Many years later, in 1904, a Jiaoji railway helped Qingdao’s rise. The port of Yantai gradually declined because it did not have the advantage of railways. Shandong’s economic center shifted from Yantai to Qingdao, and in 1910, Yantai lost its status as Shandong’s largest port and largest commercial port.
Since then, Yantai’s railway has experienced many ups and downs, until the 50s, when the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea broke out, and the state decided to build a railway on the Jiaodong Peninsula, the strategic front of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
In June 1953, the Lancun-Yantai railway officially started, and it was opened to traffic on January 1, 1956. By this time, Yantai had been side-to-shoulder for 85 years from the first railway proposal in 1868. China and the world have undergone earth-shaking changes, and Yantai missed the railway, and thus missed that important historical development opportunity.
On January 1, 1956, Yantai opened a passenger train to Lancun, and the people took it for free.
On January 2, 1956, the Yantai-Qingdao and Jinan trains were opened, running every day.
In 1959, the Yantai-Pukou train was opened.
In 1968, the Yantai-Pukou train was extended to Nanjing.
In 1973, the Yantai-Beijing train was opened, which was the first prefecture-level city in the country to have a train to the capital Beijing.
In 1974, the Yantai-Nanjing train was extended to Zhenru. It was later changed to Shanghai West.
（02）
In my childhood memory, Yantai only had trains to these four cities. My earliest childhood memory was taking the Yantai-Nanjing train to Tai’an and getting off and returning to my grandmother’s house.
At that time, the train to the distant place was what I saw as the link to the outside world. Longing for the outside world, curiosity about the outside world, made me deeply interested in train stations and the trains in the train station.
I remember that when I was in elementary school, I often went to the train station with a few classmates to learn Lei Feng to do good deeds. But it’s just sweeping the floor in the waiting hall or something, and you can’t get into the station.
Looking through the glass of the waiting hall, the platform inside and the long green train stopping next to the platform, my eyes were so anxious that my eyes were about to fall out.
Later, after investigation, a few of us could enter the station from the north end of Daiyang Road. The north end of Daiyang Road is a dark estuary, and there are simple embankments on both sides of the estuary, which is said to be a dark river, but it is actually a smelly ditch that emits a stench.
In order to achieve our goal, no matter how bad the smell and unstoppable wishes, a few of us walked along the smelly gutter to the outside of the station, there was a low wall, in elementary school, we were not tall, and found a few broken bricks to pad under our feet.
The most flexible first up, the lower few up up, and with a little more force, they went up the wall, and then, one pulling the other, all went up the wall in turn.
Sitting on the wall, there is a beautiful scenery in the station, not far over the wall is the railroad tracks, and there was no train going out in the afternoon, so it is not unsafe.
We crossed a few tracks, got under the train that stopped at the platform, and got on the platform. I remember that when I first went, there was no rain cover on the platform, and I checked the information, and it was a platform canopy built in 1980.
The platform is quiet, like a paradise. At that time, there were two buses in the morning and two in the evening. Then all day, the station was quiet.
Walking along the carriage on the platform, you will always find a carriage with an open door, and then climb into the carriage, and the conductor asked, so he quickly and seriously asked the conductor to learn from Lei Feng, do good deeds, help with cleaning, sweeping the floor, and wiping the table.
In fact, most of the time, the train crew has begun to clean after arriving at the station, and the carriage is not dirty, but if you want to find a job, there are still jobs, wiping the seats, wiping the glass, it’s all work. In short, getting the permission of the conductor to stay in the carriage in the proper way is a victory.
Pretend to clean for a while, then sit on the high backrest seat and feel the height of the train. The long seats can also be comfortably laid down for a while.
It’s a pity that the train doesn’t move, and you can’t feel the majesty of the majestic train moving. However, occasionally there is good luck, and the stopping train needs to adjust the platform and strand, so we can take the train to the location of Zhuji Station and then reverse back into the platform. Despite the close distance, it is also considered an addiction to taking the train.
When the conductor locked the door, we were asked to get off the train together, hide and seek on the empty platform, hide behind countless pillars, or hide on the platform.
When you have enough hide-and-seek, you will take out the poker you brought with you, a few people will sit on the platform, if there are enough people, they will tick the level, and if there are not enough people, they will play royalty.
Sometimes Sunday went from morning, hungry at noon, and played until the afternoon, when the sun set, and then reluctantly bid farewell to the platform, climbed over the wall again, and went home separately.
（03）
When I grew up, the first time I remembered the most memorable time I took a train in a pomp and circumstance was when I graduated from junior high school and went to Beijing with Meidong and Liu Chao.
Meidong’s sister, who works at a hotel, helped us book train tickets to Beijing smoothly, and our three boys mainly went out to play, so we traveled light and dressed.
The very popular outfits of that year were all kinds of snowflake denim, bat shirts with wide armpits and sleeves, turnip pants in various bright colors, and a kind of bodybuilding pants tightly wrapped around the legs for girls, white wedge nurse shoes. The boy has a high-top board shoe on his feet, which is red on one side and black on the other.
The popularity of shoes stemmed from an American song and dance film “Breakdancing” released at the time, and the streets were full of breakdancing boys that summer, learning astronaut steps and simulating the action of wiping glass.
Late at night, three of us fashionable teenagers boarded the train to Beijing, and our dream came true. We were excited all the way and didn’t feel sleepy at night. To be honest, the hard seat cars of that era will not give you much chance to sleep comfortably.
A small coffee table with teacups, lunch boxes, watermelons, beer and other messy things facing six or seven people facing each other. If you want to lie on the small table for a while, you have to carefully push things aside, because the table board is too small and accidentally falls to the ground.
Fortunately, of the three tickets that Meidong’s sister helped us buy, two were seats facing the window, allowing the three of us to take turns lying on the small table for a while. This should be the careful arrangement of the sister.
We squinted for a while, and soon ushered in the morning sun on the march of the train’s wheels. The sky gradually brightened, and the golden sunlight poured in from the window on the right, brightening the carriage and waking up the sleeping passengers.
The fields outside ran one by one to the back of the car, and the neat woods moved rapidly, as if following the field to our inspection.
We chatted all the way, curiously looking at the scenery outside, because Meito and I were both going out for the first time. Liu Chao has seen the world and explained it to both of us along the way, reminding us to see the famous landmarks we pass by. When the car passed the Texas station, I also bought a grilled chicken, and the three of us ate it happily.
After 17 hours of bumps, the ears have adapted to the sound of the train’s wheels “banging, banging”. With a flute, the train finally arrived in the capital Beijing and entered the Beijing Railway Station.
We couldn’t hold back our excitement, the car didn’t stop, so we scrambled to pull our luggage down from the luggage rack, in fact, there was no luggage, one bag per person, some change of clothes, one net pocket for each person, which contained fruits, snacks and worries prepared by their respective mothers.
Now Yantai has been opened to high-speed rail, and there are dozens of high-speed trains to the north and south of the country every day, which is fast and convenient. The train station has also been rebuilt quite majestically.
Every time I go out on a train, I try to find out what it felt and what it was like to enter the train station decades ago, but I couldn’t find that feeling.
Times flew by and took away my childhood and slow life. In exchange for me, I am a fast-paced world that is changing day by day, bizarre and thousands of miles away.
Although watching the world become more and more strange, fortunately, I still have memories of the past that I can reminisce about from time to time and secretly entertain myself. Then, he couldn’t help but blend into the never-ending crowd and continue to rush forward.
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