The Sun Ning Railway Company, also known as the or the , was a standard-gauge

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

in the

Pearl River Delta The Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region (PRD; ; pt, Delta do Rio das Pérolas (DRP)) is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary, where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. Referred to as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Mac ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

Province founded in 1906 by Chin Gee Hee (, Chen Yixi) and Yu Shek (, Yu Zhuo). It was South China's second railwayThe History of Xinning Railway
, Bureau of Archives of Taishan City ( some of this is copied verbatim from the Hong Kong Railway Society website article by Peter Crush).Scigliano 2007. and one of only three railways in pre-1949 China built solely with private Chinese capital. It was destroyed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

to prevent its use by the Japanese.

Fundraising

In order to fund the railway, Chin raised $2.75 million, mainly from

overseas Chinese Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. Terminology () or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...

; some sources say that further investment came from

James J. Hill James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916) was a Canadian-American railroad director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwes ...

, but others say that at a time when railway development in China was dominated by

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an nations, he "vowed not to sell shares to foreigners, to borrow money from them, or to use their engineers". Chin's partner Yu Zhuo raised further funds in China and from overseas Chinese in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

. Its benefits to

's economy were cut short when it was seized by local

warlord A warlord is a person who exercises military, economic, and political control over a region in a country without a strong national government; largely because of coercive control over the armed forces. Warlords have existed throughout much of h ...

s in 1926; it was finally destroyed during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

in 1938.Guide to the Willard G. Jue Papers, 1880-1983
on the site of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

Libraries, accessed July 19, 2007.Xiao-huang Yin & Zhiyong Lan (2003), p. 9. While raising funds and building the railway, Chin encountered numerous obstacles: a

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...

tried to usurp credit for organizing the company; there were many difficulties over obtaining a

right of way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

due to

clan A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clans may claim descent from founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, tend to be endogamous, meaning ...

feuds and

superstition A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and ...

s ( geomancy); and

gentry Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle imple and decentfamilies ''Gentry'', in its widest ...

-officials repeatedly attempted

extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, ...

. Chin bought an official title to become legally one of the gentry himself, which somewhat eased the process. Still, the construction was confronted by over a hundred riots staged by local landlord forces, resulting in thirty-nine otherwise unnecessary turns, which made construction more expensive and affected speed and safety.Cheng and Yuzun (1982)

Construction

The company was officially chartered in 1906. The first section—15 miles from Kung Yick (, ''Gongyi'') at the northern tip of the Taishan district to

Taishan __NOTOC__ Taishan may refer to: *Mount Tai or Taishan (), Shandong, China *Taishan District, Tai'an (), named after the Mount Tai, a district in Tai'an, Shandong, China *Taishan, Guangdong (), a county-level city of Jiangmen, Guangdong, China **Gre ...

—opened in January 1908. In 1909, it reached Doushan and the 54-mile railway was officially open for business. By 1913, it reached another 26 miles to

Jiangmen Jiangmen (), alternately romanized in Cantonese as Kongmoon, is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong Province in southern China. As of the 2020 census, its three urban districts, plus Heshan City being conurbated, with 2,657,662 inhabitants ar ...

; a further 21-mile branch line from Taishan to Baisha opened in 1920. Altogether, construction costs totaled about 9.7 million yuan or

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

4.8 million.

Rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can b ...

was purchased mainly from the United States, although three

tank locomotive A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender. Most tank engines also have bunkers (or fuel tanks) to hold fuel; in a tender-tank locom ...

s came from

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Trains typically had six or seven cars, carrying both passengers (in three classes) and freight. At its height in the 1920s, it carried three million passengers and approximately a hundred thousand tons of cargo annually, with 80% of income coming from passengers. In this same era, freight was heavily weighted toward imports: the import/export ratio was about thirty to one, in an economy heavily based on remittances from abroad. By 1922 there was a machine shop in Kung Yick City. Chin Gee Hee claimed that it "could manufacture everything except the locomotive".Jue (1983), p. 34. Unfulfilled 1924 plans by Chin would have extended the railway in one direction 40 miles from Doushan to the Tonggu Commercial Port and in the other to

Foshan Foshan (, ), alternately romanized as Fatshan, is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. The entire prefecture covers and had a population of 9,498,863 as of the 2020 census. The city is part of the western side of the ...

, through which would have reached

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

and the domestic mainland. Chin also wanted to continue west through

Yangjiang Yangjiang (, ), alternately romanized as Yeungkong, is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Guangdong Province in the People's Republic of China. It borders Maoming to the west, Yunfu to the north, Jiangmen to the east, and looks out to the ...

and the west of Guangdong and to the

Leizhou Leizhou () is a county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. It is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Zhanjiang. The city was formerly known as Haikang County ( postal: Hoihong); it was upgraded into a city in 1994. G ...

peninsula, forming a traffic network throughout the southwest of Guangdong. Several similar proposals met similar fates: the well-connected Yuehan Railway Company had a near-monopoly on railway construction in Guangdong, some of the gentry wished to create their own railways, and while the Sun Ning finally obtained the required formal positions, by the time it got those permissions it was in financial trouble. Furthermore, the

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

government prevented them from borrowing from abroad, despite the fact that the government itself was taking foreign loans at the time. Consequently, the railway never connected to any major port or any other key city of the Chinese economy. From 1927 to 1929, the government overtly took over the railroad, but it proved to be beyond their ability to operate it, and they returned it to civilian control. The railroad was destroyed in the Second Sino-Japanese War, dismantled in December 1938 to deny its use by the Japanese military, who nonetheless occupied Taishan. 23,782 rails were shipped to

Guangxi Guangxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the People's Republic ...

in 1942 to build the Qianguei Railway; all other assets, which were worth over three million yuan, were carried off by the Japanese.

Lucie Cheng Lucie Cheng () was a sociologist known for her work in Asian American studies, as well as being the first permanent director of the Asian American Studies Center, UCLA. She was also one of the first American academics to forge links with mainla ...

and Liu Yuzun write that, while the railway did not play major economic or strategic role in the history of Chinese transportation, "its entire life reflects the interlocking but conflicting pressures of Western

imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...

, bureaucratic

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

and

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...

which characterized early twentieth century China... Moreover treflects the role of emigrant capital and

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

on the development of enterprises in the emigrant motherland," reflecting especially the investment by overseas Chinese in a geographic area (Taishan) which had been the homeland for so many of them.

References

Citations

Bibliography

and Liu Yuzun with Zheng Dehua, "Chinese Emigration, the Sunning Railway and the Development of Toisan", Amerasia 9(1): 59-74, 1982
transcribed online
accessed 22 September 2007. *Peter Crush

Hong Kong Railway Society Under "English, Members Corner, Feature Articles", Retrieved January 2009; source for the Chinese characters for the railway name. This article includes numerous photographs. *Willard G. Jue, "Chin Gee-hee, Chinese Pioneer Entrepreneur in Seattle and Toishan", ''The Annals of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest'', 1983, 31:38. This is the source for ideographs and for (non-pinyin) transliteration of Taishanese names.

Bureau of Archives of Taishan City. Undated; the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

shows the pag
already existing
December 10, 2004. Accessed online 22 September 2007. This appears to draw heavily on the Cheng and Yuzun paper. *Eric Scigliano, "Seattle's Chinese Founding Father", ''Seattle Metropolitan'', May 2007, p. 48. *Xiao-huang Yin & Zhiyong Lan
Why Do They Give? Change and Continuity in Chinese American Transnational Philanthropy since the 1970s
commissioned by the Global Equity Initiative for a workshop on Diaspora Philanthropy to China and India, held in May 2003. p. 9. Accessed online 22 September 2007.

External links

{{Commons category, Sunning Railway, Sun Ning Railway Company
Gallery of the Xinning Railway
Archives of Taishan City. *Peter Crush

Hong Kong Railway Society. Includes a map of the railway and many pictures of the railway's rolling stock. (Link updated Sep 2009. Select ENGLISH, Member's Corner, Feature Articles) Railway companies established in 1906 Rail transport in Guangdong Defunct railroads Railway companies disestablished in 1938 History of rail transport in China Railway lines opened in 1909 Chinese companies established in 1906