The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway

Among the numerous traces of the French presence in the chinese southern province of Yunnan, neighbouring Viet-nam, le railroad linking Kunming to Hanoi is undoubtedly the most symbolic. After no more than four years of titanic construction works in the middle of a hostile jungle and impressive karstic landscapes of southeastern Yunnan, this railroad was inaugurated in 1910: twice destroyed, twice rebuilt, it has long been an essential lifeline for the development of Yunnan.

Its construction was a one-of-a-kind challenge - over 60000 workers took part under extreme conditions, up to 12000 of them died; 3456 bridges were built, and 172 tunnels were pierced - which left us with an extraordinary heritage, to both the historical and technical extents; yet still little people know it besides the few lucky enough to have heard about it.

The railroad is officially closed to passenger traffic since 2003, for security and profitability reasons. Only freight trains still ride its tortuous 465-kilometer long tracks, punctuated with engineering work-of-arts and remote stations in the typical French period architecture.

Although talks of restoration have often been held, in particular to promote tourism around the railway, the closing to passenger traffic, as well as the current construction of a new moderne railraod to link Vietnam, question the future of this unique heritage.

Xiaolongtan prison-mine

Since the early 1950's, China has been using prison labour as a form of "re-education through labour". This very opaque system is supposed to let convicts improve, rehabilitate and integrate themselves harmoniously within the society, by providing them with civic and political classes, labour, professional training and potential to re-integrate the society once their sentence is over. According to the Chinese authorities, the principle of prison labour is that every convict must take part in the national productivity, without a wage, and for the common good.

From 1983 on, under the impulse of Deng Xiaoping, the re-education-through-labour camps started becoming financially self-reliant, as public services or specialized enterprises (factories, mines, farms) yielding profits, and whose production spans from fertilizer to toys, to tea, or even to coal mining.

In 1994, under increasing international criticism, the Chinese government officially substituted the name "laogai" ("camp for re-education through labour") with the name "jianyu" (prison), but the operation, characteristics and objectives of the prison administration remain the same, and still hard to decipher.

The Xiaolongtan prison-mine, built in 1953, is among the oldest prisons of the People's Republic. Its activities encompass 5 penitentiary areas, including a machine repair plant, farms, an hospital, technical schools, and several enterprises extracting over a million tonnes of coal yearly.