After several days, Lin Lansheng was ordered to go to Beijing to attend a meeting of the Ministry of Railways. While resting, he was first asked by Sun Yongfu into his office, where he orally relayed Secretary Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji's comments, and exhorted him repeatedly and to prepare intellectually, because until the Central Committee gave approval for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway project to commence, the China Railway First Survey and Design Institute was without a doubt the main driving force, and must lead the way. This was because an impressive array of manpower was waiting for the railway plans and drafts. Immediately after, the deputy head managing foundation construction, Cai Qinghua, sought out Lin Lansheng, briefing him personally that the commencement of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway had already entered into its final countdown, and he asked Lin Lansheng, after he returned to Lanzhou, to immediately set about transferring the elite armed forces, to organize exploration and planning groups, to ready the troops, as they would only need the command of the Central Committee to set out upon the peaks of the Kunlun Mountains.
However, raising his head toward Kunlun, at this time, there was only a sky full of snowflakes, and Lin Lansheng felt that it was also only waiting for spring.
On November 26, Lin Lansheng took the train back to Lanzhou. The train passed the city of Chang'an, following the Silk Road of yore westward, when his mobile suddenly rang, and leaning on his body, Lin Lansheng answered the phone, and through the telephone receiver, he heard Cai Qinghua's voice, "Principal Lin, I'm now ringing to officially notify you, the State Council has formally decided to construct the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, at the latest, we can delay for six months next year and hold a ceremony for the commencement of work, when we return, all groups can go up the mountain, and enter the line's investigation and planning."
"Very good, Deputy Head Cai!" Lin Lansheng leapt up from where he had been lying on the soft sleeper, and put down the phone, but he was unable to sleep in the end. Leaning on a window and looking into the distance, in the wild field there was a withered and yellow sheet, sinking back into a thousand waves, looping sonorously, from this heroic symphony, vaguely, the distant ring of the camel caravans of the Tanggula Road, and it was very quickly covered in a rousing melody.
The train passed Tianshui, gazing at the earth of this town which was at the time, already low in the countryside, Lin Lansheng's veins were suddenly filled with warm blood, and the wings of his soul fluttered across the yellow earth, rising straight up to the ridge of the world, and to the generations of the surveyors of the First Survey and Design Institute, who had measured the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. His heart suddenly became calm and still, a temporary quiet like that before the start of a great war.
He stood for a long time in front of the window, looking down on this mysterious land, and Lin Lansheng was not at all lonely. The master surveyors of the several generations of the First Survey and Design Institute had already experienced three steps forward and three steps back on the Qingha-Tibet line, engraving their heroic poem in an area where the living seldom tread, and leaving unquantifiable investigative resources and knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be interrupted. When the first thought fluttered across Lin Lansheng's mind, the roar was like a great river breaking apart ice, or raging waves beating the shore. Today had hobbled out of the years of the yesterday, the meticulous effort expended by previous generations of master surveyors and was certainly not like the Yellow River of Gelmud and Lhasa in Dandong, quietly flowing by. Of the first generation of master surveyors that he was familiar with, Cao Ruzhen was almost ninety, and clearly incapable of acting as an advisor, as he was only able to look after himself in retirement. However, for the second generation of master surveyors such as Wuzidi, their health was still good, and they ought to have taken a lead role, as the leaders of specialist consultative groups, and renewing their capacity for work.
