106 years ago today, on April 24, 1919 (March 24, 1919, the lunar calendar), Zhan Tianyou passed away. Zhan Tianyou died of illness on April 24, 1919. Zhan Tianyou, also known as Juancheng, was the first railway engineering expert in modern China. His ancestral home was Wuyuan, Anhui Province (now Jiangxi Province). He was born in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province on April 26 in 1861 (the 11th year of Xianfeng). In 1872, he was admitted to the Qing government's first batch of young children abroad and went to study in the United States. In 1878, he was admitted to the Department of Civil Engineering at Yale University and studied a railway subject. He graduated in 1881 with a bachelor's degree. Soon after, he was recalled by the Qing government and sent to the Fuzhou Navy to learn driving. In 1882, he served as the pilot officer of the "Yang Wei". He participated in the Battle of Mawei, and later served as a foreign language teacher at the Guangzhou Academic Museum and the Navy School. In 1888, he presided over the construction of the Luanhe Bridge on the Tianjin-Yu Railway. In 1894, he was admitted as a member of the British Engineering Research Society. From 1905 to 1909, he presided over the construction of China's first self-built railway, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway. After that, he served as chief engineer of Sichuan Road Company and prime minister of Guangdong Road. In 1912, he served as the Sichuan-Guangdong-Han Railway Conference Office, assisting Sun Yat-sen in formulating a 100,000-kilometer railway plan, and was elected president of the Chinese Society of Engineers. In January 1919, the Committee for Supervision of the Middle East Railway and Siberia was formed by the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and other countries. He came to Harbin as a representative of China. He served as the representative of China of the Ministry of Technology and fought resolutely to safeguard China's sovereignty. Unfortunately, he fell ill due to fatigue. On April 15 of the same year, he left Harbin and returned to Wuhan. On April 24, he died of illness at Renji Hospital in Hankou. In 1872, the Qing government sent 30 children to study in the United States for the first time, including the opening ceremony of the Zhan Tianyou Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway (1909)