The Monument for Sari

Rumour has it that a 30-year-old female Tsarist Russian engineer, named Sari, was excavating the Khingan Range Rail Tunnel with her fellow engineers in Boketu.

When the senior railway engineers were at their wits’ end in digging up to the Khingan Range mountain, Sari suggested opposite excavation methods based on precise calculations. It turned out that shooting wide off the mark, there was no sign of connecting the two excavations by the estimated completion date. Sari thought she was solely responsible for the miscalculation, she committed suicide by hanging herself from a birch tree near the excavation site. The day after she committed suicide, the tunnel was successfully excavated, which added another layer of tragic elements to the legend. This female engineer has never been written in history, and there is no way to verify its authenticity, but the stone monument built by the locals halfway up the hill is an unspoken testimony. As we climbed up the hill, the monument was hidden in the bushes, with moss crawling on the surface of the stone. The tunnel is veiled. The mega-infrastructure proclaims history, but are people inclined to believe stories with flesh and blood?