1905 In May, the Engineering Bureau of Beijing-Zhangjia Railway Administration was established, with Chen Ren as general manager and Zhan Tianyou as general manager and chief engineer. 1906, Zhan Tianyou was promoted to general manager and chief engineer. Zhan Tianyou clearly knows the difficulty of this task. He must first resist cynicism from all sides: some people say that he is "overreaching", "only spending a few dollars" and even "daring". In a letter to Mrs Northrop, an American teacher, he said: "If the Beijing-Zhangjiang project fails, it will be not only my misfortune, but also the misfortune of China engineers, and it will bring great losses to China. Before and after I accepted this task, many foreigners publicly declared that China engineers could not undertake the arduous project of masonry and cave dwelling on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou line, but I persisted in my project. " . It fully embodies the patriotism and sense of national responsibility of China intellectuals.
Imperialism always wants to seize this road. At the beginning of the project, Japanese Yujiro wrote to Yuan Shikai at the imperial gate, saying: China people can't afford to build this road, so it's safer to ask Japanese technicians. The Englishman Jinda also came to intercede for Japan. Zhan Tianyou flatly refused to hire any foreigners on this road. After the Juyongguan tunnel project started, hordes of foreigners often came to spy in the name of hunting, hoping that the project would fail in order to take advantage of people's danger. Zhan Tianyou set the tone for the people of China with excellent results.