Helping to bring the US up to speed

As China jockeys to help the United States build its first bullet train - a 1,300-kilometer project that initially will connect Los Angeles and San Francisco - we might well recall the first rail collaboration between the two countries.

That early link figures prominently in the pilot movie for Kung Fu, a US television series from the 1970s that not only offers an enlightening glimpse of Chinese culture, but also provides an illuminating glance today at just how far China and its people have come.

The movie depicts the hardships in the mid-1800s American West that nearly broke the backs, but never the spirit, of the Chinese immigrants who toiled and sometimes died laying the rails by which the "iron horse" eventually crossed the United States.