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China Exclusive: China Completes Railway Construction on World Roof

Posted on: Sunday, 16 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

China Exclusive: China completes railway construction on world roof

LHASA, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- China on Saturday announced completion of a history-making railway on the "roof of the world" -- a 1,956- km-long project that is comparable to the Great Wall.

The announcement was made at a ceremony held at the Lhasa Railway Station Saturday morning to mark the country's success in making the impossible possible, by building a railway line across 5,000-meter- high mountain ranges and a 550-km-long frozen belt.

Shenzhou-6, China's second manned spacecraft that blasted off three days ago, happened to be cruising over the plateau when the announcement was made.

President Hu Jintao praised, in a congratulatory letter, the landmark railway as an "unprecedented triumph" in human history of railway construction.

Tibet's regional capital basked in glory as merrymaking crowds of railway builders, officials and ordinary citizens hailed in Tibetan and Mandarin the completion of the railway that is soon to prove a more efficient and affordable means of transportation.

"In my younger days, I thought we'd have to wait for 100 years for a railway in my hometown," said Qamba Zoinzhu, a 58-year-old businessman in Lhasa. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

The newly completed Golmud-Lhasa section of the railway, zigzagging 1,142 kilometers across the Kunlun and Tanggula mountain Ranges, has rewritten the world's history of railway construction. Its highest point is 5,072 kilometers above sea level, at least 200 meters higher than the Peruvian railway in the Andes which was previously the world's most elevated track.

State-of-the-art technologies, management expertise and efficient teamwork have turned the impossible possible. Even in areas where the least exertion sends one to the side of oxygen bottle, no single death of altitude disease was reported among thousands of railway builders.

Qamba Zoinzhu had his first train ride in 1972, when he took his sick wife to Shanghai for medical treatment. "We took a bus from Lhasa to Chengdu, where we caught a train to Shanghai. Upon returning, I thought it was impossible for trains to climb up the 5,000-meter-high mountains of my hometown."

Today, Qamba expects the new railway to bring good fortune to him. "I'll soon set up sales outlets of Tibetan paper and costume factories in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen," he said. A DREAM COMES TRUE

To build a railway in Tibet was the dream of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of China's democratic revolution, a dream that did not come true until New China was founded in 1949.

Construction of the first phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a section from Qinghai's provincial capital city of Xining to Golmud, started in 1958 and became operational in 1984. For financial and technical reasons, construction of the more challenging second phase from Golmud to Lhasa didn't start until June 2001.

American train traveler Paul Theroux once wrote in his "Riding the Red Rooster" the Kunlun Range is "a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa."

But that guarantee no longer applies: the Chinese government earmarked 33 billion yuan (4 billion US dollars) for the landmark rail project that aims to foster development of the wild west; scientists collected at least 12 million data along the route and conducted repeated tests and surveys before the designers adopted state-of-the-art technologies in terms of heat preservation, slope protection and roadbed ventilation in frozen earth areas.

To build an eco-friendly railway, the Chinese government spent 1.1 billion yuan (136 million US dollars) on environmental conservation along the route, the largest amount in any single railway project in China.

The railway has built 33 special passageways for rare animals, including the critically-endangered Tibetan antelopes. It has also bypassed celestial burial ground and lamaseries to preserve Tibetan religious sites. CLOSER LINKS

Tibet makes up one eighth of the Chinese territory, but without a railway, passengers and goods had to be shipped by buses, trucks and planes. Little access to traffic and high transportation costs have long hindered the region's economic development.

"The railway will undoubtedly promote cultural and economic exchanges between Tibet and the outside world and will enhance the region's self-development capacity," said Doje, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

At a small lamasery a few kilometers north of the Lhasa Railway Station, 57-year-old monk Dainzin Ngagwang is excited at the whistles of a passing locomotive on the new rails. "In our lamasery, only the living Buddha has boarded a train. The rail would bring us larger crowds of pilgrims," he said.

After test runs in July 2006, the railway will link Lhasa with other major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xining, Chengdu and Guangzhou, according to the railway ministry sources. It will also carry 75 percent of all the inbound cargo into Tibet, cutting transportation costs and boosting local economy.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway will stretch from Lhasa to Xigaze and Nyingchi in five years, the ministry said.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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