Leading to its final destination in Lhasa, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) is the world's highest and longest plateau railway. On October 15, 2005, the first load of goods ever to be transported by rail arrived in Lhasa.

Spanning 1,956 kilometers, the QTR originates in Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province. The first section, the 814-km stretch from Xining to Golmud, went into service in 1984. The balance of the rail line, the 1,142-km-long Golmud-Lhasa section, was newly completed in October 2005. The line is projected to go into full operation later this year, or early 2007.

The completion of the QTR realizes a historical goal: a national railway extending to and through Tibet. Today, for the first time in history, railway lines now connect all Chinese provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions.

The Impossible Made Possible

Constructing a super bridge at the source of the Yangtze River. Measuring 1,389.6 meters in length with 42 arches, the bridge spans a 1,300-meter-wide riverbed. Its location, the Tuotuo River Valley, is at the heart of the permafrost of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

In his book, Riding the Iron Rooster, on the pages of which he recorded his travels by train in China, American writer Paul Theroux states: "The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa." His presumption, echoed by laymen and expert engineers alike, is understandable. For it was long thought to be an impossible task-to build a railway that would penetrate the clouds and climb to the "roof of the world." But the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has changed all that.

The formidable weather of the plateau presented serious engineering challenges.

Tibet, which formally merged into Chinese territory as an administrative region during the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368), features one of the more formidable natural terrains in the world. An elder brother of the 14th Dalai Lama once wrote, "We lived amidst precipitous and dangerous mountains which were clad with snow all the year round. Traveling along the paths by the cliffs of sky-reaching mountains, a caravan could be thrown away by a blast of fierce wind, and even the chill of wind could take the lives of travelers. A journey from one place of stay to the next usually took several days or even several months."

And so, while emperors of feudal dynasties ruled over Tibet, dispatched envoys to Tibet, and conferred titles on local Tibetan religious leaders, Tibet, in most people's eyes, remained a far away, barely accessible place. Even Xu Xiake, a noted traveler during the Ming Dynasty, never set foot on the earth of Tibet. As British writer Peter Hopkirk explained in his book, Trespassers on the Roof of the World, for centuries Tibet remained a remote region barely touched by cartographers. It was, therefore, long represented only as a blank place on the maps of the world.

Traversing a Tough Terrain

One of the greatest inventions of the 19th century, railroads have driven national economies and developed nations. Unfolding a map of Chinese railways, one finds rail lines densely distributed in the northeastern, northern, and southern parts of the country, with a few in the western regions. Just decades ago, among Chinese provinces and autonomous regions, Tibet was accessed not by paved road, and not by railroad. After a half-a-century of development, Tibet is now reached by highways, airlines, and now the world's highest rail line.

The QTR traverses a 550-km region which is frozen year-round, as well as several sections of island-shaped frozen earth, seasonal frozen earth, and marsh. These natural hazards of the land proved to be the greatest challenge in construction. Thanks to more than 200 scientists, engineers, and technicians, and their joint efforts in constructing tunnels, bridges, and roadbeds, traversing the frozen earth by rail was successfully accomplished. To get the job done, many of the engineering methods and technologies were for the first time employed in China and, indeed, for the first time anyplace. The QTR is thus considered a "monument to frozen-earth engineering."

And, at the Tanggula Mountain Mouth, the QTR ranges at least 200 meters higher than the Peruvian railway in the Andes, which was previously the world's most elevated track.

Constructed within a 150-meter-thick layer of ice, the Fenghuo Mountain Tunnel is the world's highest permafrost tunnel. Before the construction of the QTR, some predicted that no railway would ever pass Fenghuo Mountain. The No.20 Bureau of the China Railway Group, which undertook the construction of the railway, worked closely with scientific-research institutes and successively overcame a series of challenges presented by construction in plateau permafrost. The year of its completion, 2002, the tunnel was cited by the Chinese Academy of Engineering as being one of the nation's top 10 technological achievements.

Conditions and Caution

The entire QTR runs more than 3,000 meters above sea level, with 960 kilometers of the journey being higher than 4,000 meters. At its highest point, the line is 5,072 meters above sea level. The annual average temperature is less than zero degrees Celsius; the lowest is minus 45 degrees. Some areas along the line are known to be a source of pestilence, and due to the air's low oxygen content (merely half that of inland areas), the construction workers risked serious altitude sickness, such as pulmonary edema and hydrocephalus.

But, despite the potential natural hazards of the job site and altitude, not a single worker died of altitude sickness during four years of construction. To protect the health of the construction workers, the general command for the project established extraordinarily stringent and comprehensive safety measures. To ensure timely medical treatment for workers, hospitals were constructed along the line. The most modern of mechanical equipment was employed to ease the workers' labor load. Seventeen oxygen stations, equipped with 25 high-pressure oxygen compressors, were established along the line, and each worker would take oxygen for at least two hours a day. Such a large scale of use of oxygen equipment was unprecedented in the history of construction.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a fragile natural environment and home to a wide variety of rare and precious animals. Any overt human intrusion could negatively impact the ecological system. Of the total investment of 33.09 billion yuan in the Golmud-Lhasa section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, 1.2 billion yuan was invested in environmental protection, more than the expenditure in any environmental-protection investment in the history of railway construction in China. In addition, the railway general command empowered a third party to monitor all environmental protection efforts during construction.

Realizations of a Railroad

Visitors to Tibet often note that prices for goods are relatively high. And the further one travels into the depths of the region, the higher the prices become. The actual purchase power of 100 yuan there is equivalent to 54 yuan in China's eastern coastal areas. In the relatively remote Ngari area, the price for a typical chicken is about nine times that of the inland areas.

The primary reason for higher prices? Most of the means of production and living necessities originate in inland regions, and transportation of those commodities by highway adds to the base expense.

Logistical hindrances of transportation became a bottleneck in the economic growth of Tibet. Restricted was the development of tourism, mining, medical industry, agricultural and livestock products processing, the ethnic handicraft industry and more.

Railways are the most productive of land transport systems. Since the Xining-Golmud section of the QTR became operational, the line has played a positive role in the development of the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai Province, and in the overall promotion of the economic development of Qinghai and Tibet. Golmud, a desolate desert area just years ago, is today a modern city with a population of 200,000.

The completion of the entire QTR will fundamentally improve the transportation conditions of Tibet and provide a broad support system for the continued economic development of Qinghai and Tibet.

According to government analysts, the completion of the QTR will greatly improve fuel and food consumption patterns in Tibet, and improve the local ecological environment-all to realize sustainable development. For many years, farmers and herdspeople, who account for 85 percent of the total population of Tibet, have used cow dung as a primary heating fuel; forest residents use timber; and the primary heating fuels consumed in half-farming, half-herding regions are cow dung, stalks, pine branches, and thorns. This pattern of consumption has damaged the local ecological environment. After the QTR is put into full service, people residing within 400 kilometers to the railway will be able to rely on new fuels, such as natural gas. By doing so, the quality of life for farmers and herdspeople will be improved, and the consumption of ecologically-damaging fuels will be decreased.

Traditionally, the food staples of Tibetan farmers and herdspeople was mainly comprised of beef, mutton and wild game. Such consumption has not only slowed the improvement of the Tibetan people's quality of life, but has also put heavy pressure on the plateau's ecology. After the QTR becomes operational, large amounts of inexpensive consumer goods will be available to communities along the line, and the revenue-producing animal husbandry products on the plateau will be transported to China's inland markets. Thus farmers and herdspeople will be guided toward a diverse consumption mode, and the weak ecological environment of the plateau will be effectively protected.

The Golden Route

Stunning-with snowcapped mountains enshrouded in clouds, deep gorges embellished by cascading waterfalls, colorful folk customs, and solemn Buddhist temples-the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a magnet for Chinese and foreign tourists. Since 1980, the number of tourists visiting Tibet has grown at a rate of 27.6 percent, and tourist revenue has annually increased by 34 percent-both indexes far beyond the national average. In 2004, for the first time the number of tourists to Tibet exceeded 1 million, and in the first ten months of 2005 the number reached 1.55 million, producing an income of 1.8 billion yuan.

Though the tourism segment now leads the Tibetan economy, its closed transportation network restricted further development. Tourists must travel several days to reach Tibet by bus, and the price of air tickets has limited the travel plans of many. There is even a saying in the travel community: "It is more difficult to get to Tibet than to go abroad." Typically, the price for a one-way air ticket from Chengdu to Tibet, plus food and accommodation expenses in Tibet would well surpass the expense of a travel package to Singapore, Malaysia, or Thailand.

The newly completed QTR will not only supply financially affordable transportation, but will also link together the three large cities of Xining, Golmud, and Lhasa. Also formed will be a Golmud-rim tourist zone and a Lhasa-rim tourist zone, featuring Keluke Lake, Tuosu Lake, Yadan landform, Kunlun Culture, the Source of Three Rivers, the Hoh Xil Nature Reserve, Salt Lake, Jade Pearl Peak, and Tanggula Mountain. The regions along the railway are expected to realize annual tourist revenue of 10 billion yuan.

Once in operation, the railway will provide all-weather service supported by an infrared systems monitoring system. Generally, trains will speed at up to 120 kilometers per hour, and the rails crossing frozen terrain will support speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour. This suggests that a railway journey from Golmud to Lhasa will take no more than 12 hours.

Formal operation of the QTR is scheduled to begin in 2006, or early 2007. Besides ordinary passenger transport, sightseeing trains especially designed for tourists will stop at scenic spots along the line. It is estimated that the sightseeing trains will bear an annual passenger capacity of about 900,000.

While viewing the scenery slipping past the window, travelers within the compartments will be able to enjoy food, watch artistic performances, and even seek health-care services-including oxygen, if needed. Undoubtedly, the QTR will enhance development of the tourism industry in Tibet. There is also no doubt: when complete the QTR will be the world's most elevated of transit destinations for ecological tourism and exploration.