http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/31/content_12735182.htm
GUIYANG, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- In the small village of Basha with only
2,000 residents in southwest China, 56-year-old Wu Laoguang lives a
peaceful, rustic life interrupted by the occasional tourist.
Although well-preserved traditions of Miao ethnic group makes the
mountainous village increasingly a tourist attraction, the plowman
never travels far, nor does he have much connection with the outside
world, except when he is asked by exciting visitors to take a photo
together.
He still wears hand-woven cloth and keeps the topknot hairstyle, a
tradition of local Miao men. However, the serene but rather isolated
life of Wu and his fellow villagers may be changed soon.
A high-speed railway connecting Guizhou, capital of Guiyang, with
south China's metropolitan Guangzhou, will pass through the
mountainous region where the Basha village is. The construction
started in October last year, and will be completed in four years.
Upon completion of the railway, the villagse famous for its
hunting tradition will be just two hours away, by train, from the
Pearl River Delta, China's most dynamic commercial heartland.
"I have no idea what Guangzhou looks like," Wu says. "But I was
told that once the railroad is complete, many people will come from
big cities and foreign countries to visit, then we can earn more
money."
The Guizhou-Guangzhou railway is just part of China's ambitious
plan to expand its rail network in the west to speed up local
development. The plan was accelerated after the government announced
the 4-trillion-yuan (585.6 billion U.S. dollars) stimulus package to
grapple with the global economic downturn last year.
Mostly constructed in the 1960s, railways in western regions with
low transporting capacity are increasingly bottlenecking the rapid
rise of demands for transportation.
No one understands the need for expanding the rail transportation
better than Zhou Yingxin, vice general manager of the Fangcheng Port
Company, which operates the busiest port of the Beibu Gulf in Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region.
"In the first 11 months, we had cargo throughput of more than 40
million tonnes, up 20 percent from the same period last year," says
Zhou Yingxin.
"However, we don't have enough trains to transport the cargo out
of the port. The port is almost 'dead' with loads of goods
overstocking here," he says.
Robust economic recovery in China's southwest region has raised a
strong demand for raw materials, including coal, iron ore, sulfur and
soybeans, yet the goods sometimes pile up in the port.
Trade between southwestern provinces and southeastern Asian
nations is very active, but the backward rail network is obstructing
business, says Wang Binde, vice general manager of Dahai Cereal and
Oil Industries which imports soybeans from the United States and
Canada to manufacture cooking oil.
"Economic growth is actually 'forcing' railway construction to
speed up," says the manager based in Fangcheng Port.
At least ten new rail projects are being planned or constructed in
the west now, which eventually lead to the Beibu Gulf region, the
"gate" for western provinces to go to the sea.
With a new rail network, even Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in
the far western inland will no longer be far from the coast.
The construction of the second phase of China's longest high-speed
railway, the Lanzhou-Urumqi route, started last month. Five years
later, the travel time between Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, and
Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province, could be shortened from over 20
hours at present to less than 10 hours.
The 143.5-billion-yuan project passes through Xinjiang, Gansu and
Qinghai Province, which covers almost one third of China's land
territory and is the home to 40 percent of the country's coal reserve,
as well as 25 percent of oil and gas reserves.
Once completed, the railway will be connected with several other
lines such as the Lanzhou-Chongqing high-speed railway that joins the
southwest and northwest.
Eventually, grueling journeys of more than 70 hours from Urumqito
Beihai or Guangzhou in the south will be history after the traveling
time by high-speed train is shortened to 20 hours.
Yuan Renbiao's home, Xiaobao Village of Rongjiang County, is not
far from Basha village. Unlike Wu Laoguang, he has been working in
Guangzhou for over a decade.
But every trip to Guangzhou is a long march: he walks 40 minutes
to roadside to hitchhike a minibus. It will take about two hours for
him to catch a sleeper bus going to Guangzhou from the county. The
whole journey could take more than 24 hours.
"With the new railway, it will take me just several hours to
Guangzhou. It's just incredible," Yuan says.
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