A highway linking the isolated county of Medog in southwest China's Tibet Region to the outside world opens on Thursday, October 31, 2013. [Photo: Chinanews.com]
A highway linking the isolated county of Medog in southwest China's Tibet Region to the outside world opens today.
CRI's Wu Yanping has more.
Medog, a county in Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, is the last of China's 21-hundred counties to be connected by a highway.
The 117-kilometer highway to Zhamog Township in the north of Medog will give locals easy access to the rest of the country.
Oyang Longmei, an express station owner, says she hopes the new highway will bring a better future for her business.
"When the highway opens and the mountain road to the county is not cut off, I think Medog will have great chance to develop."
Getting into and out of Medog used to be a dangerous journey.
Travellers had to climb two snow-capped mountains 4-thousand meters above sea level where landslides and collapses were frequent occurrences.
Local people called the rugged path out of Medog the "monkey road," as only people who were light and flexible like monkeys could make their way out of the mountains.
Project leader Zou Zongliang says the highway is crucial to improving transportation throughout China's western plateau region.
"During construction of the highway, we took advantage of advanced technology and the experience gained during the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and the Sichuan-Tibet Highway. The highway is a landmark project in improving transportation in China's western plateau region."
Medog, which means "secret lotus" in Tibetan, is noted for both its scenery and weather.
Surrounded by mountains, it is humid and rich in resources.
In the 1960s, China started to construct the highway with a low-cost highway completed in 1994.
However, this was destroyed by mudslides one day after opening to traffic.
The highway cost 1.6-billion yuan, or about 263-million US dollars.
For CRI, I'm Wu Yanping.
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