Desert highway under construction in Xinjiang

(Photo provided by the media convergence center of the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps)

Construction of the desert highway between Tumushuke city, the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), and Kunyu city, the 14th Division of the XPCC in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is currently underway. On September 16, construction workers were driving 18 bulldozers to work on sand dunes at the construction site in Taklimakan Desert.

"Since we kicked off the construction in July, we bulldozed 1 million cubic meters of sand to move just 4.5 kilometers forward," said Liang Bingqian, manager of the construction project at one section of the highway in the 3rd Division of the XPCC.

(Photo provided by the media convergence center of the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps)

Liang introduced that the highway runs through many big sand dunes, with the tallest one exceeding 30 meters. Normally, workers have to deal with just 50,000 cubic meters of sand to level-off tall sand dunes and fill up low-lying areas between the sand dunes in construction of a desert highway to move just one kilometer forward, but that figure has tripled in construction of the Tumushuke-Kunyu highway.

During the construction of the highway, the construction workers have encountered a major challenge in delivering the construction materials and equipment to the construction site. The section of the highway that Liang's team constructs has a total length of 54.8 kilometers. To guarantee smooth construction, the workers built a 58-km passage for transportation of construction materials and equipment.

(Photo provided by the media convergence center of the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps)

The scorching heat and sandstorms have posed another challenge for the construction workers. Since construction of the highway section started in July, the temperature in the Taklimakan Desert has stayed at more than 40 degrees Celsius and the temperature at the Earth's surface in the desert was nearly 70 degrees Celsius in the summer. To avoid heat stroke, a construction worker would have to drink 8 to 10 liters of water each day.

With a total length of 276 kilometers, the Tumushuke-Kunyu highway is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2023. When finished, the route is expected to shorten the travel distance between the two cities to about 276 kilometers from about 600 kilometers.

(Photo provided by the media convergence center of the 3rd Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps)