New railway embraced by Gansu agri sector(2)

Facilitating local travel

With some 745,900 residents, Gannan now administers Hezuo and seven counties including Luchu, Machu, Tebo and Xiahe.

Located in southwestern Gansu on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Luchu administers five towns, two townships and two State-run farms. It had 9,852 households with a total population of 38,478 by the end of 2023.

"We have many special products in Gannan produced on plateaus and lowland agricultural regions, as well as animal husbandry, such as yak alongside highland barley and winter wheat," said Gonpo Namgyal, noting that many agricultural and livestock products have high added value after good processing.

"At present, Tibetan fragrant pigs in Tebo, toasted barley flour in Luchu, cheese in Machu and air-dried meat in Xiahe are all well received in the market, and after the opening of the new railway, these products can be transported faster and become tourism products," he said.

He added that with faster transport, he can earn more.

In Luchu county, there will be three stations — Luchu, Tsecha and Lhamosi, said Xing Jiang, an office director from the Seventh Engineering of China Railway No 4 Engineering Group Co Ltd (CREC4), which is partially constructing the railway.

The Xining-Chengdu railway will also serve Huangshengguan station via the Lanzhou-Chengdu railway, which is also under construction, and then the two lines will eventually run as one line, Xing said.

Training Tibetan talent

Xing said that since CREC4 project employees started their construction work, they have also paid heed to providing local people of the Tibetan ethnic group with more opportunities.

Khamdrug Tso, 25, is a native of Lhamosi and joined the CREC4 project team at the recommendation of the township government in July 2022 upon her graduation from Sichuan Vocational and Technical College.

Starting with a job in material management covering the approval of on-site materials and the sorting of materials entering and leaving construction sites, Khamdrug Tso earned unanimous praise from her colleagues thanks to her good attitude, flexible and clear project development ideas, and hardworking spirit.

She said she has not only mastered some skills, but also helped improve her family's income. Moreover, she was proud of helping build a railway in her hometown.

"We all like her very much, as she is dedicated to her job," Xing said.

Xing added that CREC4's bid for the railway is located in Luchu as well as Zogye county in Sichuan, at an elevation of some 3,500 meters above sea level. With a total length of 26.97 km, the bid carries a contract price of 3.623 billion yuan and has a construction period of six years.

"Our project has four major challenges — construction coordination, construction organization, ecological protection difficulties and safety risks, and it has five unique characteristics — high altitude, cold weather (-30.6 C at extremes), complex geology, fragile ecology and multi-ethnic settlements," Xing said.

To cope with the harsh environment due to the cold weather and lack of oxygen, the project department has done a good job in the physical protection of all the employees, inviting the company's hospital to send a special medical examination vehicle to the construction site and conduct medical checks for them twice a year.

Anyone found unfit to work in the plateau region will be given special treatment at nearby designated hospitals, and employees can decide whether to continue working there or not, Xing said.

Wangchen Tso, a local divorcee of the Tibetan ethnic group with three children, was a cleaner for the CREC4 project. An anomaly was discovered in her kidney during a medical examination.

Suspecting that it was a tumor, a CREC4 doctor recommended a re-examination. Under the persuasion of the project department, she went to a large hospital and found that it was indeed a kidney carcinoma.

After treatment, one of her kidneys and part of her liver were removed, and now she is recuperating at home.

Wangchen said she was so grateful to the project department for her physical examination and assistance, enabling her to receive timely treatment.

Her income from the CREC4 job can help her and her three children enjoy a stable livelihood.

Previously, due to poor health awareness and difficult family conditions, locals were often reluctant to go to big hospitals for follow-up checks.