China-to-Tibet train completes first run
$4.2 billion railway debuts amid praise, protest, media blitz
Some passengers breathed oxygen from tubes — many just out of curiosity — as the pressurized train crossed a 16,640-foot pass in Tibet's Tanggula Mountains, a height the Chinese government says makes the $4.2 billion railway the world's highest.
Girls in track suits and traditional Tibetan robes draped white scarves, a customary greeting, on passengers arriving in Lhasa's new railway station.
The train is a new tool in China's much-criticized push to bind its booming east to the Himalayan "roof of the world."
Chinese leaders hope greater prosperity will help to still calls by Tibetans and other ethnic minorities for autonomy from the communist Beijing government.
The line has prompted protests by activists who say it will fuel the influx of Chinese migrants to the isolated region, threatening its ecology and diluting its unique Buddhist culture.
One Tibetan passenger asked a Western reporter what the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, thought of the train. The man, who asked not to be identified by name, said that with China's Internet monitoring, it was too dangerous for him to search news Web sites for the information himself.
China's government says it is spending $190 million on environmental protection along the Golmud-Lhasa stretch of the railway. But despite promises to minimize pollution, the sides of the line were littered with plastic bags, bottles and cardboard boxes. Large sections of the permanently frozen earth were grassless, puddled and scarred by vehicle tracks.
Damaged permafrost "becomes dark, ugly, muddy water," said Daniel Wong, an engineer based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen who worked on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, also laid over permafrost.
"The most unfortunate thing is that such damage will spread," he said.
Trains completed shorter trips on the line between Lhasa and Golmud in Qinghai province while passengers on the 16-car train from the Chinese capital were in the midst of their journey.
State media gave heavy coverage to the railway, with newspapers publishing front-page photos of passengers singing and villagers waving to the passing train. The midday news on state TV showed President Hu Jintao congratulating workers who built the line.
Before the last leg of the trip to Lhasa, the train stopped in Golmud early Monday to switch its standard engine for three powerful locomotives required to haul the train at high altitude.
The only signs of human habitation in the arid highlands south of Golmud were occasional small train stations and herders tending yaks.
After the train climbed above 13,000 feet, pens and bags of processed food burst due to the low air pressure. Laptop computers and digital music players failed, because moving parts in their disk drives are cushioned by tiny air bags that break at high altitude.
The railway is projected to help double tourism revenues in Tibet by 2010 and cut transport costs for goods by 75 percent. Until now, goods going to and from Tibet have been trucked over mountain highways that are often blocked by landslides or snow, making trade prohibitively expensive.
The New York-based group Students for a Free Tibet set up a Web site, rejecttherailway.com, urging the public to wear black armbands in protest of the project, which the group says "is a tool Beijing will use to overwhelm (the) Tibetan population."
"We reject the railway just as we reject China's illegitimate rule in Tibet," the site said.
Communist troops marched into Tibet in 1950, and Beijing says the region has been Chinese territory for centuries. But Tibet was effectively independent for much of that time.
The rail line is a decades-old dream for Chinese officials. But work began in earnest only in 2001, after engineers worked out how to stabilize tracks on permafrost.
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