In China, from north to south, from east to west, from plateaus to deserts, and from cities to villages, all roads cross mountains and rivers, criss-crossing, connecting the magnificent mountains and rivers of the motherland, and helping us move towards a new journey of Chinese-style modernization. Starting today (April 9th), “Focus Interview” launched a series of programs to see our “China Road”. The photos you see are of the karst landform in Guizhou, which is very common in Guizhou. Some people describe it as “nine mountains, half water and half fields”. As the only province in my country that is not supported by plains, traffic congestion once became a bottleneck that seriously restricted Guizhou’s economic and social development. Over the past few years, especially since the new era, more than 30,000 bridges have sprung up on the karst plateau, making Guizhou, where the “land is not three feet flat”, “change the natural moat into a thoroughfare”.
In early spring, 700 mu of citrus in Pinglihe Village, Pingtang County, Guizhou Province gradually matured, and the villagers were busy picking them. Above the orchard, the Pingtang Bridge with a total length of more than 2,000 meters and a main tower more than 300 meters high stands majestically. More than three years ago, the completion and opening of this bridge brought greater development opportunities to Pinglihe Village, and the fruit market is getting better and better. This year, the villagers decided to expand another 500 mu.
Pinglihe Village is located on the banks of the Caodu River in the upper reaches of the Pearl River. The steep and narrow valley terrain makes the land fertile and the climate humid, but the traffic blocked by the mountains and rivers has always restricted the development of local industries.
In Guizhou, there are tens of thousands of administrative villages, like Pinglihe Village, trapped in the mountains and deep valleys. Guizhou, located in the southwestern hinterland of my country, is one of the regions with the most fully developed karst landforms in the world. It is also the only province in the country that is not supported by plains. There are more than 1.2 million peaks in the province. These rolling and boundless mountains were once the biggest obstacle to the development of Guizhou.
For Guizhou, which is surrounded by mountains, bridge construction is the key to improving transportation and opening up the main artery of economic development. Pinglihe Village got rid of poverty and the villagers lived a better life because of the three bridges built in the village one after another.
Every Tuesday is the day for the market in Pinglihe Village. Every day, Chen Jiayou would come to Pingli River Bridge to do some small business. The more than 30-meter-long Caodu River stone bridge under their feet was built in 1958 by the older generation of villagers relying on their shoulders.
The completion of the Caodu River Stone Bridge has made it easier for villagers on both sides of the river to communicate. In 2016, one kilometer upstream of the stone bridge, the Pingli River Bridge was completed and the national highway was connected, which really opened up a new situation for the industrial development of Pingli River Village. The village introduced and planted high-quality fruits, and built thousands of acres of vegetable bases. The continuous flow of people and goods has brought vitality to the small mountain village.
Just over three years later, at the end of 2019, on the Caodu River Gorge, the Pingtang Bridge, an important part of the Yuqing-Anlong Expressway, was completed and opened to traffic. Starting from Pinglihe Village, it takes more than ten minutes to drive from Pingtang Bridge to the expressway, and the drive to Guiyang, the provincial capital, has been shortened from 6 hours to 2.5 hours.
The leap in transportation infrastructure has brought more possibilities for the industrial development of Xiaoshan Village. Yang Guangmeng, a large fruit grower in the village, has discovered new business opportunities. This year, he introduced a new variety of citrus, and this year he plans to expand the planting scale and sell the fruit to further markets.
The bridge is connected, the road is smooth, and the life of the villagers in Pinglihe Village is getting more and more prosperous. Relying on the cultivation of high-quality fruits and vegetables, by 2022, the average annual income of villagers will exceed 50,000 yuan.
Wang Tongjun, First Secretary of Pinglihe Village, Pingtang County, Guizhou Province: “During the ripening period of fruits and vegetables in Pinglihe Village, various merchants collect about 200 tons of fruits and vegetables through the Pingtang Super Bridge every day. After a year, the income is about About 17 million yuan.”
Over the past ten years, bridges across mountains and rivers have brought countless small mountain villages that were once closed by mountains like Pinglihe Village to a rapid development speed. At the same time, it also laid the foundation for Guizhou to reverse its disadvantages in regional development and integrate into a larger development pattern.
This is the Niulangguan Modern Logistics Park in Guiyang. At present, the annual cargo throughput here reaches tens of millions of tons. It is the largest logistics hub in Guizhou Province. In the park, the reporter met Deng Yongfu, a merchant in the ceramic tile business. In the past ten years, the traffic conditions in Guizhou have changed with each passing day, and Deng Yongfu was deeply touched. His business grew bigger and bigger, and the goods were sent farther and farther. On this day, the store received some new orders sent to rural areas, some of which were in new directions that he hadn’t traveled to before. Deng Yongfu planned to take a trip with the car himself to familiarize himself with the road conditions and learn about the market there. .
The truck drove out of the logistics park and soon got on the national expressway – Yinbai Expressway. Along the way, the truck passed more than 30 bridges of different sizes. The construction of these bridges and highways has greatly shortened the transportation mileage and reduced the logistics cost. After getting off the expressway, both the county road and the roads in the village have all been hardened and the road surface is smooth. A few hours later, Deng Yongfu delivered the tiles to the customer’s door intact.
Over the past ten years, the throughput of Niulangguan Logistics Park has increased from 2 million tons to more than 10 million tons. In Guizhou province, there are 40 key logistics parks like Niulangguan that are developing rapidly.
Ren Ren, Chairman of Guizhou Modern Logistics Industry Group: “The Wanqiao flying bridge in Guizhou shortens the distance, increases the traffic capacity, and greatly improves the efficiency of logistics operations. In Liupanshui, the first high bridge of Beipanjiang supports the east-west The rapid construction of the large passage. In Zunyi, the Wujiang Super Bridge solves the most important passage corridor going north. Going east, there is the Qingshui River Super Bridge.”
When Deng Yongfu’s pickup truck was driving fast on the Yinbai Expressway, he may not have known that the Qingshui River Bridge he often passed was a milestone in the history of Guizhou’s transportation construction.
In December 2015, the Qingshui River Bridge on the Guiyang-Weng’an section of the Yinbai Expressway was completed and opened to traffic, marking that Guizhou became the first province in the western region of my country to achieve “county-county expressways”. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, tunnels have been built in Fengshan and bridges have been built in Guizhou, connecting more than 8,000 kilometers of expressway networks and nearly 1,500 kilometers of high-speed railway networks.
Li Xudong, Director of the Comprehensive Transportation Department of the Guizhou Provincial Development and Reform Commission: “After the completion of the highway to the county, we restarted the encrypted network in 2018, which has achieved great results in promoting transportation and logistics. With the completion of the Guizhou-Guangzhou Railway, the entire southwest region Fundamental changes have taken place in the planning network, and we have successively built the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway, the Chengdu-Guizhou high-speed railway, and the Chongqing-Guizhou high-speed railway.”
On the “traffic plain” intertwined by expressways and high-speed railways, the dotted bridges have become the key to break through traffic breakpoints and congestion points. This is the Huajiang Canyon located at the junction of Guanling County, Guizhou Province and Zhenfeng County, Qianxinan Prefecture. This 204-meter-high building is the main tower of the Huajiang Canyon Bridge that has just been capped. The Lu’an Expressway Huajiang Canyon Bridge, which will start construction in January 2022, has a total length of 2,890 meters, a main bridge span of 1,420 meters, and a vertical distance of 625 meters between the bridge deck and the water surface. After the bridge is completed, it will become the first span in the mountainous area and the highest bridge in the world.
The Beipan River, where the Huajiang Canyon Bridge is located, has become the place with the most densely populated world-class bridges in Guizhou due to its steep terrain. The current highest bridge in the world – Hangrui Expressway Beipanjiang Bridge is on the Beipanjiang River. And there are many world-class bridges like this in the mountains and deep valleys of Guizhou. Among the top 100 highest bridges in the world, nearly half are in Guizhou. At present, Guizhou is using 14,000 highway bridges to continuously lower mountains and level canyons.
Dong Liang, deputy director of the Guizhou Provincial Department of Transportation: “It is difficult to find an area with so many bridges like Guizhou in the world. We have created many world firsts in the construction of bridges in mountainous areas, and continue to refresh the world‘s bridge construction New records, including the world‘s tallest bridge, the world‘s tallest pier bridge, and the world‘s first-span continuous steel bridge.”
“The sky is between the peaks, and the birds are impassable.” Wang Yangming’s emotion when he entered Guizhou 500 years ago, the road was full of hardships and dangers. After years of hard work, relying on more than 30,000 bridges, Guizhou has continuously broken through geographical limitations and opened up a regional development pattern. At present, Guizhou has become a “bridge” on the “Grand Cross” in the southwestern hinterland of my country, and it has become a link between the “Belt and Road” in Southwest my country, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Pearl River-Xijiang Economic Belt, and the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay. An important hub of the region, it has become an important node on the New Land-Sea Corridor in western my country.
Dong Liang: “By 2025, the mileage of highways in Guizhou will reach more than 9,500 kilometers, the mileage of railways will reach more than 4,500 kilometers, and an airport system with ‘one hub and sixteen branches’ will be built. By 2035, urban residents will be able to travel within half an hour. You can get on the highway, you can get on the high-speed rail in one hour, and you can get on the plane in one hour. After such a system is established, the supporting role of transportation in the entire economic system will be more guaranteed, and the modernization of transportation will be basically realized.”
In Guizhou, building roads almost entails building bridges. The “bridge-tunnel ratio” is so high and the road construction is difficult to imagine. Wanqiao Feijia contains the spirit of Guizhou people not to be outdone, and to work hard. Over the years, through unremitting efforts, Guizhou has achieved continuous breakthroughs step by step from bridge construction, traffic upgrades to economic and social development. A series of super bridges connected the developed expressway, improved people’s livelihood, and also helped Guizhou run out of “acceleration” and better integrate into the country’s new development pattern.
[Responsible editor: Shao Bingqi]