Tunnel builders sweat it out on new rail line

Import-export

In the first six months of this year, 182 trains carrying 5,463 tons of goods, mostly fertilizers and other industrial products, left Shanyao for Vietnam. At Hekou, tropical fruit and other agricultural produce are the most popular imports from Vietnam and have to reach Kunming within one day.

A worker unloads goods from a Vietnamese train at Shanyao station. Photo by Feng Yongbin / China Daily

Qu Hongli, a transfer worker at Shanyao station, said the old trains were too slow to meet demand, and most goods were transported by road instead.

"I've been working at this station for 21 years and I remember the peak time when groups of businessman came to collect their purchases," she said, adding that in 1995 the daily exchange of goods at the station was equal to the present monthly volume.

"Vietnam still runs the narrow-gauge 1-meter-wide railway and so there has to be a transit station with track of equivalent gauge inside our borders," she said.

The Yuxi-Mengzi and Mengzi-Hekou Railways will act as a convenient link between China and Southeast-Asian markets, further strengthening cooperation and trade between China and other Southeast Asian countries, especially Vietnam, said Duan Gang, president of the Yunnan Institute of Economic Research.

Liu Baisheng, director of the Kunming Railway Bureau, said: "The Yuxi-Hekou Railway will help to improve the railway network and promote railway transport. In the future, Southwest China, especially Yunnan, will rely on the eastern line of the Pan-Asian Railway to accelerate integration with global markets, especially those in Southeast-Asia."

Li Yingqing and Guo Anfei contributed to this story.