The Iron Dragon Came to Tibet; the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad and its impact on the

local people and culture along the route

Mark Caijhuajia

November 2006

Introduction to the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad

The Tibet Plateau, also known as Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (ch. Qingzang Gaoyuan)

in China, stretches out in the western region of the P.R.C. The plateau has an average

the plateau suggests, the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province lie on the

plateau.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railroad (ch. Qingzang Tielu, tib. mdodbus lcagslam) starts

from Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province and ends in Lhasa. The construction of

the railroad started in 1959 with the support of Chairman Mao, but due to the inadequacy

of technologies required to build a railroad in such a climatically and geographically

challenging region and the lack of funding at the time it stopped in Golmud, Qinghai

Province, in 1978. The completed section from Xining to Golmud started to operate in

1984.

The construction of the remaining section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad resumed

infrastructure was not efficient enough to support rapid economic development. Prior to

the completion of the railroad, there were four major roads and two airports linking the

TAR with the rest of the country. However, the road conditions were not always good

and air travel was expensive.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railroad was finished in August 2005. It is 1956 km (1.218

miles) long and touted by the Chinese government as the highest environment-friendly

railroad in the world. It was said to have created many engineering marvels and described

as an engineering miracle.

On July 1, 2006, there was a big ceremony at the train station in Golmud. The

Chinese President Hu Jintao cut the red ribbon to mark the beginning of the railroad

and capable of standing among the world’s advanced nations. (xinhua, 07/02/06) In many

ways the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad represents and reflects China today.

The Chinese government has spent 28.5 billion Yuan ($3.68 billion) to build the

Qinghai-Tibet Railroad. They built a railroad that was considered simply impossible

because the plateau posed many engineering difficulties due to its high altitude and the

harsh climate. From Golmud to Lhasa, there are high mountain passes like Tanggula

Shankou and a large section of the railroad is below the freezing temperature year round.

However, despite all kinds of difficulties, the Chinese engineers built the railroad

successfully at an average elation of 4000 meters. “The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that

more intensive in June, just one month before the trial operations of the railroad. Since

the start of the railroad construction the government has been tirelessly promoting the

railroad through all channels of communication. As the operation day neared I could hear

more and more people talking about the railroad. People were eager to see the moment

when the iron “rainbow”, a popular metaphor used by the government propaganda organs

to describe the train, would appear on the plateau.

The Government Propaganda

The Sky Road

Early in the morning I stand on the green pasture and see the divine eagle

together.

That would be such an amazing sky road, leading us to the heaven in the human

world.

directions.

railroad. It became popularized by the state only after the completion of the railroad. It

prospects of a bright future ahead with the railroad. In this song there are some

noteworthy phrases that the government propaganda apparatus has been using to describe

imaginations to a fantasyland. This metaphorical phrase does not only suggest the high

altitude of Tibet but also nicely fits in the picture of Tibet that is often portrayed as a

heavenly place on earth in the Chinese mainstream media in recent years.

A “line of happiness” (xingfuxian) best describes the theme of the railroad

promoters. This song has been used to promote the railroad. This is an auspicious road

that would only bring happiness and prosperity. This is an amazing road that has

overcome the high mountains and other geographical obstacles. This is a road that

shortens the distance between Tibet and the rest of the country both in time and space. In

that sense this road brings people of different ethnic groups together and unite them under

one common nation. The railroad would incorporate the TAR into the Chinese people’s

imagined community, the Chinese nation, using Anderson’s definition of nation as an

different levels, engineers, and business people. They have advocated the railroad

through all forms of popular media such as TV, newspapers, www, radio, magazines,

billboards, posters and etc. These promoters have concentrated on different themes to win

people’s support and appreciation of the railroad.

For the government officials, “telling the bitterness” of the workers is a

conventional way of asking for praises and appreciation from people. In the case of

building the railroad the government has documented the railroad engineers and builders

telling their bitterness. In the media there are many reports on the railroad builders and

their personal accounts. On the official website of the railroad in Chinese (Qingzang tielu

wang) there is a section devoted entirely to the literature on the people building the

on the China Central TV channels that virtually reach every corner of the country. The

first train leaving from Golmd for Lhasa was broadcasted live on CCTV 4, a TV channel

targeting mainly at the Chinese audience abroad. When the first train arrived at the Lhasa

train station, there was a big welcome prepared. The Tibetan dancers danced at the station

and offered Kabtang to the train staff and passengers. Most of the passengers on the first

train were the media workers such as journalists and TV reporters. The Chinese

government also invited many international media workers to report on the railroad.

consciousness of people. People particularly in the cities who have more exposure to the

railroad when I asked them about the railroad. Here is my short interview with a Han

local taxi driver in Xining that would illustrate it;

Zhang: The business is OK. There are many Taxis now. It’s very competitive.

Tse: Now the railroad is finished. Do you think it will affect your business?

Zhang: Definitely. There will be lots of tourists coming here.

Tse: What do you think about the railroad?

Zhang. The railroad is good for sure. Xizang (Tibet) will develop fast with the

railroad. People there will benefit the most. There will be more people going

there.

Tse: Do you think there will be any negative effect?

Zhang: I don’t think so, otherwise the state would not spend so much money on

the railroad. It was absolutely built for the benefit of the people in Xizang. The

state will not gain any economic profits. They say the state would never be able to

media. On the June 10

I was on the train to Golmud. People around me started talking

about the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad that was scheduled to operate within two weeks.

My Railroad Journey to Golmud

“I have been on the train for more than three hours now. I have talked to some

people hanging around me. They look relaxed and seem eager to find something to do in

order to kill some time. This is a ten-hour trip. The railroad is part of the Qinghai-Tibet

Railroad, which will be operational next month. The railroad has become a hot topic that

people talk about on the train now. A man sitting across from me throws out a question

asking the prices of the tickets to Lhasa. It looks like that people cannot answer that

Qinghai-Tibet Railroad.

Car Dealer Li: I think the railroad was not built just for accelerating the

was built to show the world that the Chinese state cared about the TAR and the

Tibetan people. They spent a huge amount of money on the railroad.

Solider Wang: The railroad explains one thing that China has the capability to

build a railroad like this and now China has grown powerful in many aspects.

Assistant Zhao: Now the railroad is completed. Are the troops still needed to

smooth out the flows of goods between the TAR and the interior land (neidi) in

Golmud.

Solider Wang: We are mainly there to keep the stability of the region. Also, we

need to protect the railroad. Since the outbreak of the Sino-Indian war in the 1960s

India has been hostile to China. They want to take revenge on their miserable

defeat. Therefore the railroad has a great significance for the domestic defense.

Car Dealer Li: The railroad has done a good job protecting the eco-system and the

animals. The Tibetan antelope has become a mascot for the Bejing Olympics.

People do not dare broach.

Golmud is a small industrial city in Qinghai Province. It is also known as the salt

lake city in China because of its famous Chaha Salt Lake, which is the biggest inland salt

lake in the world. Golmud is the biggest production base for salt, potassium and

magnesium extracted from the salt lakes. There are also huge natural gas reserves. This

region is also rich with minerals like god, copper, jade and precious stones. The majority

of the people living in this city are Han from outside of the province. They are working in

the services such as restaurants and hotels, and huge state-owned factories. My

be less people coming to Golmud and they would not be able to earn as much money as

they used to. They were pessimistic about the future of Golmud. They agreed that the

building of the railroad brought huge changes to the city and benefited the city

tremendously because the state invested a lot of money on the railroad and it started from

Golmud. However, according to these people the completion of the railroad meant the

stop of development in Golmud. They were worried that there would be less tourists

coming to visit a place like Golumd. Thus, they all seem to conclude that the railroad

would be good only for the economic development of the TAR and bad for Golmud.

Nevertheless, the Golmud government is promoting Golmud as a tourist place and

the production base for important chemicals such potassium. Just ten days before the trial

to Lhasa. When I asked them about the possible effects of the railroad they responded

that they would have to lower the ticket prices in order to stay in the business. Many of

my informants told me that they would prefer to take the train to Lhasa because the

railroad travel is safe, fast, comfortable and affordable. However, it seemed like the bus

drivers were not driven out of business. When I was in Lhasa, many Tibetan pilgrims I

met told me that they came by bus. They said it was difficult to buy a train ticket in

Xining so they took the bus and paid a higher price than a hard-seat ticket (yinwo) on the

train. Surprisingly, according to these Tibetan pilgrims all the buses were packed and

most bus riders were the Tibetan pilgrims and the migrant workers from Sichuan. In

Although the railroad would be bad for the taxi drivers in Golmud and the local

economy, still the Golmud people held the view that in general the railroad was

instrumental in pushing the development further and development was essential and

crucial. Despite that, in Golmud I also met people who were not informed very much

about the railroad. A restaurant owner from Chongqing said that she did not know very

much about the railroad and how it would affect her business. A Salar man from Xunhua,

who managed a hotel, which I stayed in expressed the same view. Therefore, it seems that

people were related to the railroad in different ways and affected by the railroad quite

differently.

There was a Tibetan settlement on the outskirts of Golmud. These Tibetans were

this, they did not have other knowledge about the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad.

My Qinghai-Tibet Railroad Trip

On July 15, I hopped on the train departing from Xining to Lhasa. It left Xining at

8:15 in the evening. The passengers on the train were almost all Han tourists. They were

from all over China. There was a group of people from Shanghai and a young couple

from Wuhan and there were two or three families from Guangdong in our car. It was a

hard-seat car (ch. yinwo chexiang). They were all tourists who paid for their tickets at a

much higher price than the official price because it was notoriously difficult to buy a train

me that there are more tourists because the people who are traveling to Lhasa would

normally stop in Xining for a few days to adjust themselves to the climate on the plateau.

They were simply mesmerized by the beautiful scenery outside the window.

There were always waves of excitement and admiration from the travelers upon seeing

the antelopes grazing not far from the railroad and the magnificent snow mountains in the

distance. For the Han passengers the Tibet plateau was filled with wonders. The railroad

brought the nature close to them. The passengers were holding cameras and getting ready

to take pictures of the lovely sights. Throughout the journey the passengers talked about

the railroad and were impressed by the beautiful scenery the railroad brought them. There

sky and the while patches of clouds danced over them. Riding the train to Lhasa becomes

a comfortable way to see the beauty of nature still preserved on the Tibet Plateau.

People who had money and time were eager to make the railroad journey to Lhasa

particularly in the first few weeks of the operations. The train riders that I talked with told

me they just wanted to enjoy the experience riding the train to Lhasa. They did not

particularly complain about the high prices they paid for the tickets. They thought that it

was worth it. Most of them said that they would fly back home. I learned that the first

travelers on the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad were mostly better-off Han urbanites. In fact, the

Qinghai-Tibet Railroad was the most popular phrase that people used and saw in the

summer of 2006 and the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad trip became a fashion in China.

train. In each car there were two attendants who were available for assistance. Before the

Although the attendants were Han Chinese, they had to say the greetings in Tibetan and

English. I was told that they went through a month’s training in the basic Tibetan and

showed me the greeting words on a piece of paper. They were supposed to be competent

arrival at a train stop.

The railroads become part of the landscape but it helps speed up the transport of

people and goods. “From July 1 when the railroad started operations to October 8 the line

carried 65.000 passengers into Tibet and 212,000 out of the region, said Zhao Liwei, a

publicity executive with the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad Company. The cargo service, which

opened earlier on March 1, had transported 280.000 tons of goods into Tibet and 12,000

tons out of the region.” (china.org.cn, Xinhua News Agency, 10/10/2006)

times more tourists than the year before. The railroad brought more tourists to the TAR.

than ever before. When I asked different people in Lhasa what they thought about the

railroad, there were a variety of opinions. I realized that the difference of opinion had to

about the railroad in terms of the demographic change that they could feel and see

immediately. Thus, when they talked about the railroad they were referring to the railroad

as a means of transporting people and goods. Indeed, the flows of people and goods

change economy, as the government and most people emphasize. However, it is

important to note here that the economic change leads to the changes of society, culture,

religion, and education.

Lhasa, the end

Since the Qinghai-Tibet Railroad just began operations it is too early to say

exactly what impact the railroad will have on the Tibetan people and culture. Even

thought there are already some changes happening impressively, the impact cannot be felt

within a month’s operations of the railroad it is difficult for most people to realize and

railroad would have a great impact on them. Therefore they were simply speculating on

the railroad. Although these people could see some changes around them, they found it

hard to relate the changes to them and point out the impact it would have on them as

individuals. I found out that there was a big difference between people knowing about the

railroad due to their personal experiences with and relations to the railroad.

To sum up, all I heard from my informants were the promises that the railroad

promoters made, the concerns they had, and various speculations that they made on the

railroad. At this point people were looking at the railroad as a mode of travel. Their views

of the railroad were associated with travel. People were not thinking about the railroad in

terms of how the railroad as a mode of travel would affect their culture and society at

safe. It takes only 28 hours to get home by train now. When I first came to the TAR in

problem because there is oxygen supply on the train.”

An old Lhasa woman said, “I would like to ride the train to Qinghai to visit Sku

A Sichuanese restaurant owner said, “The railroad is good for the people who

come to Lhasa to work. The railroad has made it easy for them to go home.”

A Tibetan woman from Sichuan said, “The railroad will help develop the

economy.”

A young Tibetan girl said, “The railroad will help disseminate the Tibetan culture

and more people will come to know about the Tibetan culture. And with the railroad it

becomes convenient for the Tibetan students like me studying outside to return home

during the school breaks.’

A Lhasa man said, “The railroad will raise people’s standards of living. There will

be more goods available and the prices will go down.”

employment. The Tibetan monasteries are becoming commercialized and operating in a

very commercial way. The monasteries have lost the peacefulness.

A group of Tibetan pilgrims from Qinghai said, “Now there are more and more

Han people and Lhasa will soon become like a city in the interior Chinese cities (neidi

chengshi). That’s not good.”

One old woman said, “There were many gods roaming around in the past, but

now the dogs have disappeared because the Han people eat dog meat. It is also the same

for the fish in the rivers. Now there are less and less Tibetans wearing Tibetan clothes on

the street. When there are more people it would damage the environment.” Also she

added, “”Only a few Tibetans go out so the railroad would not be particularly good for

A few days ago a bunch of us biked to Namtso Lake and we saw it was pretty dirty.”

A Han girl from Chengdu said, “I have been here for a couple of times now. It is

not as good as it was before. I like Lhasa becoming like Shanghai.”

“Now the railroad has linked Lhasa with many places and has make it easy for

people to enter Tibet. The ticket prices are not very expensive and people with different

backgrounds can come. Now there are more Han people begging,” said a young Tibetan

girl studying in Beijing.