Not long after the gleaming high-speed train departs from smog-smothered Urumqi, China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang spills out into an empty, alien landscape.
Martian red earth stretches for miles to the distant flaming mountains, interrupted only by flocks of white wind turbines with swan-like blades that turn gracefully.
This is a far-flung corner of China that, despite being rich in key resources such as oil and natural gas, has for decades been notoriously difficult to access by land.
In 2014, however, the groundbreaking Lanzhou to Xinjiang high-speed rail (HSR) line linked this remote region to China’s ever-growing high-speed rail network, which now has tentacles from Harbin in the northeast to Kunming in the southwest.
The 2,000-kilometre journey from Urumqi to Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, now takes just nine hours (slashed from nearly…
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Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Edition (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2018