Dispatches from Crazytown

August 30, 2007

Construction in the Clouds

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From the Great Wall to Mao’s Underground City, nobody has the appetite for massive engineering projects that the Chinese have. I knew about the Three Gorges Dam and the Qingzang railway, but here’s a feat of logistical hubris I hadn’t heard of: the Nyalaalm to Zhangmu highway.

We waited six hours to be allowed past the checkpoint in Nyaalam, but once we finally departed the town, around 7:00 pm, my biggest question was whether we should have been allowed through at all. The muddy little road hugging the side of a bottomless ravine, descending around 1500 meters in a matter of hours with visibility severely limited by rain and clouds, was made even more perilous by the obstructive cement mixers, dump trucks, and migrant worker shantytowns somehow transported to this remote jungle and incongruously perched on the edge of this rainy abyss.

I can’t imagine a terrain less congenial to a multi-lane expressway, but the Chinese capacity to take on Mother Nature through sheer barefooted manpower is boundless. Projects on the horizon include an escalator up to Mt. Everest’s north peak and air conditioning the entire Gobi Desert.

Construction in the Clouds