The Duku Highway, the highway from Dushanzi to Kuqa. It is a 561-kilometer-long highway connecting northern and southern Xinjiang, spanning towering mountains and deep valleys, and connecting many ethnic minority settlements. Its completion shortened the distance between northern and southern Xinjiang by nearly half from the original 1000 kilometers, making it a monument in the history of highway construction in China.
To build this highway, tens of thousands of soldiers worked tirelessly for ten years, with 168 of them sacrificing their precious lives.
Builders
In 1974, the state decided to accelerate the construction of the Tianshan Highway, a strategic national defense highway ordered by the State Council and the Central Military Commission. This highway section is 562.25 kilometers long, starting from Dushanzi in the north and ending in Kuqa in the south. It was built by a certain engineering unit of the People’s Liberation Army over nine years. It was listed as a national key project and directly under the jurisdiction of the Central Military Commission. After nine years of hard work, the project was completed and opened to traffic in September 1983.
A perpetual monument, forever remembering the road builders
This is also a road of heroes at the same time. The road-building soldiers of that era hardily dug through tunnels on the "impassable" Daban and built a thoroughfare on the Daban where even gazelles hesitated to go, crossing insurmountable peaks… 168 people sacrificed their lives during the construction of the Duku Highway;
During the nine-year construction of the highway, hundreds of People’s Liberation Army soldiers rested eternally in the Qiaoerma Martyrs Cemetery due to avalanches, mudslides, and other causes. Therefore, this is a road of heroes.
They ranged in age from 31 to 16. Later generations built the Qiaoerma Monument on the Duku Highway in memory of those soldiers, both named and unnamed, who died during the construction of the Duku Highway. This is a commemoration that people will never forget!
The Duku Highway starts from Dushanzi, an oil city in northern Xinjiang, and winds upward into the depths of the Tianshan Mountains along the trunk and tributaries of the Kuitun River from north to south. It borders on a mountain on one side and a river on the other, making the terrain of the highway very strategic.
The winding and spectacular Duku Highway passes through the "Tielimaiti Daban" at an altitude of 3700 meters in the Tianshan Mountains. The Hasilegen Daban Tunnel, at an altitude of 3390 meters, was once the highest tunnel in China. There is also a 100-meter-long snow-proof corridor built along the highway, which allows snow collapsing from cliffs to fall into deep ditches beside the road, making it a unique sight. If you continue for another 70 kilometers, you will arrive at the lush Bayinbruk Grassland.
The role of highway construction and the advantages of enhancing ethnic unity
The highway that runs north and south through the Tianshan Mountains. Starting from Dushanzi, a major petrochemical town, it heads south through the Gongnais and Bayinbrok Grasslands, crosses over the Hasiligen, Yuximolegai, and Tieliemaiti dabans, and reaches Kuqa, an important county in southern Xinjiang. It is 531 kilometers long and was completed and opened to traffic in 1983. This section of the highway runs entirely through the Tianshan Mountains, and many places require passing through mountains above 3000 meters, making road construction very difficult. However, the completion of this road has facilitated direct travel between the north and south in the middle section of the Tianshan Mountains, thereby greatly shortening the transportation distance.
The opening of the Duku Highway has changed the previous route from Dushanzi to Kuqa by bypassing Daheyan or Hejing, shortening the distance by 300 to 500 kilometers. It has extremely far-reaching significance for communicating transportation between the northern and southern Xinjiang, enhancing ethnic unity, developing and constructing the border areas, shortening the operating mileage between the north and south, invigorating the economy, and consolidating national defense. The areas along the Duku Highway are rich in resources, including the Karamay Oilfield, the Tianshan forest farm rich in fir trees, the Ili River Valley known as the base for grain and oil, the hometown of apples and grapes, the Yoldos Grassland famous for its fine-wool sheep, the Nileke coalfield with abundant reserves, and precious traditional Chinese medicines such as pilose antler. These industrial, agricultural, forestry, and mining raw materials are of great value, and the completion of the highway can greatly accelerate their development and circulation.
Before the construction of the Duku Highway, there was only one road connecting the northern and southern Xinjiang, which required a detour of more than 1000 kilometers through Urumqi from Dushanzi to Kuqa. The Duku Highway cuts nearly half of the distance. More than half of the Duku Highway passes through towering mountains and deep valleys, with many dangerous sections where ‘apes would hesitate to climb’.
More than 280 kilometers of the road section are above 2000 meters in altitude, with four dabans (daban: meaning a high mountain surrounded by ice and snow) above 3000 meters in altitude. It passes through five rivers and has the world’s only snow-prevention corridor and China’s high-altitude Hasiligen Highway Tunnel. At the same time, disasters such as landslides, avalanches, and water damage have plagued the highway for many years.
Another important role of the Duku Highway is that it will become a golden passage for promoting natural landscape tourism in the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang. Along the way, there are natural scenic areas renowned both inside and outside Xinjiang, such as the Nalati Grassland, the Qiaerma Scenic Area, and the Bayinbrok Grassland. There are also the Daxiaolongchi and Xiaolongchi Lakes, known as the ‘Southern Heavenly Lake’, which are like two pieces of crystal-clear jade embedded halfway up the snowy mountains.
In addition, along both sides of the highway are unique mountain natural landscapes such as the mysterious red-brown Grand Canyon of Tianshan, the Kiziliya scenic area, and the Potala Palace-like mountain landscape, attracting numerous tourists from home and abroad.
Many people may ask: Why would a highway be a candidate for a ‘beautiful place’? Only those who have traveled on this road will truly understand the answer. This is not an ordinary road. If one travels the Duku Highway from Kuqa, they will experience a psychological journey from ‘fire to water’.