China National Highway 109 connects Beijing with Lhasa. It runs westwards of Beijing via Datong, Yinchuan and Xining to Golmud before turning southwest to Lhasa. The total distance of the highway is 3,901 km.
In Beijing it is known as Fushi Road, as it begins from Fuchengmen and traverses through Shijingshan.
The majority of the Beijing section is in Mentougou District.
The section of the highway within western Qinghai and Tibet, from Golmud to Lhasa, is paralleled by the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
"Tasked with carrying upwards of 85 per cent of goods in and out of Tibet, the Qinghai-Tibet highway has been dubbed the "Lifeline of Tibet." ... Since it was opened to traffic in 1954, the central government has spent nearly 3 billion yuan (US$362 million) on three major overhauls. It was asphalted in 1985."
Read more about China National Highway 109: Route and Distance
Famous quotes containing the words china, national and/or highway:
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Disney World has acquired by now something of the air of a national shrine. American parents who don’t take their children there sense obscurely that they have failed in some fundamental way, like Muslims who never made it to Mecca.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)