Preface
The altitude is as high as 4,300 meters, the average annual temperature is 0.2 degrees, and frost occurs in other months except July and August.
However, it is such a place that the mainland spent more than 30 years to build a city - Shiquanhe Town.
China has once again made the impossible possible!
Shiquan River Town
However, what is puzzling is that Shiquanhe Town was obviously not suitable for people's life back then, so why did the mainland spend a lot of effort and high cost to build a city?
After careful study, I have to sigh that the country's foresight!
The content of this article is written with authoritative information combined with personal opinions, and the source of information has not been marked in the article, please be aware.
China makes the impossible possible!
I believe that most of everyone's impression of the uninhabited areas of the mainland is "mysterious, sparsely populated, and harsh environment", not to mention those explorers, even the nearby villagers are also afraid of it. The title of "Life Forbidden Zone" was not obtained in a vacuum!
For example, in the Lop Nur area of Xinjiang in mainland China, this "ear of the earth" has attracted countless people from ancient times to the present.
In the 80s of the 20th century, the famous scientist Peng Jiamu disappeared during an expedition in Lop Nur, when the country dispatched planes, police dogs, and troops, spending a lot of manpower and material resources, and finally found nothing;
In 1995, three rural workers in Milan went missing in a jeep to explore treasure in Lop Nur, and later, an explorer found the remains of two of them 17 kilometers away from Loulan.
This puts a veil of mystery on Lop Nur!
It is precisely like this, many people think that we cannot survive in no man's land, but is this really the case?
In fact, in the Ali region of Tibet on the mainland, there is such a special place, which is Shiquanhe Town.
Before 1964, it was still a Gobi desert, except for the occasional herdsmen who came to graze, others rarely came to "patronize", which was comparable to a "no man's land".
Who would have thought that just a few decades later, this place has been "transformed" into a modern city with bright lights and busy traffic!
Of course, if you want to build a city in a "no man's land", the difficulty is not ordinary, and even a little "Arabian Nights", and the construction process of Shiquanhe Town is naturally no exception, how difficult is it?
The construction of Shiquanhe Town began in 1965, when the construction team from Xinjiang laid the first brick and stone of Shiquanhe Town on the deserted Hongliutan on the north bank of the Shiquan River.
When was 1965?
At that time, supplies were relatively scarce, and although the traffic conditions here had been greatly improved due to the opening of the Xin-Tibet Highway, the transportation from the interior to the border areas was not perfect at that time.
So, we can imagine how difficult it is for the outside world to send building materials to this place, not to mention the big problem of energy.
Even so, people never gave up.
Xin-Tibet Highway
In 1966, after the Ali Prefectural Committee and the special administration moved to Shiquanhe Town, the relevant personnel made unremitting efforts to first build a bridge across the Shiquan River, and later, not only built the auditorium of the prefectural committee and the special office, but also built a road several hundred meters long along the Xinzang Highway.
At this time, the population of Shiquanhe Town was still not large.
It was not until the 80s of the 20th century that the Gar County Party Committee and the county government also moved here for some reasons, and the urban population of Shiquanhe Town gradually expanded, and by 2010, the permanent residents reached more than 10,000.
With the completion of the construction of roads and railways with the unremitting efforts of workers, and with the gradual emergence of roads, railways, parks, squares, elevators and other facilities in the city, Shiquanhe Town has truly "lived"!
And that's not all, due to the remote location of Shiquanhe Town, the energy problem has been urgently solved.
In order to solve this problem, since 2010, the mainland has overcome many difficulties and successively built three "power sky roads" on the snowy plateau, namely the Qinghai-Tibet network, the Sichuan-Tibet network, and the Tibet-China network.
The construction of Shiquanhe Town has undoubtedly cost a lot of money, at least hundreds of millions of yuan, which makes people a little curious, why did the mainland spend huge sums of money and spend decades to build a city on the border?
What's the meaning behind this?
Ali District Administration Office - Heavenly Ali, released on December 23, 2020
The reason why it took a lot of time to build the town of Shiquanhe on the border
On the one hand, this is the ardent hope of our predecessors.
In 1951, the mainland's "Advance Company of Heroes Entering Tibet" was stationed in Kadak (a former historical town in the Ali region), and the soldiers at that time imagined that this icy and snowy place could one day become a bustling metropolis with high-rise buildings and bright lights.
"Advance Company of Heroes in Tibet"
Now in the martyrs' cemetery of Shiquanhe Town, the mausoleums of more than 60 martyrs of the advance company, including Li Disan, overlook the entire Shiquanhe Town, and the dreams of heroes and martyrs have become a reality!
On the other hand, I feel that it is inseparable from the border dispute between China and India.
Tibet's abundant resources and important strategic value seem to have been "coveted" by external forces from ancient times to the present, such as our neighbor India.
As early as when India became a British colony, the British colonists took advantage of the gradual decline of the Qing Dynasty to blur the Sino-Indian border and "forcibly occupy" parts of southern Tibet on the mainland.
Although the British later withdrew from India and India became independent in 1947, they continued the original British mentality, not only taking over the Tibetan region of the mainland occupied by the British, but also attempting to continue to encroach on the mainland territory.
Later, they created a number of incidents on the border issue, such as the 1962 self-defense counterattack against India, when India openly launched attacks on mainland troops at the east and west ends of the border in order to occupy the Sino-Indian border area.
Although the mainland won a complete victory in that war and drove the Indians out of the traditional line of Sino-Indian custom, who would have expected that India, which was "unwilling" later, would "make a comeback" and take the opportunity to "forcibly occupy" parts of southern Tibet on the mainland.
India's actions have made us more aware of the importance of guarding the border, and perhaps it is in this context that the mainland began to build the town of Shiquanhe.
This seems to be confirmed from the geographical location of Shiquanhe Town.
Located in the northern part of Gar County, Shiquanhe Town is only 70 kilometers away from India by Geji County to the east, Indian-controlled Kashmir to the west, and Puran and Zada counties to the south.
What does 70 km mean?
This means that if we start from the town of Shiquan River and walk at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour, it will take us about 14 hours to reach India; If you drive at a speed of 70 kilometers per hour, it will be even faster, and you will be able to reach India in about an hour.
The distance between the two is so close that once any unexpected incident occurs at the border, the mainland can not only notice it in time, but also deliver supplies to the border in time, which is simply amazing.
I believe you can see this and understand why the mainland spends a lot of time and high cost to build a city in the "no man's land", in my opinion, Shiquanhe Town has a unique strategic value to the mainland.
Speaking of which, I have to praise that the mainland's decision-making is great enough.
Today's Shiquanhe town development is getting faster and faster, the current local water supply and power supply facilities are more perfect, with the unremitting efforts of people, the city is more and more green, the green coverage area is nearly 2 kilometers, the city streets are becoming wider and wider, living in such a city, the people feel happy.
Shiquanhe Town can be said to prove that there is no difficulty in this world that the Chinese cannot overcome.
What do you think about this, welcome to express your opinions!
The sources in this article are from:
1. "Baidu Encyclopedia - Shiquanhe Town, Ali Region, Lop Nur, Sino-Indian Border Issues";
2. "China's Highest City, the Roof of the World!" Jimu News-CCTV News, distributed on May 19, 2023;
3. "Shiquanhe Town: The Vision of the Revolutionary Ancestors Becomes a Reality", Tibet Daily, October 4, 2021;
4. "Lighting up the "Roof of the Roof of the World" - Written on the occasion of Tibet Ali's farewell to the "grid island", CCTV-Xinhuanet, released on December 5, 2020;
5. "But See the New City Rises from the Ground - A Review of the Construction of Municipal Infrastructure in the 13th Five-Year Plan in Ali District", Ali District Administrative Office - Tianshang Ali, released on December 23, 2020;
6. "Shiquan River, an important town in western Tibet: A new city on the Red Willow Beach", Tibet News-Xinhua News Agency, released on September 2, 2019, but in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!