Do you dare to imagine? The 522-kilometer-long road is built in the cross-flowing Taklamakan Desert, but it will not be buried by moving sand dunes. This is a miracle of China's infrastructure and a miracle that is admirable to the world. The 108 well houses that maintain this ro

Do you dare to imagine it?

flowing Taklamakan Desert , building a 522-kilometer highway, but it will not be buried by moving sand dunes. This is a miracle of China's infrastructure and a miracle that is admirable to the world. The 108 well houses that maintain this road to life all have corresponding well guardians. each well house costs 100,000 yuan to maintain every year. Is the desert highway really worth it?

Taklamakan Desert is located in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, my country. The desert is 1,000 kilometers long and has an area of ​​330,000 square kilometers. The lowest precipitation is only a few millimeters each year. Just imagine such a pitiful drop of rain falling on the desert that is often 70 to 80 degrees, and it evaporates and disappears in an instant.

What's more, the strong winds here are endless all year round, the largest sand dunes are hundreds of meters high. As the wind keeps moving, the sand dunes of all sizes are unpredictable, rising and falling, forming a continuous accumulation of sand walls. Once a strong wind appears, the sandstorm will be really yellow sand covering the sky. Imagine it and it will be very scary.

As the world's second largest mobile desert , Takramagan is called the sea of ​​death, but China has built the road of life in it. The wheel Taiwan to Minfeng Highway is magnificent for more than 500 kilometers. It was built and opened to traffic in the mid-1990s. It is lonely and quiet in the vast desert, with only the sound of the wind blowing sand. However, the moving dunes are 446 kilometers long, but they cannot shake this highway because of the desert well house.

What are the well rooms used for?

The reason why desert highways can withstand moving sand dunes is because the road is protected by green belts and sand fixing belts on both sides. In order to keep these green plants protecting the road alive, the amount of rainfall in the annual natural precipitation is really a drop in the bucket.

So every other section of the road, about 4 kilometers apart, a well house will be built. There are 108 well houses throughout the road. The green plants on the side of the road must be maintained by these wells. Each well house has workers on duty, and the road is protected by the wind and sand. The moving sand dunes wanted to erode the road countless times, but they were all blocked by the sand fixing belt and green plants. What green plants are so powerful?

First, use a grid made of straw to implant it on both sides of the road to prevent wind and sand. Then in 2003, the country planted green belts on both sides of the highway, with a width of more than 70 meters to prevent sand.

The green area formed by these trees is as high as 3500 hectares, making it a green guardian to guard the highway in the desert. Trees that can survive in harsh conditions like the desert are all tree species that can withstand wind and sand and withstand high temperatures. After long-term cultivation, researchers have selected dozens of varieties, mainly saxal trees, strange willow trees and sand-guilling date trees.

Such a large area of ​​green plants, plus the length of several kilometers in each responsibility area, the area is also very considerable, and the amount of water needed to irrigate the well room every day is also very large.

These workers who guard the well room are middle-aged, and many of them are older. Most of them are couples living together in the well room. Their work is ordinary and great. They are here day and night, taking care of these desert roads built through thousands of difficulties and dangers, as well as the green plants on the desert.

When the state builds these well houses, each of which invests about 100,000 yuan in funds every year to maintain. It sounds like this amount is surprising. So what are the main uses of these high fees?

The worker of the well room, at the working well location, uses a diesel engine to extract groundwater from the well every day, and also distributes fertilizer to water trees and green plants within the area of ​​his responsibility, and check whether the sand fixing belt is loose and needs to be reinforced.

These diesel engines can only be used for water supply well pumping, and there is no excess electricity to supply other home appliances.Many netizens will wonder, do workers have to drag the water pipes to water these trees and green plants several kilometers? You should know that the responsibility area of ​​each well house is about four kilometers, and the road is about eight kilometers, and the greening on each side is dozens of meters wide. If you want to irrigate all of them in place, you may have to walk for a day, especially in the hot summer weather. Can watering be eaten after going so far?

actually doesn’t have to worry at all. This irrigation system is a modern design and uses the method of laying pipes. Workers do not need to work hard. They just need to check whether the watering pipes on both sides of the road are cracked and damaged, which reduces a lot of labor intensity.

The daily necessities in the well room all rely on weekly centralized delivery. Other seasons are better. The hot summer is very unbearable, and the food is prone to deterioration in high temperatures. However, the well room does not have a refrigerator to store food. Even if some workers have tried to dig a cellar to try to store food, they still have hot sand after digging a few meters deep, so they can only give up.

It can be seen that the temperature of the desert is so terrible in summer. These workers have to overcome many work and life difficulties. Some people have worked in such a difficult environment for more than 20 years, which is also very respectable.

Diesel generator is used every day for water pumping. More than 50 liters are used every day. Each well room has to use oil costs of about 100,000 yuan per year. More than 100 well rooms. In addition to more than ten solar power pumping, the others are currently pumping diesel generators. Overall, maintenance fees are subject to tens of millions of yuan per year. In addition to the maintenance costs of these watered pipelines are also a considerable expense.

However, this desert highway provides immeasurable convenience and development opportunities for people in Xinjiang and surrounding provinces and cities. It is worth building this desert highway for thousands of years.