Carving a fresh path through 'sea of death'

Workers are building only the third paved artery through the Taklimakan Desert to help people and products move more freely

Five bulldozers were working on the side of a 9-meter-high dune. In one of them sat Zhang Xiaodong, his cab swirling with sand. Fine dust had collected in the lines of his sweaty face.

The construction team is building a new road through the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in China, covering 337,000 square kilometers in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.