Witness of change

A decade after the Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed corridor started to function, a leading engineer recalls the journey, Zhao Ruixue and Liu Kun report.

Xu Keliang is a man of medium height and tanned skin and wears glasses like many others in China. His work as a leading designer of the country's most complex high-speed corridor distinguishes him.

Sitting in his office in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, the engineer says he has taken on challenges at work, without a thought of ever giving up.

"Building a high-speed railway in China was my dream. And no matter how hard it got, I knew it would be my life's pursuit," Xu, 58, says.

His dream turned into reality by the end of 2009, when the high-speed railway connecting Wuhan and Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, was put into service. The Wu-Guang (Wuhan-Guangzhou) line stretching 1,068.6 kilometers over plains and hills, saw trains running at 350 kph, which cut travel time between the two provincial capitals by more than six hours.

China's latest high-speed trains between Beijing and Shanghai usually run at speeds of up to 380 kph.

The achievements of the Wu-Guang high-speed network were backed by hard work and persistence represented by Xu and his team a decade ago.

"I was amazed by the news of the late leader Deng Xiaoping traveling in Japan during a visit on the Shinkansen bullet train in the late 1970s. At the time, trains in China could only run at speeds of a few dozen kilometers an hour," says Xu, now deputy chief engineer of a Chinese railway survey and design institute.

After Xu graduated from Changsha Railway College in Hunan province in 1982, he worked as a technician in a company in Wuhan. He then took part in surveys and design work of several railway projects, including the high-speed railway link between Beijing and Shanghai.

In 2003, the opportunity came when Xu was appointed the lead designer of the Wu-Guang high-speed railway. The project was questioned by foreign counterparts in the beginning, mainly because the construction environment was difficult - the line had to be laid on a diverse terrain.

"We had to rely on ourselves and make breakthroughs in core technologies," says Xu.

He once led over 40 teams to work on different aspects of the project such as bases, bridges, tunnels, control system, communication links and the maintenance system.

In order to test sets of data, the teams sometimes worked for days without rest. The endeavor was stressful but satisfying.

Over 95 percent of the Wu-Guang railway tracks are welded together without ballast, because of the terrain conditions. The teams also improved the technology. The bases of these tracks are made of concrete and attached to concrete beds, which make the high-speed trains run smoothly and cost less in maintenance.

The application of advanced technology in Wu-Guang high-speed railway created new records, says Xu, giving the example of a bridge with an arch span of 140 meters as among the longest such bridges built without ballast tracks at that time.

In the Changsha section of the railway, the teams dropped the original plan of a 10-km viaduct because that would require the demolition of a very large residential area there. Instead they successfully designed a tunnel below the Liuyang River, making this China's first underwater segment of the high-speed railway.

For Xu, there were many difficulties to be fixed in the task. He says when he couldn't fall asleep at night, he would drive his car along the Donghu Lake in Wuhan for inspiration.

"I would stop at a spot randomly and sit by the lake to think over the problems," Xu adds.

A lumbar disc protrusion he suffered shows how hard he had worked back then.

"He has endured great pain from the protrusion in recent years. Sometimes he needed our help to walk into a room. If it was so painful that he couldn't sit down, he would lean on the desk to check the design paper," says Guo Jianhu, 56, one of Xu's co-workers on the Wu-Guang railway project.

Such efforts paid off.

"The high-speed railway in China is amazing. The trains run fast and smoothly, saving me travel time "says Ben Lor, a Chinese-American who makes multiple trips every year in China by such trains.

In the past 10 years, Xu has continued to work hard on the highspeed railway network. To date, he has taken part in the design of over 20 high-speed railway projects.

"Now high-speed railways are built through valleys, deserts and high altitudes in the country. Our technologies are now among the world's leading ones," says Xu.

China now has the world's longest high-speed railway network covering 29,000 kilometers and perhaps the most modern.

Xu has witnessed this development firsthand. But he owes a lot to his family.

"During those years of working on Wu-Guang high-speed railway, I spent more than 200 days a year at the construction sites," says Xu. "My wife shouldered most of the responsibility of our family. She is very supportive."

Contact the writers at zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 08/02/2019 page14)