¡¡"RAILWAY ECONOMY"

    As the Chinese saying goes, a man of wisdom should make a living out of the mountain and water close to his home.

    In today's Tibetan version of the proverb, Tibetans should rely on the railroad -- at least to some of them.

    Zhoigar is undoubtedly a woman of wisdom in that sense. The 59-year-old Tibetan peasant woman in Nagqu runs a Tibetan-style teahouse next to a railway station close to her home in Gulu town. The 30-square-meter room is almost always full seated and Zhoigar is seeking to expand the place into a cafe and souvenir shop. "I have to move quickly, otherwise someone else will do it."

    In fact, shops and restaurants have been mushrooming around nearly every station along the rail link.

    Qamba, who runs a dairy in Nagqu, plans to buy more cattle next year and double the plant's output that presently totals 1,500 kg a year. "Traditional Tibetan dairy snacks are very popular among tourists. Many buy huge packages to take home."

    The regional tourism bureau said the tourism industry has employed at least 40,000 herders and farmers, twice as many as last year.

    Herder families around Namco Lake, once dubbed as the highest salt lake in the world, are expected to make 30,000 yuan (3,750 U.S. dollars) each this year for accommodating tourists in their houses, said Liao Lisheng, an official with the bureau.

    He said the average per capita spending of tourists in Tibet is at least 300 yuan (37.5 U.S. dollars) a day and half of the amount is spent on Tibet specific adornments, herbs, incense and dried yak meat.

    The immense opportunities brought by the railway have triggered an investment craze among businesspeople from inland areas. Private investment into Tibet roared 73 percent year-on-year to 2.8 billion yuan (350 million U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters, compared with 5 billion yuan (625 million U.S. dollars) throughout the five-year period between 2001 and 2005.

    Later this month Tibet will witness the inauguration of its largest shopping center in Lhasa, a 75-million yuan (9.5 million U.S. dollars) project invested by five businessmen from Wenzhou, a booming manufacturing center in the eastern Zhejiang Province.

¡¡¡¡MORE THAN AN ECONOMIC BOOM

    Experts say the railway means more than an economic boom in Tibet.

    An Caidan, a Beijing-based expert on Tibetan studies, said the railway has made room for the development of Tibetan culture. "The Tibetans enjoy the right to seek development," he said. "The railway will lead Tibet to prosperity and present Tibetan culture to the world."

    Huang Fukai, head of a Tibetan culture preservation society, believed the railway will change the locals' way of life. "They will keep to their traditional diet but will tuck into Western food and put on jeans, too."

    Environmentalists worry the railway might undermine the ecology on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

    Addressing such concerns, the central government spent 1.5 billion yuan (about 180 million U.S. dollars) on environment conservation along the route, the largest amount in any single railway project in China.

    "I do admire the Chinese government for that," said Italian sinologist Aldo Mignucci during a visit to Lhasa.

    The Qinghai-Tibet Railway Corporation, operator of the railway, sends a special train once a week to collect garbage along the route, which is delivered to Golmud for central disposal, said the company's vice president Ma Baocheng.

    He said the company has also set up 15 sewage treatment centers between Golmud and Lhasa, the 1,142-km section completed last October.