At Qarhan Salt Lake in Haixi, the Qinghai–Tibet Railway crosses the lake on a section known as the “Ten-Thousand-Zhang Salt Bridge.” A China Youth Daily account published for the railway’s twentieth anniversary gives the span as 33 kilometres. The name turns a long stretch of track into a single image: railway and salt lake sharing the same narrow line across the basin.
From the journal
The Salt Bridge: A Railway Across Qarhan
A 2026 account of railway maintenance calls the Qinghai–Tibet Railway’s passage across Qarhan Salt Lake a 33-kilometre “Salt Bridge.”
A name for the crossing
Keeping the line working
The same report centers on the Dabusun maintenance section, where railway staff contend with a setting of saline soil and desert. It identifies water damage, salt corrosion and collapse in salt cavities among the problems that can affect the line. Here the bridge is more than a visual crossing. It is a working railway corridor whose upkeep must account for the ground beneath it and the salt carried by the surrounding air.
