A super highway to Xi'an

The road -- make that Super Highway, is amazing. It's new, it's fast and it's expensive in more ways than one. The two very different provinces we travel through -- Shanxi and Shaanxi, are the crusty, ancient heartland of China. (Xi'an, the city of our destination, you'll remember was the home of China's 'first' emperor.) It's winter so there's no green; it's all classic China-yellow earth. I hesitate to call the landscape barren, because it is all occupied and cultivated or mined.

Okay, back to the road -- a four-lane divided highway. Our little convoy of two Great Wall SUV's rip up the road at about 140 km\h, just over the 120 speed limit. We're faster than most, but serious speeders are passing doing 180 or better.

While the rolling countryside is interesting and impressive, the highway engineering is amazing. We travel across the longest and tallest bridge I've ever seen. It must be several kilometers long and its supports 30-storeys tall. Another bridge hits you following a steep mountain descent. In the rising mist from the valley far below the far end of the bridge disappears and there's an illusion that you're on a runway to another dimension. Alas, it leads only to kilometer-long tunnel that takes you through the next mountain instead of over it.

There's very little traffic for such a huge expensive project. My theory is that this is what the World Bank funds with its infrastructure loans. The Xi Yun Highway is the best highway this side of the autobahn and yet the towns and villages flanking it appear to have little hope of ever scrapping out of third world status.

Okay, we're almost there. So far it's has cost us about $50 in toll fees.