'Bridge of the Future' facilitates China-U.S. youth exchanges

A group of college students from the U.S. have got a close-up look at China's historic and latest infrastructure as they took a trip to the Badaling section of the Great Wall, the Zhan Tianyou Memorial Museum and the Badaling Great Wall Railway Station in Beijing.

Lyu Gang, deputy chief engineer of China Railway Engineering Corporation, introduced the history of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway to the students. In 1909, the construction of the railway was presided over by Zhan Tianyou who graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering at Yale University. Once completed, it had a speed of 35 kilometers per hour.

In 2019, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-Speed Railway was put into operation, being the world's first intelligent high-speed railway with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour.

The Badaling Great Wall Railway Station is currently the largest underground concealed excavation high-speed railway station project in China in terms of construction scale, excavation depth and span. It is among the most complex cave infrastructure in China.

Cassandra Melina Galvan, a medical student at Portland Community College and currently participating in a Chinese language study program at Beijing Normal University, was deeply impressed by the "Chinese speed."

"In Beijing, various high-tech achievements are applied in daily life. I haven't taken the high-speed rail yet, but I often take buses and subways. Compared to the United States, the public transportation here is cleaner, safer, and more convenient."

Galvan's anticipated high-speed rail journey will come soon. She and the group of students will go to Zhengzhou, Xi'an, and Chengdu next on the study and exchange tour that is a part of an exchange program that will see 50,000 American youth visit China in the next five years.