The new means of transportation will greatly boost the development of Hainan, China's biggest special economic zone and only tropical province, said Du Huirong, deputy general manager of the Guangdong-Hainan Railway Construction Co., Ltd.

For more than 1,100 years, the tropical island, considered as a barren place populated by barbarians in feudal times, had been a place where disgraced ministers and other senior officials were exiled by the emperors.

Among them are Tang Dynasty (618-907) senior minister Li Yude, noted Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet and defense minister Su Dongpo and Song Dynasty senior minister Li Gang.

These days, the island has become a rising tropical tourist center and a major producer of iron ore, tropical farm products and petrochemical products, making the building of a rail-ferry link with the mainland all the more urgent.

The most important part of the project, a ferry boat that can carry 40 railway cargo cars or 18 passenger carriages, in addition to 50 motor vehicles and 1,360 passengers, has been completed in Shanghai and is expected to arrive at the Qiongzhou Strait separating Hainan and the mainland around November 25.

The ferry boat, built at a cost of 210 million yuan (US$25 million) by the Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard Co., Ltd., could cover the 24-kilometer strait in about 40 minutes and operate in very high seas, shipyard sources said.

The building of a second ferry boat is underway.

A 139-kilometer rail line linking Zhanjiang, a port city in Guangdong, and Hai'an, on the Guangdong side of the strait, opened to traffic in January this year.

The construction of another 182-kilometer rail line from the coast to Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province, and Chahe in western Hainan, has entered the countdown stage.

In Haikou, builders are giving the last touch to the railway station, in front of which is a 155,000-square-meter square dotted with tropical plants.

The rail-ferry system, a state priority infrastructure project, is expected to cost 4.5 billion yuan (US$543 million), to be jointly financed by the Ministry of Railways and the governments of Hainan and Guangdong provinces.

The construction work began on Aug. 30, 1998.

(Xinhua News Agency November 15,2002)