How do the road guards on the "cloud" on the Qinghai-Tibet border work on a daily basis?

With an average altitude of 4,300 meters, Chen Derong, the road guard on National Highway 214, has been guarding the road for 24 years, and has traveled from the source of the Yellow River to the banks of the Lancang River. Chen Derong, 47 years old, is originally from Sichuan and is currently the section chief of the Nangqian Highway in Qinghai Province. Due to his long-term work outside, his skin is dark and he is almost the same as the local herdsmen.

National Highway 214 starts from Xining, Qinghai, and ends at Jinghong, Yunnan. The total distance is 3,256 kilometers. The Nangqian Highway section of Qinghai Province is responsible for maintaining more than 200 kilometers of road protection work in the Qinghai-Tibet border zone.

Chen Derong introduced that the road protection area of ??the Nangqian Highway Section in Qinghai Province is criss-crossed by large and small mountains and has overlapping peaks. It is the transition zone from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the Hengduan Mountains. Not only are road diseases prone to road diseases, but most of them are on the mountainous sections. host.

"Removing ice and snow in winter, repairing water-damaged roads, clearing landslides and repairing roads in summer are tasks that maintenance workers perform every day, without weekends or holidays." Chen Derong said that the task of ensuring smooth roads makes Most of the road protectors are in a state of "waiting for danger".

It is understood that National Highway 214 is mostly used by large trucks. The road surface that experiences winter often suffers from problems such as slurry and roadbed subsidence due to thermal expansion and contraction.

“When it’s sunny and good weather, maintenance workers will drive along the road to inspect and repair the road surface in time to ensure the maximum smoothness of the road.” Chen Derong said, “We are the people ‘tied’ to the highway. In Qinghai-Tibet I have been working on the border for 6 years and have never been to the neighboring city of Qamdo in Tibet.”

There are 105 maintenance workers in the Nangqian Highway section of Qinghai Province, composed of Han, Tibetan, Hui, Mongolian, Salar and other ethnic groups. Composition, average age 30 years old.

“Due to working outside for a long time, most people look 10 years older than their actual age.” Chen Derong said that walking empty-handed here is equivalent to carrying more than 30 kilograms of weight in plain areas, and cannot help when encountering landslides. When using machinery, it can only be carried on the shoulders and carried by hands.

What I saw when I followed Chen Derong to several maintenance points on this highway section was that the road guards were wearing orange overalls to maintain the road. They were wielding shovels in the sky, cleaning the mud in the ditches of the highway, or using steel wire mesh to flexibly reinforce it. Dangerous rock mass, or repairing diseased road surfaces...

"Lots of things, miscellaneous, fine, and broken are the working reality of road maintenance workers. Their moods often change with the weather. The worse the weather, the more frequent the maintenance workers will be. "Many." Chen Derong said, "Small mistakes on the road may lead to big mistakes. If the situation is discovered during road inspection, it must be repaired and cleaned up in time.

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