At 11:30 a.m. on November 16, eight workers tightened the last eight bolts in the Beijing-Kowloon Railway tracks in Dingnan County, Jiangxi Province, marking the completion of the 2,536-km railway. The railway stretches through nine provinces and municipalities including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Guangdong, serving an area covering half a million square km of territory with a population of more than 70 million. The rail line will play an active role in easing the transport bottleneck of the Beijing-Shanghai and Beijing-Guangzhou lines.

(Beijing Review: New Railroad Promises Development, No. 49, 1995)