Key pass

In his 1893 adventure novel Claudius Bombarnac, Jules Verne envisioned a "Grand Transasiatic Railway" running from the Caspian Sea to Beijing. Back then, the idea of a rail link across Eurasia was far-fetched, but now it is a reality.

But even Verne, dubbed the father of science fiction, could not have imagined the scale of today's China-Europe freight rail lines, the arteries of the modern Silk Road.

Between March 2011, when the first line opened, and the end of June this year, over 9,000 trips delivered nearly 800,000 containers of goods, connecting 48 Chinese cities with 42 cities in 14 European countries.

The cost of rail freight is only 20 percent of the cost of moving cargo by air, and it is three times quicker than shipping by sea.

Centuries ago, the Alataw Pass into Kazakhstan - about 460 km west of Urumqi, Xinjiang's regional capital, and 680 km northeast of Almaty, the biggest city in Kazakhstan - was a windswept route through the mountains for traders on horseback.

Now, 70 percent of westbound freight trains pass through it, with the roar of locomotives drowning out the howling wind.

China exported more than it imported on those trains until the Belt and Road Initiative addressed the imbalance.

Zhao Jie, a Chinese waybill translator in Dostyk, the first Kazakh port after the pass, has noticed an increase in the variety of imports.

"When I started the job in 2013, the list of imported goods for translation was much duller, mostly steel and ore," he said. "Now we import electronics, mechanical parts, drone accessories, red wine, baby formula and even polyester."

The Alataw Pass has become one of the busiest trading posts on the border, linking Central Asia, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by air, rail, road and pipeline.

China's first cross-border crude oil pipeline, built in 2006, from the Caspian Sea to the Alataw Pass, now brings in 12 million metric tons of crude oil every year to feed the country's energy-hungry west.

"With China and Kazakhstan each holding 50 percent, the pipeline is a fine example of our close partnership and the success of the Belt and Road Initiative," said Yao Yage, head of the pipeline's operation center in the Alataw Pass.