The construction of Yuli-Qiemo highway, the third north-south route running through China's largest desert of Taklimakan, has entered the final stage in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. More than 40 kilometers of the 330-km-long highway are left to be completed. Workers are flattening the largest sand dune with a height of 70 meters in the project. They need to remove 1.2 million cubic meters of sand and backfill 100,000 cubic meters of construction materials. Cutting across the world's second-largest shifting sand desert, the highway will connect Qiemo County on the southern edge of the Taklimakan and Yuli County on the north. It's expected to open to traffic in 2021.
