LAND OF GOLD

In the landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos, the Mekong River has been a primary source of food, livelihood, and transportation since time began. Now a high-speed railway has come coursing through the country. What changes will it bring, and what will it take away?

- Kevin West

AS the twin-engine prop plane from Bangkok began its descent into Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, I saw through the pearly dry-season air a wide river, one of the mighty Mekong's many tributaries. Along one bank ran glinting steel track that arced like a shot arrow and pierced the mountain in its way-the path of a new high-speed train. The river and the rail: one representing Laos's past, the other its future.

A landlocked country threaded by waterways, the Lao People's Democratic Republic was once a densely forested Buddhist kingdom called Lan Xang, known as the land of a million elephants. More recently, it was a revolutionary communist state bombed to smithereens during the Vietnam War, when the United States rained down some 2 million tons of explosives on its jungle-clad hills.

Today, Laos's future is unfolding in the shadow of the colossus to the north. The multibillion-dollar rail system, part of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative, was engineered with Chinese expertise and financed by Chinese capital, and on any given day its first-class compartments carry mainly Chinese tourists from Borten, on Laos's northern border, to the modern capital of Vientiane, with sightseeing stops along the way.