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China started ferrying trains on ships Tuesday, the day that would always be remembered by locals across its southern Qiongzhou Strait and railway builders as well as in the history of railway construction in the country. On that day China's first maritime railway sailed over south the Qiongzhou Strait when the Guangdong-Hainan Railway opened to traffic between the rapidly booming Guangdong province and its island neighbor Hainan province. This awoke the deep-buried dreams of prosperity of 8 million Hainan residents in the strategic but remote island of 35,000 square kilometers, two million sq. km of marine areas and 1,500 km of coastline. The scenic tropical island's resources may be further tapped since the railway can nearly triple Hainan's marine transport capacity, as statistics from local railway departments show. Hainan island joined China's first batch of special economic zones (SEZ) in the 1980s and still ranks as the largest of the SEZzones in size if not economic strength. It boasts plentiful tropical and coastal tourism resources, vivid and colorful ethnic cultures, substantial iron ore reserves, and tropical and subtropical agriculture. Lack of access to the outside world has been a barrier to the island's development. Expensive air flights or cheap but time-consuming travel by train and then ferry unnerved many tourists. For example, a round-trip ticket from Beijing to the coastal city of Haikou costs 3,600 yuan (433.73 US dollars), which is only slightly less than the price of a one-week package tour to Thailand at 3,980 yuan (479.52 US dollars), according to a tourist agency in Beijing. A survey shows nearly 75 percent of residents in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and GuangZhou want very much to go sightseeing in Hainan, says Wang Jiansheng, secretary-general of the Hainan Provincial Tourist association. The railway would enable more medium or low income tourists to visit the tropical island, Wang said. The cross-sea railway is expected to boost the island's tourism and economy and help close the gap between the booming cities of China's eastern coastal areas, whose ports provide them with ready access to export markets, and the relatively slow-developing island. Officials see rail as a key tool in spreading prosperity by cutting the cost of exporting Hainan goods and attracting investors. The Guangdong-Hainan railway could promote Hainan's development and the rail ferry constituted a breakthrough in China's railroad technology, said Fu Zhihuan, minister of Railways. Compared to a tunnel under the strait, the rail ferry had disadvantages, including limited transport capacity and dependence on weather conditions -- the ferries could operate only in winds of less than gale-force eight, says Du Huirong, deputy general manager of the Guangdong-Hainan Railway Corporation. It was the most feasible way, nevertheless, to meet the country's transportation needs and avoid unnecessary spending, said Du. The entire project cost only 4.5 billion yuan (542.17 million US dollars), whereas a under-sea tunnel would cost approximately 20 billion yuan (2.41 billion US dollars), although it could reduce the crossing to 30 minutes. The ferry train left Hai'an, on the southern tip of Leizhou Peninsula, in southern Guangdong province, around 9:15 am and reached Nangang Port of Haikou, the capital of Hainan island province, after a voyage of some 50 minutes across the Qiongzhou Strait, which separate Hainan Island from the Chinese mainland. The railway was also the cherished dream of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution, a century ago,but despite the efforts of senior officials and commercial magnates, it was never materialized. China finally approved a carefully-mapped program in 1992. With a total length of 345 km, the rail route is divided into three parts including two on land in Guangdong and Hainan provinces and a ferry journey. The two ferries are 164.5-meters-long and 22.6-meters-wide each with 13,600 tons of load capacity and will shuttle across the 24-mile Qiongzhou Strait at a speed of15 miles per hour. China has been committed to railroad construction into which it has invested a total of 278 billion yuan (33.49 billion US dollars)in the past five years, according to statistics from the Ministry of Railways.