Get your kicks on Route G6

LIU BO’S wife begged him not to do it. She said he was ill-prepared for the dizzying altitude and the treacherous roads. He would be on his own, possibly hundreds of kilometres from help if anything went wrong with him or their Fiat Bravo. But Mr Liu was determined. The couple plan to have a child next year. Now, he felt, was the time to drive the family car thousands of kilometres across China to Tibet. He recalls telling her: “There’s only one question about going to Tibet. It is, ‘When?’ Nothing else is a problem. All you need is determination. There’s not much to prepare.” His list: some money, some clothes and medicine to cope with altitude sickness.

Mr Liu, a 32-year-old car salesman, lives in a suburban commuter-belt north of Beijing; a member of a middle class that barely existed until the end of the 20th century. A few hundred metres from his home is the G6 Expressway, part of a web of motorways that has expanded just as exponentially: from around 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) in 1996 to 85,000km at the end of 2011. In a couple of years it will surpass the length of America’s interstate network. China overtook America in 2009 to become the world’s biggest consumer of cars.