Construction workers begin laying track on Friday in the southwestern province of Yunnan for a high-speed rail link connecting the provincial capital Kunming to Shanghai.(Photo/Yunnan.cn)

KUNMING, Dec. 25 -- Construction workers began laying track on Friday in the southwestern province of Yunnan for a high-speed rail link connecting the provincial capital Kunming to Shanghai.

Two 500-meter rails were laid in Qujing City on Friday morning, the start of the first high-speed line to serve the province. 185-km stretch of the 2,264-km Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway passes through Yunnan.

The track will be complete in the first half of next year, said the Kunming Railway Bureau. The designed speed for the railway is 300 to 350 km per hour.

The whole line is expected to be go into use at the end of next year. Travel time between Shanghai and Kunming will be cut from more than 40 hours to about ten hours.