Culture
China’s ‘Musical Road’ Draws Visitors to Scenic Route in Inner Mongolia
A stretch of highway in northern China is attracting tourists with an unusual feature: it can produce a melody as vehicles drive over it. The attra...
By Wavers Multimedia
The attraction is located along the Dada Route in Hexigten Banner, Chifeng, in Inner Mongolia. Known as a “musical road”, the 800-metre section has been specially engineered so that tyres create musical sounds through friction when vehicles travel over the road at a steady speed of no more than 50 kilometres per hour.
The road contains 12,366 precisely cut grooves in its asphalt. Visitors have been travelling along the route to experience the unusual combination of driving and music, with some returning for another run after hearing the melody produced by their vehicles.
The musical section forms part of the 135-kilometre Dada Route, a scenic driving route that passes through a variety of Inner Mongolian landscapes, including lakes, grasslands, sandy areas, forests, mountains and the Asgat Stone Forest.
The route was recognised in 2024 as one of China’s most beautiful self-driving routes and was the only highway in Inner Mongolia to receive the honour from the country’s Ministry of Transport.
The area has also become a major tourism destination, attracting more than 3 million visitors and about 1 million vehicles annually, according to local tourism authorities.
The journey begins around Dalai Nuur Lake, one of Inner Mongolia’s largest inland lakes, before continuing through the expansive Gongger Grassland, where visitors can see herds of cattle, sheep and horses.
It eventually leads to the Asgat Stone Forest, a top-rated tourist attraction and world geological park featuring towering granite formations shaped by volcanic activity and glacial movements more than 150 million years ago.
Since the musical road opened on June 1, about 420,000 trips have been recorded along the Dada Route, while more than 80 per cent of visitors to the area are now arriving by car, according to Feng Litian, deputy director of the Hexigten Banner Culture, Tourism and Sports Bureau.
The musical attraction is giving travellers another reason to explore Inner Mongolia by road, combining the region’s natural scenery with an unusual roadside experience that turns an ordinary drive into a musical journey.