page_title: China National Highway 312
section_title: Route and distance
hierarchical_section_title: China National Highway 312 / Route and distance
caption_attribution_description: Highway G312 Xinjiang, China
context_page_description: China National Highway 312, also referred to as Route 312 or The Mother Road, is a key east-west route beginning in Shanghai and ending at Khorgas, Xinjiang in the Ili River valley, on the border with Kazakhstan. In total it spans 5,000 km, passing through Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu before ending in Xinjiang. Besides Shanghai, cities of note on the route include Suzhou, Wuxi, Nanjing, Hefei, Xinyang, Nanyang, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Jiayuguan and Ürümqi.
  It theoretically starts at People's Square, the Zero-Kilometre point for all highways starting in Shanghai, but the first part of the road, Cao-An Highway, starts at Cao-Yang New Village.
  The road was the subject of Rob Gifford's 2007 book China Road, in which he describes traveling the entire length of Route 312 from the East China Sea to Central Asia.
  The G40 Shanghai–Xi'an Expressway has replaced National Highway 312 as the main route between those two cities.
caption: G312 near Urumqi
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