The 6~(th) International Symposium on Permafrost Engineering was successfully held in China in September 2004. About 150 scientists and engineers from 7 countries attended the symposium in Lanzhou on 5~7 September, and about 35 people from 6 countries participated in the field trip along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway/Railway on 8~13 September and the seminar in Lhasa on 14 September 2004. During the Symposium, the latest progress on permafrost engineering and the surveys, design and construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway were exchanged and inspected. Fifty-eight technical papers in English from the Symposium were published in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Symposium, as a supplement of the Journal of Glaciology and Geocryology, before the symposium. About 6 papers from the symposium are published in the second volume in the volume 27(1) of the Journal of the Glaciology and Geocryology, after the symposium.;The Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) under construction will traverse 632 km of permafrost, and the engineers are facing unprecedented engineering and environmental challenges. With the QTR under construction and to be completed in 2007, permafrost engineering has become the research focus of permafrost scientists and engineers in China. Many encouraging and promising achievements in permafrost engineering have been obtained during the past three years. However, there are still numerous engineering and environmental problems needing to be solved or resolved. ;In the discussions, some experts pointed out that methods, such as removal of snow cover on the embankments and toe areas, light-color embankments and side slope surfaces, awnings for shading the solar radiation, hairpin or tilted thermosyphons, could be applied to actively cool the roadbed of the QTR. Some new ideas on utilization of the natural cold reserves were proposed to protect the QTR permafrost roadbed from thawing. Many questions and answers on the survey, design, construction, operations, maintenance and environmental protection were exchanged in situ and in the Lhasa seminar with participation by some major railway designers, regulators and administrators.