Village-built road makes living easier

In October 1999, an elderly man surnamed Tang was celebrating his birthday. He asked a neighbor to go to a nearby market and buy groceries so they could celebrate together.

When the neighbor's packhorse reached a ladder-shaped rock, it fell off the cliff and killed him.

"I didn't know when such kind of things would end if the village remained isolated like this. There was no way out at the time," said Wang Lianke, then Party secretary of Shibanhe.

In the absence of modern machinery, opening a road through the deep mountains required extra effort.

A log written by the village head recorded that on the first day of Spring Festival in 2000, villagers organized by village cadre Yao Shixue began building the road.

"When the young men, who had left the village as migrant workers, returned home during the Spring Festival, they helped speed up the progress," it said.

Younger residents used chisels to chip away rocks, while the elderly were responsible for removing gravel. When construction was finished three years later, Huang's life greatly improved. He is now part of the team that regularly mends and maintains the road.

"Part of my current job is to keep the cliff road clean, which can earn me 600 yuan ($93) a month," he said.

In addition to income from herding sheep, he said, he can make at least 3,000 yuan a month.

Thanks to the road, Shibanhe now plans to become a camping site with a focus on rural tourism.

"With our unique landscapes, I believe our village will become a tourist hotspot someday," Huang said.

Zhao Yandi in Guiyang contributed to this story.