Guoliang Tunnel and Wanxian Mountain

Cliff Tunnel Road Cut By Villagers In The 1970s In The Taihang Mountains · Xinxiang, Henan

A village on a cliff ledge in the Taihang Mountains of northern Henan, and the astonishing road its people cut to reach the world. Until the 1970s Guoliang could be reached only by a stairway of stone steps hacked into the rock face, and when the county said a road was impossible, thirteen villagers sold livestock to buy hammers and chisels and began drilling by hand. Five years later, in 1977, they had carved a tunnel more than a kilometre long through the cliff, wide enough for a vehicle, with more than thirty windows punched through the outer wall to throw out rubble - openings that now frame dizzying views down into the gorge. The tunnel made the village famous, and Guoliang became a favourite of Chinese painters and film crews, its stone houses and threshing floors perched above a canyon of red rock. Around it, the Wanxian Mountain scenic area offers cliff-edge walkways, a glass viewing platform, waterfalls and the Nanping and Luoshiyan valleys. It is a place of vertigo and human stubbornness in equal measure, and the drive itself is the attraction.

Guoliang village, Wanxian Mountain Scenic Area, Huixian, Xinxiang, Xinxiang, Henan, China

Daily, about 7:30-18:30 from April to October with last entry 17:30, and about 8:00-17:30 from November to March. Private cars are barred from the tunnel road 8:00-18:00.

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