With over 98 percent of the land being covered with undulating mountains, valleys and rivers, transportation infrastructure has long been on the region's development agenda but such projects have been hard to implement on the ground. Cliffs, frequent falling rocks and landslides have made road construction there a life-and-death endeavor. Several simple roads built over the past decades have been of poor quality and in constant need of repair.
Under these conditions, a road stretching 300 km linking Lushui, the seat of the prefecture and two other counties, Fugong and Gongshan, in the prefecture, has received intense attention since its construction began in August 2017. It is a dual-lane road winding along the Nujiang River, the main river in the prefecture. The picturesque views along its path have led to it being dubbed the Beautiful Road. On December 30, 2019, vehicles began using the road to travel between the previously remote regions. The road has shortened the travel time from Lushui to Gongshan from over 10 hours to less than five.
Ma Jinhua, owner of a guesthouse in Qiunatong Village, Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, stands in her courtyard with a carpet she weaves, May 20 (MA LI)
New home along the way
The construction of the road was concurrent with a large population relocation project in the prefecture. Listed as one of the six regions in China most severely impacted by poverty, the local government in Nujiang has prioritized relocating people from remote mountainous areas into urban areas where they can have better access to education, medical services and economic opportunity. At the time the road construction started, approximately half of Nujiang's rural poor—100,000—needed to be relocated.
Yu Dong, a 26-year-old man living in Weilaba Community, a new community around the starting point of the road in Lushui, moved to his new home in August 2019. At that time, the road was still under construction.
His family used to live in a village over 10 km away. "The old house was a stilt house built on a hillside. It leaked during the rainy season and was very cold in winter," Yu told Beijing Review. There are four people in Yu's family. Based on the allocation standard of 20 square meters per person, the family was given an apartment of 80 square meters.
Upon hearing his family would be moving into one of the new apartments, Yu began to look forward to the completion of the new community. He witnessed firsthand how difficult the entire process was. "It was common to see large trucks carrying construction materials running along the bumpy road, which was often blocked due to roadworks," Yu said.
Xia Youhui, who is in charge of the relocation project in Nujiang described the construction as "the hardest task ever." "It was very chaotic and it was common for the trucks carrying construction equipment and supplies to get stuck in the middle of nowhere along their journeys," Xia said.
The distance from Lushui to Fugong County is only about 130 km, but the trip usually took 10 hours due to bad road conditions and sometimes the drivers were stranded overnight along the way. Before beginning a journey, the drivers had to ensure they had prepared enough food to last for days in case they got stuck.
Even under such circumstances, the construction of both houses and road proceeded gradually and steadily. Now, the new apartment buildings in relocated sites, all painted yellow, have become part of the sceneries dotted along the Beautiful Road. Each site not only has residential buildings, but also a kindergarten and primary school. Some also have factories where relocated residents can find work and earn money.
"The kindergarten is just at the gate of the community and right next to the factory," said a 36-year-old woman surnamed Feng, who lives in a relocated community in Fugong. The woman works in the clothing factory during the day and picks up her daughter from kindergarten after work. "It is very convenient. In the very beginning my mother refused to leave her old house in the mountains. Now she also works in this factory and has learned to use a sewing machine."
The local government has been committed to ensuring that the construction of the new road and the new residential areas will not damage the natural beauty of the region. Now, it is evident that the infrastructure projects have achieved a sound balance between development and environment. The Xiaoshaba Service Area, set up at the starting point of the road, is now hailed as "the most beautiful road service area in China." It has an open garden, a bicycle rental service, and a garden hotel.
Feast for eyes
A green lane for bicycle riders is still under construction, which will run along the full length of the Beautiful Road. The other terminal of the road, in addition to the one in Fugong, is Bingzhongluo Township, which is hailed by travelers as "a place in heaven" in Gongshan County.
Quite a few tranquil villages scatter across the area with the roaring Nujiang River running among the surrounding steep cliffs and deep valleys. Many residents here have been running bed and breakfasts and homestays for years.
Ma Jinhua, a local woman in Qiunatong Village of Bingzhongluo, was the first person in the village to open a bed and breakfast in 2011. The guesthouses are fully booked in advance, and on weekends she is very busy and needs to employ other villagers to help. When she is not busy, she enjoys sitting in the courtyard, and weaving Nu ethnicity traditional carpets.
Laomudeng, literally meaning "a place that people love to visit" in the language of the Nu ethnic group, is one of the villages along the road in Fugong County. It has also been popular among niche travelers for years.
He Dalin, a 56-year-old local from Laomudeng Village, has never left Yunnan Province. The image of merchants riding camels past his village, which is on Yunnan's famous Tea Horse Road, left a deep impression on him as a child.
As an adult, he wanted to grow tea. He managed to travel all the way to Dehong, another prefecture in Yunnan, to visit the tea market there. Owing to the poor transportation infrastructure, the journey took him nine days. He was the first in the village to grow tea. Seeing the profit he earned from this business, many other villagers joined him and then formed a tea collective.
His guesthouse, built right next to his tea garden, has now become a destination for tourists. He has not carried out any marketing activities, but after visiting his tea garden, many tourists have become loyal customers of his tea. "There is zero pollution in the village," he said. "It is a paradise that is hard to find in many other parts of China."
Now he earns about 500,000 yuan ($78,450) a year. "The Beautiful Road makes it a lot easier for tourist groups and buses to get directly into towns and villages," He said. "We are expecting to have more tourists visit our village in the future."
Currently in Nujiang, there is neither an airport nor a railway line. The first expressway, connecting Lushui to Baoshan, a neighboring city with the region's closest airport, was only put into operation on December 30 of last year.
The cost of the highway was huge. It took engineers and construction teams more than four years to build the 85-km road, as much of the road needed to be dug through the mountains. Altogether there are 19 tunnels along the road, with the longest one stretching over 11 km through the rocks.
"Now an airport is in the plan of Nujiang," an official from the local publicity department said. "A wider transportation web expects to form in the near future to get Nujiang better linked to the outside world." BR
(Reporting from Nujiang, Yunnan Province)
(Print Edition Title: The Highway of Hope)
