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Located in the Taihang Mountains of China, the small village of Guoliang is sitting on a mountaintop and was isolated from the rest of the world. The only way to reach it was to walk through a valley surrounded by steep cliffs, and then climb a series of cut out stone steps. Cut off from the rest of the world, the village was doomed to become a ghost town, unless a road could be constructed trough the cliffs.
The Guoliang Tunnel is carved along the side of and through a mountain in China. The tunnel links the Guoliang Village to the outside through the Taihang Mountains which are situated in the Huixian, Xinxiang, Henan Province of China. Photos of the road are often misidentified as photos of the "Road of Death" in Bolivia.
Before the tunnel was constructed, access to the nearby Guoliang Village was restricted to a difficult path carved into the mountainside. The village is nestled in a valley surrounded by towering mountains cut off from outside civilization. In 1972 a group of villagers led by Shen Mingxin made plans to carve a road into the side of the mountain. Thirteen villagers began the project, but several died during construction. The tunnel is 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) long, 5 metres (16 ft) tall and 4 metres (13 ft) wide. On 1 May 1977 the tunnel was opened to traffic. The completion of the tunnel was a major leap forward for the villagers, as it became a tourist attraction when China opened its borders to international tourists.
http://www.losapos.com/guoliang_tunnel_road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guoliang_Tunnel 360-degree panorama photography by yunzeng liu
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