These cliffside elevators soar into the clouds. Yet their most important passengers are schoolkids.
In Yunnan's Nizhu River Grand Canyon, children once spent three to four hours climbing 500 meters from valley floor to the cliff top for school. The local government partnered with a tourism company to build cliff elevators and cable car, permanently free for villagers. Now, students reach the top in one minute, and the whole journey takes just half an hour. The improved access has also given local tourism a boost.
Guided by targeted poverty alleviation, turning local resources into distinctive industries is key. Hunan's Shibadong Village was once deeply impoverished. The government supported kiwifruit, tea, Miao embroidery and homestays. In a decade, per capita income rose from 1,668 yuan to over 30,000, and it was selected as the Best Tourism Village by UN.
After years of effort, all 832 impoverished counties in China have developed 2–3 specialty industries each. Total output value now exceeds 2 trillion yuan, lifting nearly 100 million people out of absolute poverty.
Meanwhile, more young people are returning home to work, and livestreaming and drones are helping farm products reach wider markets.
From "blood transfusion" to "blood generation," China is pursuing sustainable development for the people's well-being.
This is the Guinness-certified world’s longest highway tunnel — the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel. At 22.13 kilometres, it is about the length of ten Tsing Ma Bridges. Chinese engineers cut a 10-year project down to just 52 months.
The Tianshan Mountains split Xinjiang into north and south, with travel taking hours of winding roads — and heavy snow could shut them entirely. To cut through, the tunnel had to cross 16 high-risk geological fault zones, at an altitude of over 3,000 metres, in freezing, oxygen-thin conditions.
To boost efficiency and safety, the team first bored a central pilot tunnel, then drove cross passages out to the main tubes on either side, excavating multiple sections at once. The deepest vertical shaft reaches 707 metres, a world record deeper than the height of Hong Kong’s ICC.
During construction, all wastewater was recycled with not a drop entering nearby rivers. Excavated rock was reused to build the tunnel. The team also built a cableway bridge to transport materials so as not to affect the ecology.
Today, the crossing takes just 20 minutes. Emergency transfers and fresh produce can also move reliably. Residents and tourists can make same-day trips between north and south Xinjiang, seeing glaciers in the morning and desert poplars by afternoon.
The Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is a lifeline and a livelihood corridor, protecting the Chinese borderland and the lives of its people.
