· Street View & Discovery · 1 min read ·
Guoliang Tunnel: Road Carved Through Chinese Precipices
0.75-mile mountain tunnel hand-carved through the sheer rock of the Taihang Mountains in Henan, China. Featuring 30 carved rock windows looking into the gorge below.
Mountain tunnel in Henan, China
The **Guoliang Tunnel **(Chinese: 郭亮洞) is carved along the side of and through a mountain in China. The tunnel links the village of Guoliang to the outside through the Taihang Mountains which are situated in Huixian, Xinxiang, Henan Province of China.
The village was named after a fugitive rebel during the Han dynasty, who had fought an overwhelming imperial force to a standstill utilizing the extreme local terrain. Before the tunnel was constructed, access to the nearby village of 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.
To ease the villagers’ access to outside world, a group of villagers led by Shen Mingxin made plans in 1972 to carve a road into the side of the mountain. They sold their livestock to raise funds to buy tools and materials. Thirteen villagers began the project, with one dying during construction. Without access to power tools, they undertook construction mostly with hammers and chisels. At the most difficult stage, the tunnel progressed at a rate of one metre every three days.
