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World's Most Dangerous Roads: China's Guoliang Tunnel

The next time you feel underappreciated and overworked sitting in a beige metal box all day, sneaking e-mails to friends and reading travel blogs, remember the parable of the Guoliang Tunnel:

Back in the 70s, when our parents were taking horrific photographs with feathered perms and mustaches for which we would later mock them, a group of 13 men in the Chinese village of Guoliang in the Taihang Mountains sat down to figure out how to get to the village on the other side of the enormous hill blocking the way.

The solution: dig through it -- manually. The men sold goats and herbs to buy hammers and steel tools. After five years, they had dug a 4,000-foot tunnel. It measures 16 feet high by 13 feet wide. About 30 "windows" look out over the 90-degree drop. The sight overwhelmed one traveler:

I was deeply moved and even wanted to cry, for the sacred Guoliang Tunnel and for what the villagers have done - to triumph over nature.

Although this statement appeared in China Daily, so we're not vouching for its authenticity.

The tunnel is in Southwest Beijing, close to the city of Xinxiang.

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·World's Most Dangerous Roads [Jaunted]

[Photo: thrillingwonder]