ABSTRACT

Shenxi village is located in Wenping township, Dejiang county, northeast Guizhou province, southwest China. The village is 950 miles distant from the capital of China, Beijing, and 175 miles from Guiyang, the provincial capital. As a remote mountainous area dominated by rough terrain, transport to and within the region used to be quite difficult. Only about forty years ago was a road built, which linked up with the main road leading from Dejiang county to Guiyang, but this road was of very poor quality. Moreover, the main road was itself so narrow and steep as to make travel on this road difficult and time-consuming. In 1993 when I first travelled from Guiyang to Dejiang by a truck it took me more than ten hours to complete the journey. In recent years, both roads have been rebuilt with special government funds and a motorway has been built between Guiyang and Zunyi, a city 90 miles from Guiyang, making road transport in the region much easier than in the past.