In China’s Henan Province, there is a small village located on the top of a cliff 1,700m from sea level, and the only linkage to the outside was a set of steps built into the cliff face. Many villagers, the women and the frail ones, never got a chance to see the world beyond their hilltop village in their entire lives.
So 13 men from the village decided to build a proper road that would be good enough for their motor vehicles with their homemade black powder and basic hand tools.
The work was carried on between 1972 to 1977 during the Cultural Revolution. In the process, several men lost their lives. Eventually, the local government learned the news and offered help and a miracle has been created.
During Chairman Mao’s time, every Chinese, man and woman, no matter how humble his/her origin and position were, he/she was encouraged to believe him/herself and believe in the power of collaboration, that was how the cliff canals were built during that time.
COMMENTS FROM GOOGLE PLUS
13-17 July, 2017
A survivor
Considering they were forced to do it, not so wonderful. Like admiring the work of Siberian work slaves. Impressive but a lot of bad history in the achievement of it.
David Crosswell
Where do you get that fantasy?
Out of the CIA handbook?
Got a reputable reference?
As far as I’m informed, the decision to build the tunnel was made by local village elders. hinahighlights.com
A survivor
Well you mentioned cultural revolution and most of these works were not voluntary back then. This may be the exception.
David Crosswell
No, I didn’t mention the cultural revolution.
And there was a lot of voluntary work back then.
This wouldn’t be an exception.
All Things Chinese
Nobody forced them. They live on the remote mountain top and do not want to leave their ancestors’ land, so they decided to build a road for vehicle, and the project was entirely based on their own initiative.
Once the road was built and the news spread, the government then provided them with some assistance.
You call them slaves, that is an insult to those people. I wish you learn to respect others and respect the facts, do not imagine the world you know little to nothing about based on your own negative experience.
Aaron Linder
Chinese built the tunnel through the Sierra Nevada for the railway. The Chinese can do hard labor
A survivor
The millions that died in the famines of the 1950s thanks to Mao’s 5 year plans would disagree. It wasn’t voluntary they did it or got volunteered for something worse in most cases. There’s voluntary and “voluntary”…There is a difference.
David Crosswell
Get to know your history before you comment on it.
Before the revolution, the grandparents would wander off into the snow in the middle of a winters night in order that the baby of the family had enough to eat. Starvation was standard fare, in what was a feudal social structure.
That doesn’t need to happen these days.
These things are completely lost in China now, on the spoilt brats whose biggest concern is finding somewhere to get the smartphones recharged they’re using, to communicate with, over the latest fashion in U.S. structured `Umbrella Revolutions’. They’ll never know about them, and your preferred ignorance prevents you from becoming any better acquainted with the facts of the situation.
Yes a lot of people died, and a lot more before that.
And China would be an absolute shithole now, if the revolution had not succeeded, because the so-called Nationalists, the Kuomintang who ran off to Taiwan, were busy selling off the place to the U.S., UK, and Japanese soft invasion.
Far better to keep your mouth closed and for people to merely suspect than to open it and confirm the fact you’re a fool.
And stick with the subject: involuntary work. Snivelling around, the way you do, betrays the fact you’re not genuine in establishing truth, but far more interested in establishing agenda.
Involuntary work, starvation, what next?
Ludo?
A survivor
It didn’t succeed moron. As soon as Mao’s corpse had cooled the communists began ditching all his policies as they were abject failures. Between 20 to 43 million died during Mao’s agricultural revolution (exact figures are hard to come by as there was a lot of covering up).
This ultimately ended with the total abandonment of communist economics and a replacement with capitalism. Communist China today is nothing more than an Autocratic Capitalist regime. With a rich elite pretending they are still Communist.
NOTHING of the cultural revolution survived apart from a few statues, some communist buildings and a party that now pretends they are communist. China today was built on the total abandonment of communist economics.
PS: Kuomingtang did not run away, he lost due to constant infighting within his army due to it being built out of factions and military defeat.
Aaron Linder
Well prison work camps are legitimate. But as far as the general population having forced labor I think it’s fucked up. Without capitalism civilization relies on forced labor.
A survivor
The advantages of capitalism is it has a carrot and a stick…all communists have is a stick. No one but the crazy works hard for bullshit idiology (unless they really need something). It’s why China abandoned Communism in all but name. Yesterday’s Party Communists are just today’s entitled Autocrats.
David Crosswell
PS: Kuomingtang did not run away, he lost due to constant infighting within his army due to it being built out of factions and military defeat’.
Your whole qualification to speak on the subject is on the exhibition here. The Kuomintang was a political entity, not a person.
newworldencyclopedia.org – Kuomintang – New World Encyclopedia
Everything else you say is on exactly the same level: politically uninformed ignorance. Kuomintang – New World Encyclopedia
newworldencyclopedia.org
A survivor
Correction I answered in haste…”Kuomingtang did not run away, Chiang Kai-shek lost due to constant infighting within his army due to it being built out of factions and military defeat’.
A typo.
And considering your whole argument that Modern China was built of the Mao economic revolution was a lie, a minor typo error like that is minor.
China today was built on the abandonment of those ideas and replacement with a Capitalist Autocracy. Keep talking bollocks know nothing.
Mani Elliott
He retreated to a river in South. There was division in the KMT. Before they betrayed the revolution, some in the KMT were communist. Either way, they would have certainly lost. The people supported the CCP and they were growing in power. They retreated to Taiwan.
Mani Elliott
Get to know your history before you comment on it’. How ironic.
‘These things are completely lost in China’. You’re kidding, right? You aren’t aware of how many dirt poor people there are in China?
I see you’re the typical technophobe who hates young people enjoying the modern technology they’ve invented.
And of course, predictably, your cynical remark about the Umbrella Revolution is typical of a person who is pro-CCP and amazingly, pro-Cultural Revolution despite the fact that even the CCP regard it as a disaster and try to distance themselves from it.
You can’t possibly be so idiotic that you embrace an event that the party you glorify try to bury in history so much so that state sponsored history books omit it. And the CCP generally regarding and accepting and teaching that toward the end of his life Mao began going nuts. Thus forming an excuse for his questionable acts and policies.
You mentioned the Umbrella Revolution, which took place in Hong Kong, a division regarded as having one of the strongest economies alone, in East Asia. A place that universally had better standards and standard of living than China for many years and still has a better standard of living. This and the fact that Western imperialism actually transformed many places in China into some of the most economically important places in the world, you claim that UK and US involvement would ruin China. I’m anti-imperialism. However, anyone can see that what you stated is almost objectively wrong.
Of course, no one can predict the future.
The KMT wasn’t selling anywhere to imperialists. They were taken by force as the KMT was soft and weak. The national government at the time was soft and weak.
During the civil war the KMT was supported by the US just like the CCP was supported by the Soviets.
The Japanese invasion wasn’t soft….it wad quite aggressive actually. Very aggressive! And the CCP did next to nothing when the KMT finally decided to turn their attention to them.
David Crosswell
Another idiot that twists reality to suit his point of view.
Stop misquoting me for a start.
I didn’t say ` ‘, I said, `These things are completely lost in China now, on the spoilt brats’. And it id completely lost on them.
That’s a China they’ve never had to experience.
And they didn’t invent the smart tech., they’re just in a position now to earn the money to afford to buy it.
`You aren’t aware of how many dirt poor people there are in China’?
Yes, I am, but even they’re not as dirt poor as they used to be, and there’s nowhere near as many of them. Even the most far flung rural settlement has electricity and medical care now.
`I see you’re the typical technophobe who hates young people enjoying the modern technology they’ve invented’.
Just an example of stretching reality beyond breaking point. I’m no `technophobe’. I’m very much immersed in the tech demographic. Hating people? You’re a cheap, melodramatic, emotively rhetorical idiot.
`And of course, predictably, your cynical remark about the Umbrella Revolution is typical of a person who is pro-CCP and amazingly, pro-Cultural Revolution’
What has the one got to do with the other?
You can’t even state a logical train of thought. Where have I said I was pro cultural revolution? You’re as politically ignorant as your cohort. This tunnel was constructed in the late 70s, and has absolutely no association with the cultural revolution. I haven’t even mentioned the cultural revolution. The only ones that have dragged that into the scenario are you and your equally ignorant countryman. It’s not hard to identify you both as Americans, without checking, because they’re the only ones that are so amazingly ignorant of anything in the rest of the world.
`the party you glorify’
Where do I glorify it? You create strawmen to knock down. You’re a silly, posturing, little man.
`Thus forming an excuse for his questionable acts and policies’.
In whose mind?
Yours?
Well, there’s room for any fantasy there, obviously.
`Of course, no one can predict the future’.
You can’t even construct the present accurately.
`The Japanese invasion wasn’t soft….it wad quite aggressive actually. Very aggressive’!
You’re talking about a different period here, and it could be one of many. I think you need to get hold of the right one for coherencies sake.
The invasion was predominantly soft, as witnessed by such aspects as the final overthrow in the Boxer Revolution. Just for one example.
`And the CCP did next to nothing when the KMT finally decided to turn their attention to them’.
‘The people supported the CCP’
Exactly! And the only thing you’ve got right.
The far-beyond-dirt-poor peasants supported Mao and his troops all through the Long March, willingly. Nothing was taken from them.
Mao had some extremely harsh disciplinary procedures in place for anybody that pulled that sort of action.
Read this, written by somebody that was actually there and, unlike you, talks with authority on the subject.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/400393.Red_Star_over_China#
Mani Elliott
The irony you ooze is hilarious.
You did say that. You’re the kinda traditionalist idiot who assumes that just cuz modern kids have different interests and aren’t taking part in revolution they’re spoilt brats. You’re an ass.
They invented the smart the tech. They are inventing the smart tech. How old do you think smart tech actually is?
‘Not as dirt poor as they used to be’.
………..what kind of ignorant person says this?
At least you got the comparison or amount correct. But who couldn’t get that right anyway?
Nope. There are rural places in China, even excluding Tibet and Neimongolia that don’t have electricity or running water.
Technophobia doesn’t mean you completely hate tech. It may mean you dislike the penetration tech has. Like your backward remark about what young people use modern tech to do. How ignorant. But of course an idiot like you would make such a general remark about such a huge industry and the youth.
“Oh look, I’m making an ignorant statement about how successful the CR was despite it being universally looked on as a failure but if you call me pro-CR you’re a meanie’.
You jackass are you blind. The post obviously states that the Guoliang tunnel was built during the CR.
The tunnel was began being dug during 1972 to provide ease of access to a village that existed in the Guoliang mountains.
My cohort? Do you know the meaning of that word?
I’m American now?! 😂
You know what I’m done. You’re a joke.
Boxer Rebellion. Rebellion! There was no revolution. Japan didn’t invade China during Qing. They simply exerted power over Qing along with the other foreign powers. The 8 power alliance. Japan didn’t really invade China until 1931.
The article you sent me is about post-civil war ROC and US, USSR relationship. How does itrelate to the fact that the CCP did very little to help when the KMT turned their forces on the Japanese?
The invasion was aggressive.
Grow up.Guoliang Tunnel – Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
David Crosswell
Anybody that puts up Wikipedia as a reliable source is a clown, because anybody can write it up.
The tunnel was begun in 1972, right at the end of the CR, in an out of the way location that was totally unaffected by it, not even initiated by a government directive.
As for the rest of it, you’re all over the place and incapable of coherent communication.
Something that appears to be your signature.
In short, you’re a waste of anybody’s time, and I’ve wasted enough.
So all the kids employing smart tech during the umbrella revolution created it did they.
Well, thank you for enlightening us.
See ya!
Icarus Tanović
Just 13 of them?! Wow!
All Things Chinese
Yes, amazing people. Some of the 13 died during the project.
William Gregory
Whenever and however built, it is amazing construction. Well done to all the people involved in the making of the roads.