Spending spree

In Sichuan, the government has spent 124.14 billion yuan building and upgrading 116,000 km of sealed roads in rural areas during the past five years.

This year, the total length of rural paved roads in the province reached 291,000 km, the most in the country.

Transportation in Pingshan has also seen significant changes. In 2015, all the county's villages were connected by sealed roads, and since last year, a reliable intervillage bus service has been provided for residents.

In 2016, Zhang Debin returned to Pingshan and opened his tea factory with the money he had saved as a migrant worker, even though he had originally planned to use it to buy a house in Guangzhou.

"Before, during the harvest season, the tea farmers even had to carry their tea down the hills at night using flashlights," he said.

"Now, whenever they are ready to do business, a truck will be waiting on the hill to carry the tea to my plant to process it."

The "Immortal Poet", Li Bai (701-762), who lived at the height of the ancient Tea Horse Road, once wrote, "The road to Shu is harder than scaling the skies!"

The "Shu" he mentioned is today's Sichuan, and the line is a vivid illustration of the inconvenience of transportation in the province centuries ago.

"Li may have walked the same trails the farmers used to take every day," Zhang Debin said.

"But as paved roads have now spread all over Sichuan, those old trails have entered the realms of history."