In a remote village in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, 23 households spent over a decade constructing a road on a cliff for a better connection to the outside world, and to improve their lives. David Deen has more.

In China's Lanying grand canyon, in the poverty-stricken Wuxi County, is a community called Zhou Jiaping. Villagers here needed to travel almost an entire day to get to the nearest road to sell and buy goods at the county's markets. That was until the villagers took it upon themselves to dig a way out.

JIANG DEXIN VILLAGER OF ZHOU JIAPING "You can see this place is surrounded by cliffs, and isolated. Many villagers moved to the nearby cities. In early 2002, we only had 23 households left and around 80 people. So we discussed together and made the decision that we must dig out a cliff road by ourselves."

As big equipment could not get in, they used basic tools to build the road. The 1.2 kilometers cliff road was divided into 23 sections, with each family responsible for one. It took them nearly four years to finish the rough foundation. In 2017, the local government managed to raise enough funds to reinforce the road, justifying it for its role in alleviating poverty.

XIANG QING'AN SECRETARY OF LANYING VILLAGE BRANCH "We planned to reinforce the road in 2016 and finished construction in 2017. The rich natural landscape here, though normal for us, has started to attract tourists. People here want to develop tourism, and we hope more tourists can come and bring us higher incomes."

With the support of the national poverty alleviation policy, old houses in the village have been rebuilt. And the village is covered by a 4G network and digital TV is also available. Some villagers who once moved out, are now moving back. Officials say, although there are still 8 households living below the poverty line, they are confident that the whole village can be out of poverty by the end of 2019.