BEIJING, Dec. 1 -- Dulong is an ethnic minority group residing in the mountains of southwest China's Yunnan Province. Its people, bidding farewell to primitive life only after the founding of New China in 1949, had long endured poverty and poor transportation to the outside world.

Shortly ahead of the New Year's Day in 2014, people from Gongshan County, where most of the Dulong people live, wrote to President Xi Jinping to report that the Gaoligong Mountains-Dulongjiang River highway tunnel was about to be completed.