Sichuan no longer the road not taken

"It is easier to climb to Heaven than take the Sichuan road."

So goes the 1,400-year-old poem in reference to the southwestern province's complex and often treacherous landscape, which has been a natural obstacle to economic exchanges between it and the rest of the world since time immemorial.

But over the next few years, all that is set to change, Sichuan Governor Jiang Jufeng said yesterday.