Isolated no more, Guizhou tiptoes out to meet world

China's 'park province' seen as national jewel of ecological and cultural tourism

If Guizhou province were a wheel, Guiyang, the capital, would be the hub. Outward, beyond the city limits, lies a different world - 176,000 square kilometers of remote wilderness that has managed to remain, in many ways, untrammeled by modernity. Guizhou is sometimes referred to as China's park province.

For thousands of years, this region was blessed - or cursed - by the difficulty of travel. Until recent decades, the sheer raw ruggedness of Guizhou's terrain kept development at bay. Roads through its wild mountains are difficult to build and at least triple the cost per kilometer of roads in open country.