The last road in China

Abuluoha also didn't have running water in the early 2000s. So, a scarcity of precipitation caused problems that extended beyond arid cropland.

"Lamp oil was precious before we got electricity in 2013," Jilie Ziri says.

"That's because nobody who went to the nearest town carried more than they absolutely needed back to the village. And sometimes they couldn't even carry that."

That changed in June of 2020, when a 3.8-kilometer road was completed, and Abuluoha became China's final village to connect to the road system. It takes just 15 minutes to drive out of the village and about two hours of jackknifing up and down serrated peaks to reach the nearest town.

Abuluoha translates from the Yi language as "a place off the beaten path". But it no longer lives up to this moniker.

The ethnic Yi settlement of 65 households, comprising 253 people, also brought the final 29 households of 187 people out of extreme poverty last year.