Finally, every county in China is connected by road.
And the people of Metok county in the Tibet Autonomous Region will at last, after several doomed attempts, have a link to the outside world.
It is a remote, forbidding place that is almost entirely surrounded by the Himalayas and other mountains. Access is limited, but with the blasting of 150 kilograms of explosives yesterday, all that is about to change.
The blast removed the last obstacle to a three-kilometre tunnel through the mountains, and by the end of next year, Metok will for the first time have a highway.
With a population of 11,567, Metok, which adjoins India in the south, was the last of 2,100 counties on the mainland that lacked a highway.
The Galongla Tunnel, built at an altitude of 3,750 metres, is the key to the 117-kilometre project, which will lead to Bome county.