Mail carrier Wang Shunyou has trudged bumpy mountainous paths for 20 years, equaling 6 round-world trips, by foot.

Muli County, sitting at the outskirt of the southern Tibetan tableland in Liangshan Prefecture of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, is a mountainous county, with an average altitude of more than 3,100 meters. Due to the arduous valley and scattered villages, it is impossible to deliver mail by any other means except by foot.

Wang Shunyou on his way to deliver mails. 

"I'm on the post road 24 hours a day, 330 days a year," said Wang. "I'm happy when villagers and children greet me. Without the land-locked villagers having access to modern telecommunications services, I am the bridge linking them with the outside world."

Wang's father was also a postman and worked on the mail routes for 24 years. In 1984 when he was no longer able to scale the mountains on the mail routes, he asked Wang Shunyou to do the job, and Wang accepted, with pleasure and resolve.

Since then, he has been on the road, delivering on average 8,400 pieces of newspapers, 330 copies of magazines, 840 letters, and 600 packages delivery each year, with not one late or missing mail.

Each of his mail-delivering trips takes 14 days, and each year, he spends 330 days on the mail routes and 30 days at home. In his career as a postman so far, he has walked at least 260,000 kilometers.

On the route, Wang has to mount the 4,000-altitude jokuls and descend valleys. He has to endure sharp temperature changes. By day, he hobbles his way by stepping into the footprints of his mule and at night a plastic shabby tent shelters him from occasional downfall.