School kids in a remote Chinese village need to climb 2,625 feet of bamboo ladder on a cliff face to reach home upon return from boarding school. They have to take the same route when they would be going back to school.
6 To 15 Years Old
Washington Post reported that this is the routine taken by more than a dozen kids every two weeks. These children are so young with some of them only aged 6. The oldest in the group is 15 years of age.
The crude bamboo ladder they are using to reach their schools is a series of 17 bamboo ladders joined together. According to locals where the children live, the ladder is as old as the village itself.
Many Have Died
In interview with China Daily, one of the locals, Chen Jigu said that when a ladder would show signs of rotting, then they would be replacing that ladder. The steep climb is very dangerous for children and even for adults alike because people have already fallen from the stairs. Once you fall, you have nowhere to go but straight to the abyss.
Government officials, however, said that the kids and the villagers alike would soon find an end to their difficult ordeal. The 72 families living in the village would soon enjoy stairs. When the stairs are installed, they would no longer have a hard time going to the marketplace to buy food or to sell stuff.
According to Fox News, a team of 50 officials has already gone to visit the said village and would be making concrete actions to get their stairs in place. The Communist Party Secretary General said that the most important issue they want to solve is the transport issue. He said that it will pave the way for them to make larger-scale plans and look at opportunities in tourism in these areas.
