Alexandra Ma: Chinese Kids Scale A 2,600-Foot Cliff To Get To School
Never complain about
your commute again. Recent footage of
Chinese schoolchildren scaling a treacherous, 2,600-foot cliff to get to school
is shocking social media users worldwide. The dangers facing the
dozen or so schoolchildren — all of whom are between the ages of 6 and 15, and
hail from a remote, impoverished village in Sichuan — first gained widespread
attention after Beijing News, a state-owned local newspaper, featured the
photos earlier this week.
Children can be seen
climbing a rickety ladder with no harness up an almost vertical mountain. Most
of them are bare-handed, and none of them appear to be wearing any safety gear.
The journey takes about 90 minutes uphill and an hour downhill, Beijing News
noted. “Every single climb felt like rubbing shoulders with
death,” said photographer Chen Jie, who accompanied the children on the commute
and captured the harrowing images for Beijing News. About seven or eight people
have died as a result of this journey, the village chief told the newspaper.
“This has to be fake!” one user exclaimed on Weibo. “Doesn’t our mighty
country receive millions of dollars in international aid every year? How can it
not even build a road for young village schoolchildren?” “The government is
turning a blind eye to this plight,” another user wrote. Part of the reason
these children have to make this life-threatening journey is that their village
can’t afford proper infrastructure, according to Chen. County authorities have
tried to build a road in the area, but the project grew too expensive for the
government and the impoverished villagers.
“I hope the story that
my photos tell will ultimately bring some change,” Chen said. Some 1,200 miles away, schoolchildren
in Nepal face similar obstacles. Many kids in the country’s remote
mountainous regions have to cross rivers by pulling themselves along suspension
wires — a method that’s cost some children their fingers, and others their
lives.
Watch a video of
the terrifying journey: