Villagers living up a remote 800-meter (2,624-foot) clifftop in southwest China that became famous for the precarious ladders connecting it to the world have been moved to a new urban housing estate.
Atule’er, a 200-year-old village in Sichuan province, made headlines around the world when photographs emerged in 2016 of schoolchildren descending the cliff on unsteady rattan ladders – or “sky ladders,” as locals called them.
The two-hour climb was the villagers’ only way to access the outside world, and they had to carry farm produce down the cliff to sell at the nearest market miles away. In recent years, local authorities replaced their hand-made ladders with a steel one that featured handrails, drastically shortening their travel time.
