Better life

The first residents of Atulie'er are believed to have settled on the cliff about 600 years ago. The rugged terrain sheltered them and their descendants from wars and bandits, while the fertile patches of land kept them fed.

However, the village's poor accessibility hindered its development and created other problems.

Access to medical care was difficult. Labo said he had five elder brothers and sisters, who all died of illness in infancy. "My sister-in-law had a difficult labor. We tried to carry her down the mountain to a hospital, but she stopped breathing on the way, leaving a baby that survived only for eight months," he told People's Daily.

The trip up the cliff using the vine ladders, tantamount to ascending a 30-story building, usually took an average villager one and half hours and the trip down one hour.

The climb was also highly risky. In 2016, then Secretary of the Communist Party of China Atulie'er Branch, Apijiti, told Beijing Times that about seven or eight people he knew had lost their lives during the trip. He said he himself nearly fell off the cliff during his first visit to the village. But at that time, the vine ladders were the only option for children in the village to go to a boarding primary school at the foot of the mountain.

The steel ladder has made the trip much safer. Media reports and live-streaming by villagers have also made the village famous, turning it into a tourist destination.