Daily Times

BEIJING: Students, some as young as six, from the Atuler village in China’s Sichuan province must scale an 800-metre cliff on rattan ladders in order to get to class.

Seven people are reported to have died making the journey. Local authorities have promised to intervene after the publication of the pictures in Chinese media led to an outcry.

The photos were taken by a staff photographer for the Beijing News, Chen Jie, who followed a party of parents who were picking their children up. The journey requires scrambling over sheer rock faces and using old ladders.

“I was shocked,” the photographer wrote on social media. He said that the scene was extremely difficult, perilous common experience which “the heart is still heavy” from. He added that he used his camera to tell a “thrilling story, eventually to bring about change”.

Despite some progress in recent years, poverty remains rife in China’s rural regions. Some of the village people cannot afford to send their children to the school, while others choose not to for safety reasons.

Constructing a safer route to the school would prove too costly for the local population but since the pictures were published, offers to develop infrastructure have been coming in from all over China.

Jie said that he was very nervous about the trip and had been warned to be careful by local officials. “It is precisely because they say it is very dangerous that I decided to risk recording this place. It provoked my impulse.”