Children from an isolated “cliff village” on a mountain top in southwest China have to climb down a 800-meter ladder to get to school. The Atule’er village is home to 72 families whose only route to the outside world are 17 vine ladders attached to the side of a 2,625-foot sheer cliff face. China Daily reports: Fifteen children regularly use a rattan ladder to scale an 800-meter cliff on their way to and from boarding school every two weeks in Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province. The children, aged 6 to 15, belong to 72 families in Atuler village in Zhaojue county. The villagers go to the nearest market several kilometers away once a week using the same ladder to buy necessities and sell agricultural products, mainly pepper and walnut. The ladder is a chain of 17 smaller ladders tied together, some even perpendicular and fixed to the cliff with steel bars or timbers. There are no safety measures. A villager in his 40s fell off the cliff and died not long ago. Chen Jigu, one of the villagers, said the ladder is as old as the village, maybe hundreds of years. “We replace a ladder with a new [...]