New bridge puts high-flying villager out of a job
Print Edition
CHU Sihua, a villager in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, has lost the voluntary job he has been doing for the past 17 years.
Thanks to a new bridge over the Nujiang River, the 32-year-old no longer needs to propel himself over the water on a 200-meter steel cable.
“I am the best in the village. I can take a cow or a horse across the river, even at night,” said Chu, who helps fellow villagers send rice, vegetables and even bicycles across the river on ziplines.
Chu hoists a pulley onto the cable, ties a homemade rope around himself, kicks his legs against a rock and in 10 seconds he is on the opposite bank.
In Yunnan hamlets along the Nujiang where no bridges existed, all types of commodities, from food to livestock to cinderblocks for new houses, had to be sent across on ziplines.
In 1957, the first steel cable was set up across the river in Nujiang Prefecture to replace bamboo strips. At the end of 2011, there were still 42 still in use.
Deng Qiandui, a doctor at Lamadi Village in the Nujiang Valley, used a zipline for 28 years to visit patients on the other side of the river.
When his mode of transport made media headlines in 2012, the provincial government decided to replace most of the ziplines with concrete bridges to take cars and motorbikes.
The construction of 181 bridges over the Nujiang River is expected to be complete by the end of the year, ending the zipline’s role as a means of transport.
Nujiang Prefecture, the poorest region in the province, where 94 percent of its 540,000 population are ethnic minorities, is expected to benefit from the project.
Ten ziplines will be kept for tourism, which Chu hopes may offer a more prosperous life.
“We will charge tourists 30 yuan (US$4.5) for a one-way ride,” said Chu, who relies on a small patch of corn and raising pigs to earn a living.
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