Southwest China clifftop village sets Guinness record for steel ladder elevation span

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 23, 2019 shows a steel ladder built on the cliff in Atulie'er Village, Zhaojue County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

CHENGDU, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- A cliffside steel ladder in Zhaojue County, southwest China's Sichuan Province, has earned the Guinness World Record for the steel ladder with the greatest elevation span in the world, local authorities said on Tuesday.

With an elevation span of 370.1 meters, the steel ladder was constructed in 2017 to replace a rattan ladder, which was once the only way to enter or exit the county's Atulie'er Village, known as the "cliff village."

The cliffs surrounding the village have an altitude drop of some 800 meters, isolating locals from the outside world for decades.

The clifftop village is among hundreds of thousands of villages in China that have eliminated poverty. In 2020, after eight years of efforts, all of the country's nearly 100 million rural residents living below the current poverty line had shaken off poverty.