A new elevator now runs up the side of a canyon in China's Yunnan province, the second one on this cliff, and together the pair has turned a three-hour climb to school into a trip of about half an hour. The children who ride them live at the bottom of the canyon. Their school is at the top. No more cliff climbing to school!
China holds the Guinness World Record for the tallest outdoor elevator - the famous Bailong ride, which travels 326 m (1,070 ft) up and down a cliff face in around a minute and a half. The two elevators in this canyon are shorter than that. They are also the road to school.
The new 288-m (945-ft) "Fuyao Ladder" has opened alongside the 268-m (879-ft) "Qingyun Ladder", which was built in 2022. Both rise from Nizhuhe Village, a remote settlement at the bottom of the canyon, and both were built with the village's schoolchildren in mind. For generations, those children had no way out of the canyon but their own legs. They climbed precarious cliffside trails for three hours to reach Guanzhai Primary School, which sits at the top of the mountain at about 1,650 m (5,413 ft).
The climb took so long that students still board at school, coming home only once every 10 days or so. Before the elevators, that meant walking up at the start of a stretch of classes and climbing back down at the end of it.
The canyon is a scenic area as well as a route to school, so the two elevators carry sightseers alongside the students. Locally the pair goes by one nickname, kongzhong xiaoche, which comes out in English as the "aerial school bus" or the "sky school bus". "The second 'sky school bus' is 20 meters [66 ft] higher than the first ... and operates at a speed of 5 meters [16 ft] per second," according to local news outlet Yunnan Net. At that speed, the ride lifts a child up the cliff in under a minute.
The elevators are only one leg of the journey. At the start of each stretch of classes, the kids travel a short distance on a shuttle bus, which takes them to the base of the elevators. From there the aerial school bus carries them to a platform near the top of the mountain in just minutes.
They still have to take an aerial cable car - a trip of around five minutes - to get to school. A bus, an elevator and a cable car, plus the waits in between: three rides, about half an hour in all, and not one step of cliff. Everyone can now get to class on time without climbing a rock face.
The elevators carry tourists too, but for the kids of Nizhuhe Village it is the ride to school that counts. The canyon has not changed. The way to school has.