In a very remote corner of south-central Sichuan there is a hamlet perched upon a cliff high upon the canyon formed by the mighty Dadu River. This hamlet doesn't have a name. Instead, it is known by the description of its location: the Second Level Terrace of the Wushi Bridge Village in Gan Luo county which is one of many in the Liang Shan Yi Minority Autonomous prefecture of Sichuan, China. This tiny spec in the Chinese universe is home to four hundred members of the Yi Minority, one of China's fifty six officially recognized ethnic groups. (All in all, there are 6.6 million Yi in China, thus accounting for one half of one percent of the population.)

Among them live two teachers, Mr. Li Guilin and Ms. Lu Jianfen. By their own accounting their lives are entirely ordinary. Soon after they arrived, Mr. Li and Mrs. Lu decided that only education would enable the next generation of Yi villagers to leave this dismal place. In order to reach out to as many students as possible, they decided that they would teach not only the kids of the Second Level Terrace, but those from the neighboring villages as well. There was a slight problem, however: the five wooden, steep ladders leading up to their school at the Second Level Terrace was (and today remains) too dangerous for the children coming from the outlying areas to scale themselves ever day.

Mr. Li and Mrs. Lu concluded that the kids faced enough obstacles as it was; let no ladder stand in the way between their plight and a basic education, is what they said to themselves. And so they decided to descend themselves one morning to the bottom of the five ladders and to carry each child, one by one, on their backs up to the Second Level Terrace. In the evening, they carried them back down again. And this they have done ever since, for nineteen years by now, day in and day out without fail.   ⇦ Back to Page 19    On to Page 21 ⇨