Mountainside 'cloud shuttle' helps lift remote Yunnan villagers out of isolation

The lives of local residents in a remote village in southwest China's Yunnan Province have been transformed in recent years thanks to a unique project known as the "cloud shuttle" which transports them up the rugged mountainside and was built as part of the country's rural revitalization efforts.

As schoolchildren across China headed back to start the new school semester following the Chinese New Year holiday on Sunday, the young people in the small village of Nizhuhe set out to embark on a morning commute that is unlike any other.

After a scenic train ride, they ascend a towering 268-meter-tall cliffside elevator, after which they then glide high above the Nizhuhe river canyon in a cable car, before finally reaching their school.

"With the elevator, it's much more convenient and saves a lot of time. And riding the cable car feels like going down a slide. I'm really happy," said Lei Xin, a student at the Guanzhaiwan Primary School.

The remote Nizhuhe village is nestled at the bottom of the canyon in Puli Township of Yunnan's Xuanwei City. For centuries, it remained isolated and largely impoverished.

In the past, the shortest route available for villagers to go from the valley floor to the mountaintop was via a perilous cliffside path, a journey that took nearly six hours for a round trip and was certainly not one for the faint-hearted. Children and their parents living here had to make this arduous trek at least once every 10 days.

"[Back then,] when we decided to go to town, we had to get up around 04:00. It took us over two hours to climb to the top of the mountain, and we must get there before 07:30 to catch the bus to go to the town," said Zhao Suzhen, a local villager.

For many years, taking on this challenging climb on the narrow 'zigzagging' trails along the sheer cliff face was the only way local children could travel to school. Twelve-year-old Lei Youyou still shudders at the thought of those difficult days.

"The scariest time was during a flood. There was a section where we had to step on a large rock to cross. When flooding came, the rock was completely submerged by the flood water, and it's slippery. One slip, and we could have fallen straight off the cliff. That day, my grandma came to get me. She cleared another path so we could make our way home," said Lei.

A turning point came several years ago as part of China's large-scale poverty alleviation efforts, when the local government introduced a tourism project to bring in more visitors to enjoy the local scenery and ultimately provide better all-round access for those living in the area.

In 2022, a significant change came that would finally offer a solution to the once-perilous journey villagers had to make, with the completion of a local scenic area along the Nizhuhe river. This saw the 268-meter-high sightseeing elevator and a cable car system put into use, offering free access to the villagers of Nizhuhe and nearby areas, and providing the children with the direct "cloud shuttle" to the mountaintop.

Cai Xiong, a native of the region, is a major investor in the project and said he wanted to ensure young people no longer had to go through such daily hardships.

"When I was in primary and middle school, I really wanted to leave this place. Seeing this change now makes me really happy," said Cai.

Since the work was completed, the canyon has been attracting an increasing number of tourists and has helped create new economic opportunities for locals, with a raft of new businesses opening up including restaurants and homestays.

"Puli is home to excellent tourism resources. In addition to the Nizhuhe river canyon, we also have hundreds of hectares of grasslands and azaleas. We will speed up the development of tourism to drive growth across the entire township. Secondly, we should focus on enhancing the quality of [the tourism resources at] the existing Nizhuhe river canyon," said Yang Jie, the Party secretary of Puli Township.

Thanks to these life-changing developments over the past several years, the children are now looking toward a world full of possibilities, and despite being among the confinement of the mountains, they now view no journey as being too far, and believe no dream is out of reach.

"When I grow up, I want to open a hospital here so that elderly people won't have to travel all the way to the city of Xuanwei for treatment when they are sick," said Chen Honghan, a student at the Guanzhaiwan Primary School.

Mountainside 'cloud shuttle' helps lift remote Yunnan villagers out of isolation

China has been playing a key role in bringing a sense of stability to the world and continuing to promote globalization against a turbulent international backdrop, according to a British scholar as he gave his assessment of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) which lays out the country's development vision for the years ahead.

Renowned British scholar Martin Jacques, a former senior research fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, shared his take on the recently approved outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan, a key blueprint which maps out China's policy priorities through to the end of the decade.

The plan notes that China advocates practicing true multilateralism, upholding the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order based on international law, and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

It says China will also seek to expand its global partnership network and guide the international order toward a more fair and just direction.

Despite current geopolitical tensions, Jacques says China is responding to a turbulent world full of uncertainties in a calm and rational manner.

"We are living in dangerous times, unpredictable times, and I think China has found a way in this new, difficult era, in the big power relationship [with the United States], to handle it in a calm way, not rise to the bait, and seek to, as far as possible, keep the relationship on a relatively even keel," he said.

China has also pledged to commit to openness and cooperation against the rise of unilateralism and protectionism, and has vowed to share opportunities and pursue common development with all countries.

Noting the wave of anti-free trade sentiment and protectionist policies which have emerged in the United States, particularly under the administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump, Jacques says that globalization will remain the prevailing trend and believes China has been able to find successful approaches to advance international cooperation amid the current challenges.

"I think globalization is the long-term historic trend. But that doesn't mean globalization is always in good health, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have setbacks. [We are] now in a period where globalization first of all, has been slowed and in key respects reversed, but at the same time we've seen it taking new forms. The Belt and Road Initiative is a very important form of globalization, and it's been very successful," he said.

China striving for stability against unpredictable int'l backdrop: British scholar