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With bare hands, no safety ropes and loosely laced canvas sneakers on his feet, Huang Xiaobao, a 52-year-old villager clambers up the sheer rock face of cliffs along Getu River in Southwest China's Guizhou province. Huang, a man with one of his legs affect by polio, started to learn skills of free climbing from his father when he was only 12 years old. In the past 40 years, the man with strong arms always climbs 100 meters in search of swallow droppings to fertilize local terraced fields. The Getu River area has a long history of climbing. In the past, locals would have to scale the treacherous cliff face to collect swallow's droppings to use as fertilizer. Today however, climbing is more of an ethnic ritual, performed for tourists who stand aghast as the climbers, using their bare hands and no safety equipment, navigate a hundred meters up the walls of the caves and down again in less than 20 minutes. Six rock climbers put on "Spiderman" shows every day of the week.[Photo/Ecns.cn] |
