For years, international climbers and authorities were locked in a standoff over Liming’s sandstone cliffs. Now, the sport’s popularity and China’s success on the global stage have transformed climbing into a valuable resource.
By Li Pasha
YUNNAN, Southwest China — On an immense wall of red rock, a jagged crack resembling a bolt of lightning stretches up until disappearing from view. Ten meters above, a climber, Dahlia Wong, slowly inches her way up.
Her hands and feet tightly jammed into the crack, which varies between about seven and 30 centimeters wide, she relies solely on the tension between them and the rock to cling to the bare rock face. Every couple of meters she stops to push a metal device into the crack, clips in the rope, and continues climbing, her face a mask of concentration and pain.
The crack Wong is climbing is a classic climbing route named Scarface II. Unlike sport climbing, where the rock face is equipped with pre-drilled bolts for safety, Scarface belongs to traditional or “trad” climbing, where climbers place removable protection as they climb, which makes it more challenging.
Below, another climber Zhou Lei, points to Scarface and says, “Men find climbing it easier because they have bigger hands, but women usually jam fists. Everyone climbs it differently depending on height and build.”
And alongside others like “Air China,” “Ding Dong’s Crack,” and “Japanese Cowboy,” these routes are drawing trad climbers from around the world to the remote village of Liming, located in the Laojunshan Mountains in southwestern China’s Yunnan province.
Here, most locals aren’t Han Chinese, but Lisu, a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group, whose livelihood depended on hunting, subsistence agriculture, and harvesting wild honey, found high up on the same cliffs.
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