Fight that has routed poverty

Mighty efforts in raising living standards of tens of millions can be seen in country’s bridges and roads. Li Lei and Li Yingqing report

-  Li Lei and Li Yingqing

When TV cameras captured Yu Yanqia, 8, dragging herself upside down along a steel rope strung above the raging Nujiang River on her daily journey to school, no bridges spanned the Nujiang, in rural Fugong county, Yunnan province. So the only way anyone could cross the river was the primitive and precarious steel rope and pulley system that Yu used that day in 2007.

Since then things have vastly improved for Yu and the area in which she lives.

Yu, now a doctor at a hospital in Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture, in which Fugong county is situated, remembers how her heart raced with the howling wind each time she crossed the river.

"I'd never been far from my village, so I just thought everyone used pulley bridges to cross rivers," she told Chinese media in July.

The images seen nationally of her crossing the river spurred action to build a bridge across the Nujiang, and when it was completed the following year Yu was chosen as the first person to cross it.

Yu's story encapsulates the rapid progress that has been made in China in improving infrastructure and lifting people out of poverty, especially in remote parts of the country.