Escalator Of The Week

Not being quite as young as I once was I am now becoming a bit picky about how much energy and effort I want to expend to get to a position to enjoy a view of some site of natural beauty, a sort of mental risk and reward calculation. Increasingly, more and more seem not to be worth the effort.

China is not the first country that would come to mind for inclusivity but they are beginning to cotton on that here are many people like me who would like to enjoy nature’s beauty without the fag of getting there and have come with a novel solution to make it possible.

From May 2025 visitors will be able to ascend a 1,500 metre mountain in the Lingshan Scenic Area using dozens of interlinked escalator. The project was launched in 2022 and is being hailed as a giant step in making the spectacular and sweeping Lingshan vistas with its seventy-two peaks accessible to all. What was a two hour climb up innumerable steps carved into the mountain has now been reduced to an escalator ride of a few minutes.

Lingshan is not the first Chinese landmark to receive this makeover – in 2023 an escalator was installed at Tianyu Mountain in Zhejiang Province up its 350 metre summit and several other sites have since followed suit – but it is certainly the most ambitious.

Opinions are divided. Is it a slippery slope that strips nature of the very challenges that make it rewarding or is a step to making even the most remote outposts available to all to enjoy?

The jury is out but, for what it is worth, as long as it blend sensitively into the environment, it can only be good.