Features

With waters billowing noisily like galloping wild horses and towering rocks as well as overhanging cliffs lining both sides, the gorge along the Nu River stretches hundreds of miles. The huge mountains and wide rivers have posed great obstacles for the people travelling out of the gorge area. However, nothing can stop their strong wish to communicate with other people. They have set up one "overpass" after another over the Nu River. These gliding ropes hanging over the Nu River are called " Nu river overpasses."

The Nus used to make gliding ropes with bamboo strips twisted together and put them up across the river. They also make wooden gliding boards and hang them on the rope. Then they glide over to the other side on it. They can also put their goods, animals on the gliding boards and send them over to the opposite bank. In history, the Chinese goldthread rhizome monkey native to the Nu River valley was sold to many faraway places with the help of these gliding ropes.

Gliding ropes are still used by people living in some remote mountainous areas, though some old bamboo ropes have been replaced by iron chains which are strong and fixed with pulleys. Even so, the thrill of hanging on it and rushing over the torrents still renders many people breathless.

The Gaoligong Mountain and the Biluoxue Mountain facing each other had hindered the development of the Nus. Until in the 1950s, many places still observed the growing and withering of trees and flowers to keep the time, passed information by tying knots and carving wood as well as managed agriculture by slash-and-burn cultivation. Now the new times has arrived, and the economic tide has also reached the Nu River gorge. Here, numerous herbs are incessantly sold to many other places, and rich underground mineral reserves have become economic advantages. Even the surging waves of the Nu river are no longer a problem they have been turned into an invaluable hydraulic resource to be utilized.