Mr. Wu Jiaxing, the shaman of the village, told me that a complicated sacrifice offering ceremony involving many procedures will be held beforehand to prevent those performers from getting hurt.

Before Buddhism and Christianity reached this area, local Lisu people practiced animism, a primitive form of religion. They believed that there's god or spirit behind every mountain, every river, and every piece of land. So before they perform the stunt of climbing the knife ladder, they need to set up tables in the direction of east, west, north and south to pay tribute to the gods and pray for safety.

And according to Mr. Wu, two theories explain the origin of this tradition. One goes that climbing the knife ladder is an exorcizing ritual to drive away the evil spirits. The second theory is that the ceremony is to commemorate a special war during which their ancestors scared off invaders by setting up knife ladder and jumping over a big fire pit.

Most of the knives are arranged parallel except two crossings. It turns out that the crossings represent the crossroads on the way toward the top of the ladder. If you cannot pass the crossings, you don't get to unlock the gate toward the spiritual world, the world of blessings.

Xiaolan: My heart now pumps really fast, coz I've never seen this in my whole life! Real people, in flesh and blood, climb the knife ladder. But it's Lisu tradition, and they told me accident never happened before because they are blessed by god and spirits.

"OK, on three, one, two, three!"

Only a few who are specially trained can accomplish the feat of climbing the ladder, and they are called "nipa" or "xiangtong" in lisu.

Lisu people climb the knife ladders only on the most important festival or occasions, in Nujiang, it's during the Kuoshi Festival from December 20 to 22.

Host: Thank god! They are back to the ground safely. This is the real guy of the mountain, Lisu people!

Lisu people worship fire. Climbing the knife ladder is always accompanied by walking the burning charcoal.

For us regulars who are not trained with the exceptional skill, dancing around the bonfire is a safer and more pleasant way of worshipping the fire.

"I'm struggling with this new dancing number I just learned from this Lisu little girl here. Well, this is a people who worship fire, worship mountain, and worship river. And I've never been to a place where people and nature exist in such kind of harmony before."

Host: Is it safe?

Local: Don't worry, people take it everyday to cross the river.

"I can't breath. We are going take the cable sliding to cross the Nujiang River! This used to be the basic death-defying solution, the only solution to cross the river in the past for local people."

"I'm really not a thrill-seeking type of person. Normally to do this, I'd have no other choice to escape from death to do this! But for the better scenery ahead waiting for us, let's go!"

"Once you started, you forget about all the fears and started to enjoy the feeling of flying. It's really awesome, I want to do it again, let's go!"

This time it's more difficult. It happens. Because one side is higher, but sometimes the momentum won't carry you all the way to the other side. You probably will get stuck somewhere in between. So you need arm strength to cross over. But it's really fun, top notch, we highly recommend it! See you next time, Bye-bye!

Editor:Chen