Home‑made simple cableway carries chestnuts down mountain in Feixian, wins wide online acclaim

A home‑built simple steel‑wire cableway for transporting chestnuts has gone viral on social‑media platforms in Feixian County. Local mountain farmers use pulleys and steel ropes to send sack‑loaded chestnuts sliding downhill, greatly cutting heavy manual labour during autumn nut harvest season.

Most chestnut orchards in Datianzhuang Township of Feixian sit on steep hillsides. For generations, farmers had to carry heavy sacks of chestnuts down narrow rugged mountain paths. One round trip would take more than one hour, bringing high physical burden and potential fall risks during harvest rushes.

More than ten years ago, several local villagers pooled merely over 1,000 yuan to purchase steel wire, pulleys and fixing components, putting up this practical simple cableway along mountain slopes. After chestnuts are collected and packed into woven sacks, farmers hang sacks onto pulley hooks. Full sacks glide smoothly along the steel cable directly to flat ground at the foot of mountain, replacing strenuous human shoulder‑pole transport.

Cao, the local grower who shot the short video, said he originally posted footage simply to share this labour‑saving trick with fellow mountain villagers, without expecting it to become an internet hit. After the video went viral, many chestnut‑planting farmers from other mountain regions reached out to consult construction skills. Cao generously shares his hands‑on experience hoping more rural households can reduce toil and raise harvest efficiency with low‑cost folk innovations.

This low‑cost grassroots invention showcases practical wisdom from Yimeng mountain farmers. It proves that rural‑sector innovation does not always rely on large‑scale sophisticated machinery. Down‑to‑earth, trial‑and‑error solutions born from field production can also deliver tangible benefits for mountain agriculture.

Editor：韩蒙蒙