Above of the "Ladders to Heaven" tells the moving story of Li Guilin and Lu Jianfen, a couple and substitute teachers in Liang Shan, China. They have gone through unimaginable distress through their long career to educate village children isolated from the world by high mountains: shockinlgy low salary, poor living condition, and even occasional real danger. They are the Prometheus in Chinese countryside, sacrificing their whole youth for the sake of the dissemination of knowledge among those who are in the most desperate need of it.