A Chinese woman climber who fell unconscious near the summit of Mount Everest was rescued by Sherpa guides who happened to be there, and she made it safely down the mountain and survived. However, when it was reported that the climber had refused to pay the Sherpa guide $10,000 (about 1.4 million yen), the news was viewed more than 300 million times on the Internet. The Chinese Internet news outlet Shangyu Newspaper (cqcb.com) reported the story.
On May 18, a 50-year-old female climber from Hunan Province in central China, with the help of two Chinese male climbers, successfully reached the summit of Everest, but soon after beginning her descent, she became unconscious at around 8,500 meters above sea level.
At that time, a Nepalese Sherpa guide and others who happened to be supporting other climbers passed by. The climber gave up on his own ascent of Everest and asked the guide to help the woman, and the guide demanded that the climber pay him $10,000.
Generally, Sherpa guides who assist climbers to the top of Everest are paid between $8,000 and $10,000. Assuming that the woman climber would pay $10,000, the guide, in cooperation with the two climbers, lifted the woman climber up and down to the base camp, where she was treated for several days and recovered.
However, when the climber heard what had happened, she refused to pay the $10,000. No matter how much we tried to persuade her, she did not agree, so the $10,000 was paid by the female climber and the two climbers who accompanied her. The climber did not thank them or the guide.
The incident was reported by Shangyu Newspaper and posted on Weibo, China’s version of the short-text posting SNS. Many comments were made on the Internet, such as “Because of this woman, Chinese women as a whole will be misunderstood,” and “I wonder if other Sherpa guides who learned of this incident will not help anyone if they are Chinese in the future.
