This Valentine's Day, you might not consider a ladder to be a particularly romantic gift. Gifting your loved one a ladder as a token of your love could be considered as unromantic as buying a toaster, or washing machine as a Valentine's gift. However, for a couple in Chongqing, China, a ladder was the most romantic and appropriate gift that one man could possibly give his true love.

The Ladder of Love

Over fifty years ago, a young man named Liu Guojiang, then aged sixteen, fell in love with an older, widowed woman called Xu Chaoqing. She was twenty six, with four children from her first marriage.  At that time, it was considered immoral in Chinese society for a young man to love an older woman, even worse if she happened to be a widow.  However, Liu's love for Xu was so strong that he ignored the malicious gossip and scoldings from village elders, and became more determined than ever to be with the woman he loved.  He snuck into her house late one night in 1956 and proposed to her. She readily accepted, and the next morning the couple eloped with Xu's four children to live high up in the mountains overlooking Gaotan village where they had once lived under scorn.

The couple had nothing to begin with, and lived off wild foods and whatever they could forage. Over the next few years, they built a series of shelters, starting with a simple grass and straw hut, and upgrading to a house built by hand with mud and home-fired bricks and tiles.  They planted a vegetable garden behind their dwelling and lived simply, yet happily. Xu bore four more children to Liu, and the children attended the village school far down the mountain.

Although Liu and Xu rarely ventured down to the village, having created a sustainable life for themselves in the mountains, Liu decided that to make the steep climb up and down the mountain safer for his wife, he would carve (entirely by hand) a set up steps to create a proper pathway to civilisation. It took more than fifty years to complete, and Liu broke thirty six chisels in the process, but he never gave up his love-inspired labour.  His ladder of love was the perfect gift for the one woman he loved irrevocably.

The ladder of love, as it has been dubbed, was discovered in 2001 by a team of research explorers.  They ascended the steps, not knowing what they would find at the top. When they arrived, they were amazed to find the couple, elderly by now, but still very much in love. Xu admitted in a 2006 interview that she rarely used the ladder of love to go into the village, as the couple were happy enough with their secluded mountain life.  In 2007 Liu died, Xu moved in with her sons, and passed away in 2012. They are buried together near the home they, quite literally, carved out for themselves high in the mountains.

This story has captured the hearts and minds of millions of people all over the world, as a representation of the strength of true love and the lengths that people will go to in order to be with the one they love and to make them happy. Inspiring as it is, carving a set of steps into a mountainside is not a viable option as a Valentine's gift for many people. But it's the thought that counts.

Plato's Ladder of Love

Plato also used the phrase 'ladder of love' to describe the stages a person goes through when learning about love.  A lover (defined as someone who loves) climbs from rung to rung through the stages from the basest, to the purest form of love.

The first, basest stage is 'a beautiful body', which describes the feeling of being physically attracted to another person.  After this first stage, the second rung is 'all beautiful bodies', where the person realises that the beauty contained in the object of his desire is not original and exclusive to that person, but that it is shared by all beautiful bodies.

In the third and fourth stages, the lover learns that although all beautiful bodies are desirable, neither many nor one single beautiful body will satisfy completely.  Instead of looking for merely physical attractions, the lover realises that the soul is more important. Because the soul is more important than the body, the lover starts to see that the very thing, which nurtures a beautiful soul, is a harmonious and peaceful social order.

The fifth stage, or rung, is called 'the beauty of knowledge' during which stage the lover invests more importance into social institutions, and the knowledge that makes social institutions work. The sixth and final stage is 'beauty itself'.  In this stage, it is not so much that beauty is the descriptor of a particular person or thing, but that beauty itself is beautiful, as is the pursuit of learning about love and beauty. Plato's description of this level of love and awareness as everlasting loveliness which neither comes nor ages, which neither flowers nor fadesbut consists of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every lovely thing partakes of it.

Plato's ladder of love is not exactly a romantic tale, but it does show us how falling in love and becoming aware of what love and beauty is about can be compared to climbing up a ladder. And just like a ladder, love should be grasped with both hands.  Continuing that metaphor, both love and ladders hurt if you fall off!

Ladders for lovers

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's classic romantic tragedy, the star-crossed lovers use a rope ladder in act 2, scene 4, to help Juliet escape her father's house so that they can be married in secret.  But imagine how differently the famous balcony scene might have gone, had Romeo had a ladder with him.  Juliet asks Romeo

How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?

The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,

And the place death, considering who thou art,

If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

Romeo's reply is,

With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out,

And what love can do, that dares love attempt: Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.

The sentiment that love made him 'fly' over the orchard walls is very beautiful, and no doubt more romantic than if Romeo had said that he used a mobile work platform, or extension ladder to scale the walls.  Perhaps it was a very early advertisement for Red Bull?  Romeo's reply might have been very different today,

'With an extension ladder did I scale the orchard walls

And a with a second ladder did I o'ercome the stony limits

But a mobile work platform might have been more suitable

Had I brought thee flowers and a box of Milk Tray.'

In modern day films and television programmes, ladders are often used by young lovers wanting to sneak into each other's rooms at night so it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see the similarities between Romeo and Juliet and today's lovestruck teenagers.

Recreating the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet might be a little over the top for a Valentine's Day gesture, but with a ladder and a decent singing voice, you can still serenade your loved one without dressing in period costume and reciting pages upon pages of Shakespeare. You could even dress as the Milk Tray man and climb through your lover's window as a surprise.  Remember though, if you are planning to use a ladder somehow in your Valentine's Day treat, stay safe and make sure the ladder is well secured, as nothing ruins a romantic gesture like a trip to A&E.