BEIJING - A Chinese Muslim woman from Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has successfully scaled Mount Everest.
Officially named Ma Liyamu, a Muslim from Jichang Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, Maizi started doing outdoor sports in 1996 but concealed her career from her other family members except her father until the media widely reported her in 2015, official sources said here on Tuesday.
In 2015, she was severely injured in an avalanche at her base camp in Nepal as she was preparing to climb Everest. But after recovering, she geared up again and successfully reached the top of Everest last May.
From being an amateur climber, and later a coordinator for a mountaineering firm, to running a high mountain trekking agency, the 47-year-old woman has been persistent in her efforts despite suffering obstruction in this male-dominated industry. Maizi became an assistant of Yang Chunfeng, known as the pioneer ofChinese folk mountaineering in 2009.
Mainly in charge of logistic support services, she assisted Yang, also from Xinjiang, in scaling 11 of the 14 mountains in the world that are taller than 8,000 meters, including Everest.
She set up a trekking company and founded the first China Women’s Everest Team the next year. As the world’s third registered women’s Everest expedition team, the five members – Maizi and four other climbers from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sichuan and Yunnan – have received nationwide attention.
