A university in Northwest China is really branching out its curriculum by offering students tree-climbing lessons for college credit.
A class of 24 students (13 women, 11 men) watched as instructors on Tuesday talked climbing gear and line placement at the base of a tree towering 18 meters over them.
One of the two coaches, Chen Chao, then wowed the class by covering eight meters in six seconds flat, Chinese Business View reported.
The lessons are part of a new outdoor survival course at Northwest University (NWU)in Xi'an that aims to not only help students with forest canopy research, but also survival skills and first-aid techniques.
Liu Meizhou, a chemistry major at NWU, said she hadn't realized how little she knew about the outdoors.
"I really like outdoor stuff like hiking and barbecuing, but I never learned expert skills like these," said Liu.
Though fun, the course is designed to help students in canopy research and offer a bird's-eye view of the ecosystem, local education authorities posted Tuesday.