For half a century, Liu and Xu remained hidden in their cave home. No-one even suspected they were there. The wilderness was so huge that even the staircase had existed unnoticed by those in the valley below.

There are conflicting stories about what happened next. Some say that it was a team of timber surveyors; others that it was adventurers, trekking across largely unexplored areas of the mountain. Either way, the result was the same. A group of men hiking through the forest came across the elderly couple and their now adult children.

Their story was out and it wasn't long before journalists were beating a path up the staircase to meet them. No-one was sneering at them now. Nobody was dismissing Liu's feelings as puppy love, nor Xu as someone after the easy life. She was now eighty years old and still holding the hand of her seventy year old husband. They were as deeply in love, as they had been when they'd defied social convention all those decades ago.

It was a romance which captured the hearts of the Chinese, as the tale spread throughout the media. They were offered a home back in the village below, but the couple refused. They wanted to remain in their cave, though they were relieved that the censure was over.

Officials bowed to public pressure and vowed to install electricity in their home. It was agreed that Liu would not get into trouble for carving his 'ladder of love' into the mountainside. The staircase and the cave would be preserved as a testimony to their struggles.

The readers of Chinese Women Weekly voted this into the top ten of the greatest love stories to come out of China. Liu and Xu had gone full circle. From village pariahs, fleeing from opposition to their marriage, they were now being held up as one of the greatest examples of love in the country.

Unfortunately, there was a sad coda. One day Xu was entertaining reporters in her home, when Liu returned from work. He told her that he didn't feel well, then collapsed into her arms. He was dead by the time he hit the floor. Xu clung to him, screaming, and held him for hours. Her Liu was gone.