At 394 feet up a cliff, this is the world’s most inconvenient convenience store

Most convenience stores compete on location, price, or how late they stay open. One tiny shop in China’s Hunan province competes on an entirely different metric: how terrifying the commute is. Perched 394 feet (120 meters) up a sheer cliff face, the store has earned an unofficial title.

The shop sits inside Shiniuzhai National Geological Park, built into the same vertical rock wall that rock climbers scale as part of a popular route. At just 22 square feet (2 square meters), the store is barely larger than a closet. It still serves a genuinely useful purpose for climbers who need a drink after hours of scaling exposed rock.

Nearly a decade up

The store has operated for nearly a decade, reachable only via metal anchors climbers clip into during the ascent. Reaching it has become something of a milestone partway through the climb, a small reward for anyone who has made it that far up the rock face.

Once there, climbers can buy a bottle of water for around 2 yuan, roughly 30 cents in US currency, similar to prices found at ground-level stores. Unlike most retail in China today, the shop reportedly still deals only in cash. There is no confirmation yet on whether mobile payment options like WeChat or Alipay have made the climb up as well.

Staff earn their paychecks

Whatever the climbers experience pales next to what store employees endure just to open for business. Staff reportedly carry dozens of beverage bottles up the cliff in a backpack before every shift. That’s the same climb recreational visitors take roughly 90 minutes to complete purely for fun.

Employees are also said to pace their own water intake carefully during a shift, since the nearest restroom sits at the bottom of a very long climb down. The store operates from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., selling water and simple snacks to anyone who makes the trip up.

Sometimes closed, always inconvenient

The shop was shuttered during the pandemic, and staffing the position year-round has proven difficult since then. Visitors occasionally report reaching the top only to find the store closed, an outcome that adds a fittingly inconvenient twist to an already inconvenient errand.

Despite the logistics, the store remains a fixture of the Shiniuzhai climbing experience. The park is otherwise known for a dramatic glass suspension bridge and one of Asia’s longest ziplines. China has built dramatic cable cars and elevators to make its most spectacular cliffs easier to access. This tiny shop, by contrast, stands out for going in the opposite direction entirely.