“We sing for happiness because we saw children far away from home returned to their mothers.” The first time I saw Sina Dingzhu, he was reading a poem in a TV program. 

When we met face-to-face on February 5th, he was back with his mother to their hometown—Bala Village in the Balagezong Grand Canyon, Shangri-la City, northwest Yunnan’s Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

Dozens of years ago, Bala was a unreachable place since there is no road to it. To change the condition, Sina Dingzhu paid all he had earned and built a road to Bala in ten years.

 “It is always a happy journey to drive my own car back to Bala, reminding me of many memories,” said Sina Dingzhu. When he was a boy, Bala was a poverty-stricken Village. It was until he was a teenager that Sina Dingzhu went out of the village for the first time.  

“Because my eye was wounded in an accident at that time, my father took me to the hospital in Shangri-la. But it took us five days to walk from Bala to Shangri-la,” Sina Dingzhu recalled. When he arrived at the hospital, he missed the best time to treat the wound. “It’s really sad for me. From that time on, my expectation for building road to Bala had become stronger,” he said.

When he was 40 years old, Sina Dingzhu earned 40 million yuan by doing business. He then decided to build a road to Bala. But he faced insurmountable difficulties because the planned route was 35 kilometers long and passed through three other villages.

The survey team Sina Dingzhu invited left after they knew the difficulties, and local villagers also showed their misunderstanding. But these didn’t weaken his determination.

In September 2004, Sina Dingzhu started the construction of the road. He worked in the valley and paid his attention to every detail in the planning, calling for tenders and construction. 

Happiness is always achieved though hard work. Though the construction was stoped and restarted for many times, Sina Dingzhu never lost his confidence. After ten years, a road was finally built to Bala, reducing the travel time to Shanghai-la by car to one hour. Since then, the beautiful Balagezong Grand Canyon has been unveiled to tourists who has brought more and more wealth to local villagers. 

During the just passed Spring Festival holiday, the number of tourists visiting Balagezong doubled. And Sina Dingzhu is realizing his dream to lead his fellow villagers to achieve common prosperity. 

(Text by Zheng Fan; Photos from Xinhua)