Tibetannet

“You have a dream, you got to protect it.” This sentence in the American inspirational movie "The Pursuit of Happiness" that can burn you with righteous indignation when you listen to that it has already become the motto of some young people living on the “Roof of the World”.

Chamdo of Tibet has been known as “A bright pearl of Eastern Tibet”. In 2006, after graduating from the Southwest Jiaotong University (specialized in traffic engineering), Nyima Gyaltsen started to work for the Communication Bureau of Chamdo. From many people’s point of view, to be an official in a flourishing city is a sign of good luck. Yet most of the time during the 10-year period of time, he was rushing about in mountainous villages where there are no running water, electricity or roads opened to traffic.

In 2008, Nyima Gyaltsen came to Kyari Township in Pashod County and started his one-year work on poverty-relief. He had not imagined that in Kyari (where roads were not opened to traffic during those days) there was just one small store and communications could only be done with an overhead cable.

“Coming to this kind of environment, you indeed will feel a little lost，”Nyima Gyaltsen said.

He eventually was inspired by an elderly party secretary who had been working there for 10 years and the honest villagers, therein finding his working motivation.

Nyima Gyaltsen said, that year, when he was going back and forth to different villages many times to conduct the route surveys, what he thought about was just to built roads and let the villagers be able to go out of the mountains.

“The second year, a big bridge was built on the Nujiang River in the Kyari Township, the villagers no longer had to cross the river using the dangerous overhead cable,” he said.

“In our farming and pastoral areas, there are still many villagers who really need young people’s help.” Reflecting on the experience during the three times staying in the village within those five years, he said, “as a young person living in the new era of Tibet, you have no shirking the responsibility for this.”

Unlike many young people working in governmental departments and national enterprises, Norbu Dradul, the head of the Lhasa Zhuomeng Training Center, is relatively ambitious. After teaching in a public school for three years, he left his work and chose to set up his own career. He did a translation job, engaged in non-profit projects, and then entered a private school teaching language; later, in 2013 he established this training school.

 “My family and friends do not appreciate this project at all, many friends think that I am a crazy person who has no payback plans.”, Norbu Dradul recalled. During the process of collecting money, he seemed to struggle a lot; after the school was established, it also faced the hard situation of the shortage of highly-qualified teachers; later on, because of not having enough management experience, he often came into conflicts with his partners.

Since last year, after having his career stabilized, Norbu Dradul shared with his friends the ups and downs, the struggles he has experienced as well as the success he has gained in a talk entitled as “the distance from dream to reality”. He said that he hopes that with this talk, he can help college students change their simplified thoughts about job opportunities and reinforce their awareness of career building. Some people got inspired by him, choosing to build their own careers.

Shikha, turning 37 years old this year, is the director of the Shigatse Branch of the China Telecom. As a person who was born in 1979, he always considers himself as a half “after the 1980s” (the generation after 1980s). In 1999, when he was 20 years old, after graduating from the university, Shikha started to work for the Chamdo Telecom Bureau, after 17 years, starting from an operator he became the responsible official of the branch company.

Last year, a strong shockwave radiated from the “4.25” earthquake in Nepal which affected the Shigatse, Shikha and his colleagues worked hard on keeping the communication online in the disaster areas, preserving the communication networks in Tibet, becoming one of the most effective examples of communications teamwork.

“Alike many other children of Tibet, I went to school in inland since I was very young, this has trained me into not surrendering or being afraid of hardships”, said Shikha.  

This year is the year in which China starts the 13th Five-Year Plan, facing the target to build up a better-off society in five years, Shikha said, here, on this piece of vast land in Tibet, there are still many things awaiting to be constructed: a base station, a new road, an electricity network…, “This is the dream of every person amongst us.”