Shangri-La road builder Sina Dingzhu’s story of building an almost impossible road for his hometown deeply moved the audience at the Fifth Perfect Charity Movies Festival, which was held in Zhongshan City, south China’s Guangdong Province on December 9.

Carving a zigzag road on towering snow-covered peaks in Shangri-La City, northwest Yunnan’s Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sina Dingzhu is chairman and general manager of the Balagezong Eco-Tourism Development Company.

The current Balagezong scenic area, where Sina Dingzhu was born, used to be a Tibetan village cut off from the civilizations outside. The only post road to the outside world was less than 1 meter wide.

At the age of 13, Sina Dingzhu left the mountainous village, looking for a new life. With hard work and honesty, he gradually got rich by conducting business.

In his thirties, he returned to his hometown, only to see people in his home village remained poor. There and then, he decided to build a road to link the village to other places, so that he could lead the fellow villagers develop tourism and get out of poverty together.

Supported by the villagers in the ensuing eight years, Sina Dingzhu succeeded in building a 35-kilometer road with his savings and loans from different banks.    

Today, the annual income of the households in the Bala village averages more than 100,000 yuan. Each family lives in a decent house, and some even got a car. In 2015, the village won the title of a nationally model village.

"Without Sina Dingzhu, we could still be trapped deep in the mountains like our ancestors," said the villagers.

Source: Diqing Daily; trans-editing by Wang Shixue