On July 1, 2006, the first train of the Qinghai–Xizang Railway made its firstrun.

chief conductor Chen Chunyou paced through the carriages, checking every detail–slower and more carefully than usual. As the whistle blew, the train rolled toward Lhasa.

The following afternoon, the train pulled slowly into Amdo Railwway Station. As the doors opened, Tagui, a herder from Shengekhang Village in Amdo County, straightened his Tibetan robe and stepped aboard with a sense of wonder.

They may have passed each other at some moment, neither knowing the other.

One would continue to travel back and forth along the steel tracks; the other would return to his roots and remain in the pastoral region. Two lives that had no point of intersection were quietly brought together by this railway.

First encounter: One platform, two people

Fourteen years later. Spring 2020.

Chen Chunyou stood at the entrance of Shengekhaang Village. Beside him, a natural stone tablet bore the inscription: elevation 4,880 meters.

He had been sent by the Qinghai–Xizang Railway Group as a resident cadre for village support.

Village committee member Tagui stood at the same entrance, his face weathered dark and coarse by the plateau's intense ultraviolet rays.

When they shook hands, the grip was firm.

This First Secretary from the railway–tall, lean, and fair-skinned–stood in the Amdo wind like a sapling not yet firmly rooted.

“Can he withstand this wind?”Tagui wondered to himself. Just then, Chen Chunyou asked,“Shall we take a walk around the village together?”

That day, the two walked a long way along the dirt paths. Chen Chunyou spoke little but asked with great care: Where do most of the young people go for work? How does the village get its drinking water? Is it convenient for the children to go to school?

Over the following months, Chen Chunyou, accompanied by Tagui, traversed every inch of Shengekhang’s 35,687 hectares of pastureland, walked through every valley and along every hillside, and visited each household. He would often squat at herders’doorsteps, rubbing his hands together while making small talk and asking detailed questions, filling his notebooks with notes on all kinds of community information.

“You resident cadres are all so dedicated!” Tagui exclaimed as he flipped through Chen Chunyou’s notebooks.“Since you came, you've never stopped building bridges, tidying the village, and supporting students and the needy. Most importantly, our village now has running water, electricity, roads, communications, and internet–all connected.”

Chen Chunyou closed his notebook, on which a list of plans was written: build a village history museum, take the children on a train ride, expand the water plant...

One evening, the two sat at the village committee gate, the wind having blown the moon clean and bright. As they chatted, the conversation turned to 2006.

Chen Chunyou casually mentioned,“That year, I was the chief conductor of the first Qinghai–Xizang Railway train.” Tagui paused,“Train Qing-1? The one on July 1?”

“Yes. How do you know the train number?”

Tagui set down his tea bowl and looked at him,“Ajo(Tibetan for‘older brother''), I was on that train too. I boarded at Amdo–it was my first time on a train.”

Chen Chunyou was stunned. After a moment, they both burst into laughter.

So that train, which had crossed the“Roof of the World,” had already placed the two of them at the same point fourteen years earlier.

Side by side: One land, two pairs of hands

A changed mindset, broader vision, and greater drive are what enable a once-isolated village to gain the confidence to open up.

This was what Chen Chunyou told Tagui–and it was also what he saw in Tagui.

In 2018, the Qinghai–Xizang Railway Group had helped build a poverty-alleviation water plant for the village. Now, Chen Chunyou wanted to expand it.

At the construction site, the wind was so strong it was hard to stand. A pipe froze and burst, spraying water all over both of them. Tagui pulled off his gloves and pressed his hands against the crack; Chen Chunyou reached out too–one pair of hands dark and rough, the other pale and chilled.

Tagui looked at them, then pulled a pair of old gloves from his robe and tossed them onto Chen Chunyou's knee,“Your hands are a scholar's hands–they can't take the cold. Put these on.”

Chen Chunyou laughed and said,“They’ll get used to it after a bit of freezing.”

Once the water was bottled, it needed a market.

In the depths of winter, with snow so heavy that the road ahead was barely visible, Chen Chunyou and his team visited 11 townships, pitching their product time and again...

In 2021, the plant's sales reached 640,000 yuan. They decided to distribute 400,000 yuan as dividends, with the highest-earning household receiving about 5,000 yuan–making it the village with the largest dividend payout in Amdo County at that time.

With the water plant firmly established, Chen Chunyou next proposed building vegetable greenhouses.

Growing vegetables in a place where even trees could not be seen–the herders were skeptical, but they all trusted him.

Under Chen Chunyou’s coordination, some leveled the ground, turned the soil, and set up the frames, while others carried shovels and pulled carts... Dozens of people worked on that barren land.

The day the first crop of cabbage came up, the whole village came to see.

Tagui crouched in the greenhouse and gazed at it for a long time.

That evening, he brought the cabbage to the table and picked up the first bite.“I think this village is going to be very different from now on. Ajo, I truly thank you!”

“I‘ve long considered myself a part of Shengekagang Village–don't you see me as family yet?”Chen Chunyou teased.

Tagui’s eyes reddened,“You are family, you are family!”

The Return:

One pen road, two hearts

When he first arrived, Chen Chunyou was a newcomer, an outsider.

A few years later, he had become an old friend, a familiar face.

In 2022, his tenure as resident cadre came to an end. On the day he left, Tagui pressed a plastic bag into his hands, containing tsampa (roasted barley flour) and a small jar of butter tea. A note with wobbly handwriting read: Eat this on the way. Long after the train had pulled away, Chen Chunyou was still holding that plastic bag.

Back in Xining, reunited with his family and living a stable life, he nevertheless felt an emptiness inside. In the quiet of the night, he often thought back to all the things in the village.

His phone calls with Tagui never stopped. Beyond exchanging wishes for good health, their conversations always came back to Shengekagang,“Thirty-eight households have been relocated to new homes in the county town. Per capita income has grown from 2,780 yuan in 2006 to 21,000 yuan now. Ajo, don't worry!”

He suddenly understood–it wasn't that Amdo could not do without him; it was that he could not do without Amdo.

“I want to go back to Amdo for a visit.”

As soon as he said it, his wife's hand, holding her bowl, paused for a moment.

He had just come back and was about to leave again–Chen Chunyou knew it wasn't fair, and was about to explain, but his wife spoke first,“Then I‘ll get out that winter coat I put away.”

In 2026, Chen Chunyou once again stood at the entrance of Shengekagang Village.

Tagui stood in the wind, just as he had six years earlier–one waiting, one arriving.

Now the village Party branch secretary, Tagui stepped forward and gave him a tight embrace.

“I want to expand the water plant again. You'll help me, right?” These were Chen Chunyou's words.

“We’ll keep working with you,”Tagui replied.

One evening a few days later, after finishing work on the water plant expansion, the two passed by the village history museum. Tagui suddenly stopped.“Ajo, let's go in.”

Tagui walked up to an old photograph.“My father's generation lived in tents, chipped ice for water, and never left this grassland in their entire lives." He turned and pointed to a picture of children posing in front of a bullet train, moved.“How fortunate today's children are!”

It was just after the Lhasa-Nyingchi Railway had opened, and Chen Chunyou had taken more than 30 local primary school students on a bullet train ride. One of them, a young girl named Quzhen, later wrote,“I used to think Amdo was the biggest place in the whole world. Sitting on that speeding train, I realized that the world outside is much bigger.”

The water plant is a road, the railway is also a road–one lets the water flow out, and the other lets the people go out.

Reporters: Danzeng Wangmu, Wang Yahui, Zhang Yu

Translator: Dan Zhen, Zhi Xinghua

Review: Phurbu Tsering, Li Chengye, Drakpa Wangchen