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SCMP Reporter

Few people outside Tibet  would have taken the completion of the first railway linking the impoverished region with the rest of China as personally  as retired general Yin Fatang .

For Mr Yin, a former party secretary in Tibet in the 1980s who spent more than two decades promoting the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world's highest rail link is as much a national triumph as a personal accomplishment.

'I've been longing to see the railway almost all of my life, and it is like a dream come true,' he said.

However, the construction of the railway, lauded by state media as a 'rail of hope' and heavy with political and strategic significance, has not proceeded smoothly.

It has not only invited controversy over its impact on the fragile environment and native culture, but also witnessed the many setbacks in the country's ascendancy on the international stage over the past five decades.

The idea to link Tibet to the  mainland rail system was first envisaged by Sun Yat-sen in the early 1900s.

But it was Mao Zedong  who realised the strategic significance of building transport systems, including a railway, to Lhasa  before Beijing took control of Tibet 55 year ago, according to Mr Yin.

Tibet is the last region in China to have a railway, which is seen as a shortcut to poverty relief and even prosperity on the mainland, especially in the country's long-forgotten hinterlands.

Author Tashi Tsering,   whose  autobiography The Struggle for Modern Tibet recalls life in Tibet in the 1950s, said the railway had been a dream dating back to his childhood.

'The first time I travelled by train was when I studied in India in 1956. At that time I could not help wondering when I would see a railway in Tibet,' the 77-year-old said.

The railway on 'the roof of the world' was formally put on the agenda of the  central government in 1955 and the construction of the section between Xining  and Golmud  in Qinghai  started three years later.

Although the project was forced to  stop three years later when the country suffered from the great famine of 1961, Wang Yingxian , the head of a leading research institute responsible for the project's technical support, said research work on the rail link never stopped.

The persistence of 'a great number of dedicated researchers and supporters of the railway' offered hope for the resumption of construction more than a decade later, Mr Yin said.

The project resumed in 1974, but another setback lay ahead, a little further down the track.

Xining to Golmud was the relatively easy stretch. The remaining stretch was where the technical complexity - laying tracks on frozen earth on the world's highest plateau - became a real factor. Another dispute emerged on whether the railroad to Tibet should start from Yunnan  or continue from Golmud, and the project stopped again in 1978.

To Mr Yin's surprise, the railway authorities changed their minds and threw their support behind a different route from Yunnan to Tibet, citing insurmountable technical bottlenecks, and received approval from Deng Xiaoping .

However, the Yunnan route proved too expensive and was soon shelved.

Mr Yin  set the train rolling again when he was appointed party secretary in Tibet in 1980, amid frequent riots by the pro-independence movement in Lhasa.

He began a painstaking 20-year campaign to lobby the country's top leaders for their support of the project.

'What do the Tibetan people need the most? They want to see a developing Tibet. But without a railway, Tibet will not be able to get rich,' he said citing a report he delivered to the leadership in 1981.

Deng  added his weight to Mr Yin's campaign in 1983 when he heard that the technical difficulties could possibly be overcome. 'The Qinghai-Tibet railway should be built,' he told Mr Yin.

But another spate of riots in Tibet in the late 1980s put the project on hold.

Mr Yin,  also  well known for his key role in Beijing's investigation into former Hebei  party chief Cheng Weigao  in 1999, was proud that his efforts finally paid off in 2000 when former president Jiang Zemin  decided to complete the project.

Mr Yin was born in Shandong province  in 1922 and participated in the war against Japanese occupation and the Kuomintang, and later in the border conflict with India during his first 20-year stay in Tibet. After stepping down as Tibet party secretary in 1985, he served as the deputy political commissar of the Second Artillery Corps.

With the railway scheduled to start operation  tomorrow  night, he said his main wish was to  take the first train to Tibet, where he had lived and worked for roughly 27 years.

While other 84-year-olds might baulk at the thought of a long train journey through some of the most forbidding high-altitude terrain in the world, Mr Yin was not intimidated.

Two years ago, he made a trip from Golmud to Tibet by car to inspect construction of the unfinished section of the railway, a trip which changed the fate of the project.

He wrote a letter to the top leaders right after the inspection, calling for an early opening of the railway.

'President Hu Jintao  accepted my suggestion last December and instructed that the trial operations of the railway should start one year ahead of the original schedule,' he said.



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Tibet

Tibet rail link 'a dream come true'