In 1976, Dilizhaer and Ayi Han in Xinjiang were at each other's throats over irrigation and house building. The feud between their families spread to the younger generation too. Aliya, Song Xiangshang's childhood sweetheart, stopped letting him ride her big white horse to school and made things difficult for him at every turn. Later, amid the wave of educated youths returning to the cities, Aliya went back to the city with her father, an educated youth, and began living an urban life. She also became the person Song Xiangshang pursued.
Song Jianguo, an electrician, was furious about the disgraceful "Eight-Nation Alliance Project" in the power industry. In a fit of anger, he changed his son Song Xiangshang's university application to the power systems program. Song Xiangshang also learned that ultra-high-voltage transmission technology was essential to the nation's rise, but developing it was as difficult as creating the Two Bombs and One Satellite. Major powers around the world, including the United States, Japan, and Europe, had poured in enormous sums of money, manpower, and resources, yet half a century of research had ended in failure.
But Song Xiangshang and generations of power industry workers, young and old, were undaunted by the challenges. They brought together dozens of academicians from the nation's mechanical engineering and power industries, thousands of power experts, and spent twenty-three years breaking countless foreign monopolies and setting countless world records. At last, they solved the seemingly impossible challenge of ultra-high-voltage transmission, creating a miracle in the power industry as China went from falling behind, to catching up, to keeping pace, and finally overtaking others. To this day, China is the only country in the world to have independently mastered and applied this technology.
So far, China has built 39 ultra-high-voltage projects. Their lines crisscross the country, forming the arteries of the nation and lighting the homes of 1.3 billion people, while giving the economy wings to soar.
Song Xiangshang takes an active part in developing Xinjiang's power industry, helping vast amounts of wind and solar power be transmitted in bundled form to 21 provinces via ultra-high-voltage lines, as far as Shanghai. It's a romantic story of "Xinjiang's abundant wind and sunshine lighting up Shanghai."
