Workers play the generation game

Chamdo Bamda Airport in the Tibet autonomous region does not have a good reputation among the local people: it is renowned as the world's second-highest commercial airport, reputed to be the farthest such facility from a city anywhere in the world, and the one with the worst weather on the planet.

However, the smooth, wide, well-sealed road to the airport, flanked by snow-capped mountains and yak-dotted grasslands, means the drive is not too dreary, thanks to the generations of maintenance workers who have been stationed along the way.

Lodro is one of 23 workers responsible for a 30-kilometer section of the road. Every day at about 7:30 am, he and his colleagues drive steamrollers along the road, surveying and flattening the roadbed and cleaning the surface and ditches.

The 50-year-old, who like many Tibetans only uses one name, has done the job for 34 years. He still enjoys it, despite the workload and harsh weather, because he remembers the conditions endured by his parents, who were also road maintenance workers.

"When I was little, they brought me to their work site. It was still a dirt road. The only tools they had were shovels and pickaxes. They always left home at dawn and spent two or three hours walking to the site. It was often dark when they returned and there were very few streetlamps," he said.

"When they were hungry, all they had was tsampa (dough made from highland barley flour) and they could only melt mountain snow to make tea," he added.

Chenrab Yeshi, who works on the Lhasa-Nyingchi High Grade Highway, also inherited his job as a road maintenance worker from his parents. When he was little, he and his parents lived in a dormitory near their work site. As a result of the poor transportation infrastructure, he rarely attended school, but his father taught him some basic road repair techniques.

Lodro and Chenrab Yeshi are two of the 4,000 maintenance workers whose parents dedicated their lives to safeguarding roads across Tibet. As many of the 4,000 were uneducated and unemployed, the regional government offered them the same jobs as their parents so they would receive a steady income.

Lodro's 25-year-old son, Phuntsok Choten, is a road maintenance worker in distant Ngari prefecture. When asked why he allows his son to do the same hard work, Lodro said he wants the next generation to pass on the hardworking spirit of their road maintenance predecessors.

"I told my son that road maintenance can be passed down from generation to generation. It is good to maintain the road so people who pass by are safe. I still want to work harder and do better every year," he said.