Recently, the official WeChat account of Tsinghua University released a push “You’re so dare to do, the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University”, which was forwarded a lot and red more than 100,000 times a day. And a touching comment below caught our attention:

Message on the public account

We tried our best and got in touch with the person who left the message, and learned that the “grandpa” in the message is Mao Yugui, an alumnus admitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University in 1952.

In 1957, Mao Yugui, in response to the call of the country, went as an electrician to Dingbian County Machinery Factory of Shaanxi Province, with a dream of building the great northwest of the motherland.

In Dingbian County, where there was no electricity, people lived besides kerosene lamps, and there was only one hand-cranked diesel generator in the mechanical power plant. He led the comrades of the Electricity Bureau to change this situation and opened the cause of “pioneering” for the electricity in Dingbian County.

He was like a licorice rooted in the Great Northwest, he worked hard not for fame or fortune, but for lighting up thousands of families in Dingbian County.

To solve the problem of electricity supply in Dingbian County, he had to use not only the knowledge on electrical engineering he learned but also the knowledge on civil engineering he hadn’t learned. Mao Yugui rose to the challenge, taught himself the knowledge on civil engineering and construction, and started as a mason to learn in practice.

Finally, under his leadership, 4 substations were built in Dingbian County, which realized that all enterprises have electricity, and every household has electric light, fundamentally changed the production and life in Dingbian County, and fully promoted the local economic development.

For decades, Mao Yugui has been staying at the front line of the power system in Dingbian County, working hard day and night for the development of the great northwest of the motherland regardless of harvest. Up to now, Dingbian County has become a bright “pearl in the northwest China” and a national new energy demonstration base, where wind and solar energy are developed and utilized. Mao Yugui’s hard work is bearing fruit there.

We invited Mao Yugui to tell his life story and feelings about Tsinghua through video at the conference venue of the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Electrical Engineering. The video of senior Mao Yugui played has toughed the heart of every audience, and many people shed tears silently.

After the anniversary conference, Mao Yugui's granddaughter sent a message to the Department of Electrical Engineering, and delivered her thanks to the university for our attention to this “ordinary” alumnus who graduated nearly 70 years ago.

A letter of thanks from Mao Yugui’s granddaughter

This year is the 90th birthday of the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Mao Yugui, born in 1932, is the same age as the Department of Electrical Engineering. Over the years, countless Tsinghua people like Mao Yugui have taken root at the ground level for the development of the motherland and dedicated their youth, repaying the society with sweat and sticking to their original intention with hard work. They grew as hard as grass, exuding a refreshing fragrance.

We pay our tribute to those ordinary and great Tsinghua people who work at the front line of the construction of the motherland!