Permafrost, especially cold and high altitude permafrost in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has always been a headache for China’s construction projects. Over the past decades, China has made great breakthroughs in the field of highway engineering research in the permafrost regions of high and cold high altitudes, providing strong technical support for the construction and maintenance of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway in Tibet's traffic lifeline.

Researchers in this field have been working hard for years at the cost of their youth, health and even lives, and harvesting fruitful research results. They are ordinary and extraordinary, making themselves the most remarkable icon of our times. Wang Shuangjie, secretary of the Party Committee of the First Highway Survey and Design Institute of China Traffic Group and the national survey and design master, is a leader of this research team.

Wang Shuangjie was born in April 1962 in Anhui. In July 1983, he graduated from university. This farmer's son from Anhui had not yet adapted himself to the climate and human environment in the ancient capital of Xi'an and was entrusted by the Ministry of Communications to go to the Karakorum Mountains in the following spring, to provide technical support for thousands of construction workers there. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was the main battlefield for his work at that time. During that period, he ran through every passageway in and out of Tibet and led the team to conduct technical research on frozen roads. The work lasted for almost thirty years. He said that the study of frozen soil has been passed down for more than 50 years. He is only one of the sticks.

From then on, as long as the Tibet Highway survey and design project is released, he always takes the initiative to go. After serving as a middle-level leadership position, he has never been absent from Tibet’s highway survey and design. He not only ran through all the national highways entering and leaving Tibet, but also had a comprehensive and deep understanding of the common worse geological disasters along the Tibet Highway. Whenever a colleague joked that he had a Tibet complex, he always replied solemnly: The land has a magical charm. If you go far, you can't let it go.

However, very few people know that during that period, Wang Shuangjie’s mother passed away in Anhui’s hometown. When he received the news, it was more than a month later. In the face of the military order, Wang Shuangjie who was particularly appointed by the local ministries and commissioned to the military taking the heavy burden of technology, only to bear the grief and persisted in the post. After the head of the army personally made a return trip for him, his mother’s grave is already covered with grass when he hurried home.

For the inheritance of permafrost research, Key Laboratory of Highway Construction and Maintenance Technology Transportation Industry in Permafrost Regions of transportation Department, State Key Laboratory of Road Engineering Safety and Health in High and Cold High Altitude Areas of Science and Technology Department were created and approved under the leadership of Wang Shuangjie for decades. As a laboratory director and a mentor for young people, No matter how heavy the management work is, he always insists on setting up examples for others with both diligence and devotion.

“I know how much I will suffer before I leave, but I didn’t expect it to be so bitter.” Many years later, Wang Shuangjie said to the young people in the research group, Bitterness can train and test people. To be engaged in Permafrost research, you have to overcome the hardship first.