This led me to another quake zone, in the nomadic Tibetan communities of Yushu on the remote Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

Sichuan taught me to find light in the darkness. Qinghai taught me to create light when there seems to be none to be found－literally.

I started working on the plateau by installing solar panels in an isolated school without electricity.

From there, friends and I went on to electrify most schools throughout Yushu's Qumarleb county.

We also provided metric tons of clothes, computer labs, libraries, food, medicine, coal and even yaks, when a blizzard killed most of a school's herd. Indeed, when I first arrived in China, I never imagined I'd end up buying, riding, milking and getting kicked by yaks－let alone harvesting their dung for fuel.

Even there, on the "planet's third pole", China's poverty-alleviation miracle means that the Qinghai I've returned to recently is a different place than I first saw in 2011. It's unrecognizable now. This seemed unimaginable then.

Since the government has brought unthinkably rapid development, we've shifted toward providing surgeries for nomadic children and university scholarships for nomads.