All his mountaineering fervor started by chance in October 1958.

A soldier of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Gongbu was then serving as a bodyguard for the 10th Panchen Erdeni in Xigaze.

As Zhou Zheng, the chief coach of the China Mountaineering Team and one of the first group of mountaineers after the formation of New China, recalled, 40 Chinese mountaineers arrived in Xigaze in October 1958, after finishing their formal training in the Soviet Union on the Pamir Plateau.

Three Soviet mountaineers also came as Chinese and Soviet mountaineers had decided - with the two governments' approval - to join together to scale the mighty peak.

They took motor vehicles to Sagya County where they further rode horses. In November, they reached an elevation of 6,500 meters for preliminary training.

One of Gongbu's deputy platoon leaders, a Tibetan, was going to join the team.

"The platoon officer asked me one day if I wanted to go to Qomolangma," Gongbu recalled. "I said I did."

After strict medical and physical tests, Gongbu and 20 of his peers went to Lhasa, where they changed their army uniforms for mountaineering garb. Starting that day, Gongbu officially became a new member of New China's mountaineering team.

In the following two months, Gongbu and his teammates went through intensive training, including workouts at the foot of the 6,000-metre Nyainqentanglha Mountains.

However, in 1959, Lhasa reeled under an armed rebellion by a number of people in the ruling regime in Tibet.

"This forced us to stop our scheduled training and we plunged into fighting the rebels," Gongbu recalled.

Meanwhile, the Soviet mountaineers were stopped from joining the Chinese for political reasons. The plan for a joint Sino-Soviet ascent was canceled.

Despite tremendous economic difficulties as a result of the man-made Great Leap Forward movement and natural disasters, China decided to go ahead with its preparation to climb Mount Qomolangma. "We just wanted to show to the world that we Chinese would do it," Zhou said.

The State earmarked US$700,000 to finance the climb. Zhou and a colleague were sent to Western Europe to learn the techniques the Chinese mountaineers would need to tackle peaks over 8,000 meters.

They also had to buy the equipment they needed, which was not available in China.

In Zurich, when they were shopping for ice picks and iron chains, a storeowner asked them if they knew a suntanned man who was looking at some duck down-padded bags.

"Seeing our perplexing look, he told us that man was Tenzing Norgay (1914-86)," Zhou recalled.

The store owner also told Zhou that the Indian military had organized a mountaineering team in 1960 and Tenzing Norgay had come to shop for climbing gear for the Indian team.

Zhou and his colleagues returned to China in mid-March, 1960, with oxygen bottles, alpine tents and sleeping bags, climbing ropes, iron chains, ice picks, iron claws, gas stoves, walkie-talkies and other provisions. "The equipment, weighing 6 tons, was shipped from Prague to Beijing and then onto Lhasa," Zhou said.

Between 1958 and 1960, Chinese scientists conducted a series of studies and gathered ample information on the weather, geology and geography of the Qomolangma area for the mountaineers.

In early March of 1960, Gongbu and other Chinese mountaineers reached the base camp at the foot of Qomolangma.

"I was in charge of building roads and transporting materials," Gongbu recalled. "When the assault group failed at a height of 8,300 meters, they were forced to retreat. A new team was formed and I became part of it."

They set out from a height of 8,100 meters at midnight. "When we reached 8,500 meters, we ran out of food," Gongbu recalled.

The next day, four of the mountaineers - Wang Fuzhou, Gongbu, Qu Yinghua and Liu Lianman - resumed climbing on empty stomachs. It was midnight when they reached 8,670 meters, a height where a person would freeze if exposed to the extreme cold for the night. At the same time, a snowstorm was gathering.

"We dared not to spend a night there. So, we decided to press on," Gongbu said.

By then, Liu, who had offered a lot of help to other climbers, was moving slowly. Wang decided that Liu should remain at 8,700 meters. They searched their pockets and checked their oxygen and found that they only had an 80-litre bottle of oxygen, a small piece of smoked mutton and 18 pieces of candy.

They left the oxygen bottle and candy for Liu and the remaining three pressed on.

Gongbu said: "We could not speak and had to make gestures with our hands to express our thoughts. Finally, three of us reached the top of Qomolangma in the wee hours on May 25. We had made it!"

Wang wrote in his notebook: "Wang Fuzhou, Gonbu and Qu Yinhua ascended Qomolangma at 4:20 on the morning of May 25, 1960."

He then tore the piece of paper out of the notebook and buried it together with a bust of Chairman Mao and a national flag of New China under a pile of stones.

The team members gathered nine rock samples and began to climb down.

After seeing the others off as they continued, Liu fell asleep. He soon woke, starving for oxygen, but decided not to take any.

"I couldn't return if they didn't return, so I'd better leave the candies and oxygen to them," Liu told himself. He even wrote a will.

When he met Gongbu, Wang and Qu during their descent, Liu summoned his strength and actually helped the three victors in their downward climb.

In defeating the mighty peak, the Chinese mountaineers created three world records: using no oxygen for 14 hours at a height of 8,600 meters, climbing continuously from a height of 8,600 metres to the top of Mount Qomolangma at night and ascending via the northeastern ridge.

The success laid a solid foundation for Gongbu's subsequent mountaineer career.

Zhou Zheng, whose lengthy article tracing the human history of tackling Mount Qomolangma over the past 50 years appears in the latest issue of China Tibet magazine, Dode Zhamdui and Xue Wenxian from the China Tibet Information Center, contributed to this article.

(China Daily May 22, 2003)