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By Mihar Dias October 2026
At 14, Song Xingyu left school and went to work in his father's timber mill, covered in sawdust from morning to night. At 26, he flew a homemade electric board, in the spirit of the Green Goblin's glider from "Spider-Man", across the Yangtze, Asia's longest river.
His village is in Badong, Hubei. His only teacher was an old tablet from a friend, loaded with foreign flight-test programmes. He had no engineering degree and no laboratory, just a father's abandoned shed, which he turned into one on borrowed money.
His first version used five small turbojet engines, and in its first full test they caught fire. He fed the data to an AI agent, which spotted that the engines were mounted too close together, so hot exhaust bounced off the ground into the intakes. It suggested going electric. Two months later he had a board with ten brushless motors, each producing over 30 kilograms of thrust. His first flight ended in a stall, sprains and scraped knees. Then he rigged two phones to coach him through Bluetooth earphones, with spoken prompts to shift his weight left or bend his knees right. After more than ten days of practice, he crossed the river.
Nearly four million people liked the video on Douyin, and CCTV took notice. Some viewers doubted it was real, so Song said plainly that no AI was used in the footage and that the board and the video were made by hand. The comment that stuck with me was “Chinese people can fly.”
Song's story is not tidy. He failed twice in the timber business. A crewed jet-powered aircraft he built crashed, and a boat he built sank after he was cheated. He ended up more than 2.4 million yuan in debt. In a helicopter jump with a homemade jet wing, his main parachute failed and the reserve opened only 600 meters from the ground. His parents are proud of him, but they worry for his safety, and so should we. I'd never tell a young person to copy the stunts.
But copy the spirit. Song failed in public, borrowed, crashed and got up again, and what sustained him was curiosity rather than a certificate. He used AI as a patient tutor that spotted what he couldn't see, not as a shortcut. And when a camera maker, Insta360, backed him with creator support to clear his debts, it was betting on a person's nerve rather than his paper qualifications.
So why not Malaysia?
We have our own Song Xingyus, in sheds behind kampung houses and in workshops in Klang and Kuching. Many of them are quietly told that without the right paper, they don't count. We celebrate degrees, and we should, but we are slow to notice the teenager who has taken apart every engine in the neighbourhood and put it back together better.
If we want an innovation economy, we need to back the tinkerers. That means small grants without mountains of paperwork, public workshops, and TVET pathways that carry real prestige. It also means a culture that applauds the first honest attempt as loudly as the final success. Song's board flew only after the first design burned.
Somewhere in Malaysia, a 14-year-old is staring at a broken motor and wondering what it could become. Let's make sure he doesn't have to leave school, or leave the country, to find out.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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