On the mountainous red soil of Yunxi County, Jiangzuo Province, in the summer of 1995, sixteen-year-old Li Jiye put away his report card, which ranked sixth in the county in the high school entrance examination, gave up his high school spot to his younger brother, and entered Jiangzuo Water Conservancy and Electric Power School with the ideal of inheriting the ancestral business. Four years later, this young man holding a graduate certificate in "Industrial and Civil Architecture Major" thought that he could rely on his skills to stand firm in the wave of the times. However, he never thought that in the next thirty years, he would find a path in the reinforced concrete jungle where "obeying the rules" would be more difficult than "earning fame and fortune."
From supervisor to national registered supervision engineer, he changed his blue work clothes and safety helmet one after another. He once slapped the table with the construction team over the 1-centimeter thickness of the protective layer of steel bars and loose scaffolding fasteners, and also encountered uncontrollable incidents such as counterfeit steel. In the vortex of low-price competition in the industry, and in the dilemma of "unlimited responsibility and limited power", he gradually changed from "original intention" to "struggle".
The investigation in 2012 was like a thorn in his side, piercing his ideal of "serving the people." I watched the construction party confuse right and wrong by relying on their connections, watched the supervision fees be owed for two years and still had to pay them with a smile, and watched young colleagues change careers because their salaries were too low.
This is not a comeback story. This is the workplace of an ordinary person: he entered the construction industry with his ideals, and spent twenty-five years measuring the distance between his ideals and reality - on one hand, he was frustrated that "there are no similarities in the project", and on the other hand, he was helpless that "it is difficult to find a smooth road in the industry's dilemma"; on the other hand, there were the red line specifications on the drawings, and on the other hand, there was the gray area in the interest field; who can keep this barrier!
Reader comments
In the reinforced concrete, see the persistence and helplessness of the little people - Comment on "The Silent Persistence in the Reinforced Concrete"
"Silent Persistence in Reinforced Concrete" takes Li Jiye's supervision career as the main line and truly restores the urban construction workplace ecology. From the time when he was admitted to a secondary school in 1995 to when he faced industry difficulties in 2025, the time span not only shows his professional perseverance in correcting the 1 cm error and refusing red envelopes to detect fake steel, but also portrays his helplessness in the arrears of supervision fees and the imbalance of powers and responsibilities.
The structure is clearly divided into four volumes, each corresponding to a different life stage, interspersed with specific project details and industry data. The multi-dimensional presentation of personal growth, industry dilemmas and changes of the times has no sense of counterattack, but uses delicate writing to allow readers to see the struggle between ideals and reality of a small person like Li Jiye in the construction industry, with both realism and depth.
In the reinforced concrete, see the persistence and helplessness of the little people - Comment on "The Silent Persistence in the Reinforced Concrete" "Silent Persistence in Reinforced Concrete" takes Li Jiye's supervision career as the main line and truly restores the urban construction workplace ecology. From the time when he was admitted to a secondary school in 1995 to when he faced industry difficulties in 2025, the time span not only shows his professional perseverance in correcting the 1 cm error and refusing red envelopes to detect fake steel, but also portrays his helplessness in the arrears of supervision fees and the imbalance of powers and responsibilities. The structure is clearly divided into four volumes, each corresponding to a different life stage, interspersed with specific project details and industry data. The multi-dimensional presentation of personal growth, industry dilemmas and changes of the times has no sense of counterattack, but uses delicate writing to allow readers to see the struggle between ideals and reality of a small person like Li Jiye in the construction industry, with both realism and depth.