A Pillar of the Nation: It All Began When I Enrolled at the National University of Defense Technology

[The 1970s] [Technology Builds the Nation] [The Rise of a Great Power]

That year, a circle was about to be drawn along the southern coast. It was the eve of an economic boom, an era when gold seemed to lie everywhere.

Yet this transmigrator, armed with forty years of foreknowledge, didn't do what people might have expected: stockpile goods, resell them for profit, or start a factory or business.

He chose a more difficult path, one with a far greater power to shape the nation's destiny: taking the college entrance exams.

In an era when the perfect score was 500, Jiang Feng scored almost full marks. Rather than choosing Tsinghua or Peking University like everyone else, he chose the then little-known National University of Defense Technology of the People's Liberation Army.

Before he had even enrolled, the deans of several colleges were vying for him. Meanwhile, a factory director wanted to take his university place and refused to issue his recommendation letter, trying to persuade him to give up the opportunity.

At that moment, Major General Zhang Yan, the university's president at the time, stepped in personally. This veteran, who had weathered war and hardship, came to claim the student himself.

With just one sentence, “The military wants this student. If the sky falls, I'll hold it up,” he forcibly “snatched” him away from the local bureaucratic wrangling.

The day after receiving his special admission notice, Jiang Feng resolutely boarded a green train heading north, bound for Changsha.

From then on, a figure who often worked through the night could be found deep in the laboratories of the National University of Defense Technology.

Jiang Feng didn't become a billionaire by riding the wave of opportunity. Instead, he made himself the most precise screw, fitted into the very heart of the great nation's most advanced machinery.

He didn't make a fortune, but he personally propelled a nation toward the stars and the sea.