Behind the Lights

Li Feng has been a gas engineer for twenty years. On the first day he was transferred to Jinyang Gas Company, the cast iron pipe under his feet exploded. The methane concentration is only tenths of a percentage point away from the explosion limit. From that day on, he saw another side of a city - not the high-rise buildings on the ground, but two thousand kilometers of gas pipelines winding like blood vessels underground. Some were older than him and were so rusty that they could be pierced; some were dug out as soon as they were laid; and many more could not even be found on the drawings. When the cold wave hit, he pried off the manhole cover at three in the morning. When the air supply was in short supply, he stared at the big screen for three days without sleeping. In the face of corruption, he refused to sign - even if it cost his own position. The colleagues around me are all ordinary people: Lin Xiaoyu who runs away after delivering the dumplings, Su Xiaoman who leads his apprentice to suffer from insomnia, and Chen Xiaodong who never asks why. They are not heroes. They are just the people who keep every light on in this city. No one knows about them. This is the meaning of their existence.