At the beginning of the century, the west-to-east electricity transmission strategy was fully rolled out, and the Guangxi Longtan Hydropower Station, the third largest hydropower project in the country that year, officially started construction. Thousands of migrant workers left their homes and went to the mountains of western Guangxi to build century projects in the canyons with their sweat. The fate of ordinary people is closely connected with the construction of a great country.
Xiao Junchen, a native of Sichuan, had a rough life. He worked as a rural substitute teacher, opened a restaurant and was self-employed. After several ups and downs, he went south to Guangzhou and made a living as a shelf worker. In 1998, a serious illness broke down his body and his marriage suffered another change. Under all the entanglements, he took the initiative to agree to divorce and swallowed the pain alone. For two years he had been trying to leave the place of sadness, but there was still no way out. In 2001, the news about the start of construction in Longtan made him determined to go to the mountains and live a new life.
He invited fellow workers from his hometown to go to Tian'e together. When he first arrived at the construction site, he was hit by the harsh reality: long working hours, meager wages, and dust. Seeing that their future was bleak, those who were traveling with him turned back to Guangzhou one after another, leaving only Xiao Junchen alone.
He started as a slope support worker, then transferred to a high-risk driller position, and spent ten years taking root in the canyon. He experienced the hard work on the construction site, the warmth and warmth of human relationships, and the loneliness of wandering in a foreign land. He met Ran Hui, an orphan of a martyr and a rural teacher. The two people who had gone through hardships comforted each other and gradually fell in love.
With his tenacity and sincerity towards others, he established a firm foothold on the construction site, grew up step by step from a small worker, and witnessed the transformation of barren mountains into high dams.
This book is based on the author's personal experience and adopts a new chapter-like writing method, with each chapter equipped with a quatrain. Instead of writing a vigorous legend, we only record the perseverance of an ordinary migrant worker.
