A Tale of Two Cities Supporting Xinjiang

When Abudu walked into the cotton mill, he was actually a little apprehensive.

As one of the first trainees in the county's "Technical Preparatory Class," his task this summer was to intern at this agricultural product deep processing plant for a month.

The notice clearly states: Follow the technicians, learn the standards, practice hands-on skills, and lay the foundation for helping farmers in the future.

"You're the new intern?"

A lean, wiry man in his forties walked over, his hands covered in cotton wool.

Abudu quickly nodded: "Yes, I am Abudu."

"Just call me Engineer Wang."

Technician Wang looked him up and down. "From the pre-technician training class?"

How well are you learning the theoretical knowledge?

"It's alright, it's just..."

Abudu was interrupted before he could finish speaking.

"What you learn from books is never enough."

Engineer Wang waved his hand, "Come with me, let's start with the basics."

The first stop was a raw cotton warehouse, where cotton was piled up like small mountains.

Engineer Wang casually grabbed a handful: "Can you understand this? What level is it?"

Abudu leaned closer for a look: "It should be... grade two cotton?"

"should?"

Engineer Wang laughed, "In our line of work, there's no such thing as 'should'."

Look at the stiff petals here, and then look at the fiber length and color. This can at most be considered a top-grade product among third-grade cotton.

Grade 2 cotton? Far from it.

Abudu blushed.

He had seen cotton grading charts at school, but when he actually saw the real thing, he realized that there was a huge difference between theory and practice.

"Do you know the price difference between grade 2 and grade 3 cotton?" Engineer Wang asked.

Abudu shook his head.

"The price difference is at least one thousand yuan per ton."

Engineer Wang put the cotton back. "Our factory isn't big, but we handle several thousand tons of cotton every year."

A difference of just one level can mean a difference of millions.

Do you think sorting is important or not?

Abudu then realized that his slogan of increasing the value of cotton had to be realized starting with this most basic and tedious work.

For the next few days, he spent every day in the warehouse, learning sorting from the experienced workers.

His eyes were blurry, and his fingers were pricked by the cotton swabs, but he gritted his teeth and persevered. Slowly,

He grabbed a handful of cotton and could roughly estimate its grade in his mind.

"It's starting to look promising."

A week later, Engineer Wang gave a rare compliment: "But just knowing how to sort isn't enough. Starting tomorrow, you'll learn the processing technology from me."

The machines hummed in the processing workshop: cotton cleaning, carding, drawing...

As each step of the process went on, Abudu's notebook was filled with notes.

He then realized that the reason why the cotton processed by the village could not be sold at a good price was because the cleaning and impurity removal was not thorough, which would reduce the strength of the yarn spun later.

"Processing is the second life of cotton."

Engineer Wang said loudly beside the machine: "Good craftsmanship can turn grade 3 cotton into grade 2 cotton, while poor craftsmanship can ruin grade 1 cotton into substandard products."

Halfway through his internship, Engineer Wang called Abudu over to a slightly worn cotton gin and handed him a thick booklet.

"This is……"

"Original operation manual for imported cotton ginning machine".

Engineer Wang patted the machine, "The factory wants to make full use of it to increase the cotton yield."

"I've forgotten all my English. Don't you young people always say you want to keep up with the times? Why don't you give it a try?"

Abudu opened the booklet, and the sight of so many professional English terms made his scalp tingle.

His English wasn't bad, but he had never even seen words like "Hydraulic pressure" or "ginning rib" before.

"Engineer Wang, this..."

"What's wrong? You're already chickening out, are you, a top student in the technical preparatory class?"

Engineer Wang looked at him with a half-smile.

Abudu gritted his teeth and said, "I'll give it a try!"

During those days, he spent his days following the procedures and his nights studying manuals and dictionaries.

Once, to figure out the meaning of a parameter, he got up in the middle of the night to call his preparatory class's English teacher. His roommate laughed at him, "Abudu, are you doing an internship or preparing for graduate school?"

"What do you know? I'm giving cotton wings."

Despite some stumbling and difficulty, he actually managed to figure out the key operations.

After adjusting it accordingly, the old machine's roar became much smoother, and the cotton lint it produced was more even.

Wang didn't praise him, but the next time they met, he casually tossed him a bottle of ice water.

During the last week of my internship, the finance department was incredibly busy.

Engineer Wang grabbed Abudu and pulled him over, saying, "Come on, let me show you how our cotton is turned into foreign exchange."

The table was covered with English documents: invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin, quality inspection reports...

Abudu was dazzled by the information, but after his experience of studying the manual, he found it wasn't so scary anymore.

"The cotton grade is incorrectly labeled on this quality inspection report."

Abudu pointed to one of the documents, "It should be Grade A-, not Grade A."

The finance manager came over for a look, then slapped her thigh: "It really is! Xiao A, you're pretty good, you could even tell that."

Abudu smiled sheepishly, but a warm feeling welled up inside him.

He saw the batch of cotton that he had personally sorted, with the grade clearly printed after "Grade A-".

Although it's just a difference of one symbol, it means that this batch of cotton can be sold at the price it deserves.

On the day he left the factory, Engineer Wang handed him a notebook at the door: "You've learned a lot this past month."

Inside are some key points I've summarized over the years; take them home and review them.

Abudu took the notebook and said solemnly, "Thank you, Engineer Wang."

"Don't thank me."

Engineer Wang waved his hand, "Remember what you said when you first came about increasing the value of cotton? Do you understand now?"

Abudu nodded: "Understood."

You need to get good grades, process the goods well, and understand the rules of the game.

"That's right."

Wang Gong smiled, a rare occurrence for him. "Having the initial aspiration isn't enough; you need to master all these practical skills. Go back now; you have a long road ahead."

Shortly after the start of the first year of high school, a crowd gathered in front of the school bulletin board.

Abudu went over to take a look and saw that the school's Youth League Committee was recruiting cultural exchange ambassadors between Liaoning and Xinjiang.

The requirements are excellent academic performance and character, familiarity with Xinjiang culture, and preferably some English speaking ability.

"This is practically tailor-made for me," Abudu thought to himself.

He recalled his summer internship at the cotton mill, the foreign trade documents and English manuals, and even more so, the ocean stories he had read in the pen pal Chen Haoxin's letters from Dalian.

The cotton of Xinjiang and the sea of ​​Liaoning seem unrelated, yet they quietly built a bridge in his heart.

Registration, interviews, campaign speeches...

A week later, the results came out.

"Congratulations, Abudu."

The Youth League teacher patted him on the shoulder and said, "From now on, you are our school's first cultural exchange ambassador between Liaoning and Xinjiang."

The task is clear: to build an online platform that allows students from Xinjiang and Dalian to truly understand each other.

Abudu was so excited that his hands were shaking.

But when he got home and calmed down, he realized that this task, though it sounded glorious, was not easy to do.

He told himself, "First, I need a theme."

We can't just talk in generalities; we need concrete measures.

The word "cotton" almost immediately popped into his mind.

What could represent Xinjiang better than cotton?

He grew up in cotton fields and interned in a cotton processing plant. Cotton is the pride of his hometown and something he knows best.

"But talking only about cotton is too simplistic," Abudu pondered. "We need a point of comparison."

He recalled the ocean described by Chan Ho-shun, a world completely different from the cotton fields.

The ocean is unfamiliar to children in Xinjiang, just as cotton is distant to children on the coast.

"Yes, that's it!" Abudu's eyes lit up. "Cotton and the sea, one on land and one at sea, the contrast will definitely have a better effect."