When birds are chattering merrily as they skip among the branches and glimmers of lights are cast on the sidewalks upon which the lamps go out one by one, some HNUSTers, bearing passion for their work and dreams, have broken the tranquility of the peaceful morning.
Loving and Dedicating
Zeng Aiping, Head of the sanitary group, leads her team to maintain a clean and tidy environment of Canteen, Zone 7 for teachers and students. She gets to work at six fifty in neat dress every day, including wiping the table several times, putting the garbage into a trash bin, sweeping the floor, etc. “I love my work. Though it requires getting up very early, I still feel energetic every day,” she said.
She never considers her work a drudgery but a busy and fulfilled way of life. “When a large flow of students come to eat, I’m often worried that I’m too busy to serve them all instantly. But I can handle this better now after days of practice.” she said, “I think I must set a good example for our team to improve the canteen’s environment so that students can be more assured to have a meal here.”
“Every morning I’m delighted to see the lovely students thank me for my service. Their vigor always reminds me of my own children,” she said with a smile, scratching her head. She has worked here for 8 years and due to the long distance, she can not go home frequently so she regards every student as her own child and tries her best to help them.
Finding Happiness in Work
XieLiuchun gets up at the crack of dawn and sets off from the School of Foreign Studies to Dongyuan and Zhongyuan Staff Community by tricycle at ten past five. Holding a broom on one hand and a rubbish bag on the other, he begins his work with his eyes fixed upon where there may be dirty. When it rains, he would make two holes on a bag, put his arms through them and wear it as a raincoat. In others’ eyes, his work is probably “dirty, toiling and varied”.
However, he always gets his pleasure from playing flute. Since high school, he has been playing flute for more than three decades, which is his pleasure to relax after work“Every time I play the red tunes such as East is Red, I feel an inspiring force flow through my heart”, Xie said with great enthusiasm.
For XieLiuchun, being a cleaner is a very ordinary job, but he adopts a positive attitude toward this ordinary position. “There is much exhaustion, but playing flute has added a lot of delight to my work.” It is his firm conviction that in ordinary life, as long as the heart is full of expectations, every day will be wonderful.
Going ahead Step by Step
Awaking from his sleep and quickly running to the front of Lide Building for training, Gu Yongcai, as the chief instructor of the National Flag Honor Guard of HNUST, has to get up early for six days in a week. The seed of the military dream has been deeply planted in Gu's heart since his childhood, thus he resolutely chose to join the National Flag Honor Guard to continue to advance toward his dreams after his coming to HNUST.
During the winter training, though facing some unusual difficulties—eighteen people dossing down on the floor in one dormitory—Gu never gave up. Since then, he has had more profound understanding of the connotation of “the one trying to wear the crown must bear the weight.” He said that only by preserving it can he improve himself and complete the flag-raising ceremony more perfectly, worthy of the trust of the country and the school.
For Gu Yongcai, the result of persistence is the harvest of skills and knowledge. And the sunshine in the morning marks the beginning of a day's hope, while members of the National Flag Honor Guard who train hard every morning, are the starting point of his hope.
(Translated by Lu Ziyao and Li Fei)