Skilled workers don't get the respect they deserve

First Person | Geng Jiahua

When I was in my teens, I followed my bench-worker father to a skill exchange in a factory. He displayed his mastery of the lathe by making an axle 4 meters long and 8 millimeters in diameter, which was quite a challenging task at the time.

As news spread, the number of observers rose, until there were so many people that they had to climb on top of things to see. When my father finished after two hours, there was thunderous applause. You can imagine how respected senior skilled workers were at that time.