Wu Xijun, a Road Maintainer at High Temperature： The Road to Growth from Farmer to Guardian

Cctv news(Reporter Wang Ruoyi): At the road construction site, the roar of machines is endless, engineering vehicles come in and out, and the heat wave hits the face. After a few minutes, sweat has covered my forehead.

Road maintenance is a high-intensity manual labor, such as clearing ditches, filling pits, pruning flowers and trees, and clearing weeds … … When you choose this job, you choose to associate with cold and heat, wind, frost, rain, snow and sweat.

Wu Xijun is a monitor in the road maintenance section. The Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway is a place he is familiar with. For decades, he has grown from a farmer to a "national technical expert" and a "national outstanding migrant worker", which is the first step he took from here.

Irrigate the trajectory of changing fate with sweat

In 1997, Wu Xijun was just 20 years old, and his father died of stomach cancer, leaving his family destitute. He took a 24-hour long-distance bus and came to Beijing from his hometown in Zhoukou, Henan Province alone, becoming a "northern drift". Introduced by his fellow villagers, Wu Xijun came to the former Jingshi Expressway in the southwest of Beijing to work as a road cleaner, picking up large pieces of garbage with the sweeper every day, unloading the muck and washing the vehicle before work … … It’s five years. Wu Xijun also hesitated, always thinking of working for a few more years, paying off the foreign debt, and returning to his hometown to continue to be a farmer with his back to the loess. But he didn’t expect that with the reform of Beijing’s highway system, he also ushered in the opportunity to change his destiny.

In 2003, Beijing Shoufa Highway Maintenance Engineering Co., Ltd. was established. The company’s trade union selected Wu Xijun, who is serious and responsible, to be transferred to the road maintenance class through the first-line investigation at the grass-roots level, and assigned a master to teach him all the skills of road maintenance.

Having just come into contact with skilled jobs, Wu Xijun felt very hard. The repair of pavement diseases involves a wide range: from the identification of common pavement diseases such as potholes, ruts, subsidence, bump at the top of bridge culvert and surface damage, to how to use vehicle machinery such as truck, roller, cutting machine and joint filling machine, and then to various targeted repair technologies such as slotting and joint cleaning, pressure pouring sealant and asphalt hot recycling repair & HELIP; … There are countless headaches for Wu Xijun, but he knows that mastering more technologies also means mastering more opportunities to change his destiny.

During the day, Wu Xijun was busy shuttling around the road disease repair site. Under the scorching sun, Wu Xijun and his colleagues pushed heavy dust-free cutting machines, asphalt spreaders, etc. to carefully repair damaged roads; It rained heavily, and they waved shovels to dredge culverts and clean ditches; With the sudden snowstorm, they drove the snow removal vehicle for more than ten hours or even dozens of hours, and even had to put up with it when they went to the bathroom … … Year after year, Wu Xijun not only developed a skill, but also passed the welder’s operation qualification certificate and became a senior technician, completing the transformation to a skilled worker.

Maintaining the road well is a constant commitment to the capital.

In order to be a "security guard" for citizens’ travel, Wu Xijun has multiple "identities" in his work. When he was on the highway inspection, he was not only an "environmental beautician" who cleaned the highway, but also a "road doctor" who conducted inspections of bridges and culverts, found road diseases in time, and repaired potholes on the road surface. Usually walking on the road, Wu Xijun always commits "occupational diseases", and his eyes are always staring at the road: "There is no small matter in road safety. The key to pavement repair is to find it early and repair it in time."

One day in July, 2005, the Yamenkou Bridge on the West Fifth Ring Road in Beijing was seriously flooded after a rainstorm. Time waits for no man. In order to find out the water situation under the bridge as soon as possible, Wu Xijun put on protective clothing and gas mask, asked the workers to tie the safety rope tightly around their waist, held a torch and jumped into waist-deep water to explore the drainage culvert of the auxiliary road. The protective gear is heavy and airtight. He carefully searched for the blocking point while being careful of the obstacles ahead and the possible deep wells and live lines. After groping for more than 300 meters, I finally found an unbroken retaining wall blocking the drain. Wu Xijun immediately called the team maintenance personnel, carefully demolished the wall in the water, and the long-standing water problem of Yamenkou Bridge was cured.

This kind of work of "coming from the wind and going in the rain" is a common occurrence for Wu Xijun. Another typical "occupational disease" of his is that he always pays attention to the weather, especially in the case of bad weather such as heavy rain and heavy snow. He will prepare the plan in advance, intensify inspections, and once problems are found, he will rush through the highway as quickly as possible to shorten the time for passing vehicles to stay. Through his daily visits, he also put forward the idea of transforming perennial water accumulation points such as the main station of Jingcheng Phase I, under the U-turn Bridge and the toll gate of Houshayu, and transformed several water accumulation points.

Wu Xijun’s hard work, diligence and hard-working Saburo have won unanimous praise from colleagues around him. In 2013, he became the monitor of the road maintenance class through the company’s open competition. Wu Xijun said: "Everyone accepts me and trusts me, and I will certainly keep the road well. This is my constant commitment to the capital and my career."

Digging into innovation, difficulties can also become bright spots.

On the expressway, any construction work will bear the risk of life. Especially in the maintenance work, the front end of the safe operation area must be designated to wave the flag to signal the vehicle to slow down and change lanes in advance. However, due to the different length of the actual operation, waving the flag has become a matter that costs both labor and security risks. Wu Xijun often hears complaints from colleagues when they are assigned to wave the flag.

After a long period of observation, Wu Xijun used the working principle of the wiper to effectively combine the wiper motor, several connecting rods and a red flag. After repeated experiments, the effect of automatic flag waving was obtained. He also upgraded the "flag-waving machine" and installed a night light-emitting device for the flag-waving device, which greatly reduced the danger of road occupation by maintenance personnel, especially at night, while reminding drivers to pay attention to safety. In addition, in order to reduce the danger of working at high altitude when lifting the snow melting agent, he and his colleagues also jointly developed an operating platform for lifting the snow melting agent to prevent people from accidentally falling when lifting the snow melting agent. At present, these devices have been fully adopted by the maintenance system in beijing expressway, saving hundreds of thousands of yuan in labor costs every year.

In March, 2014, the expansion joint of the bridge at K47+610 of Jingping Expressway was broken, and the disease could not be completely solved after repeated maintenance. According to the field observation in Wu Xijun, the repeated fracture of the rail is caused by the inaccurate concrete pouring at the bottom of the expansion box and the repeated impact between the beam and the rail. He boldly put forward the plan of removing broken concrete, making a telescopic box with the same size as the original one and reinstalling it. After the welding is firm, the self-implemented supporting film pouring concrete is still firm, and there is no rail fracture again, and the maintenance cost is reduced by 70%.

After 23 years, Wu Xijun has been affectionately called "Guardian of Capital Expressway". From farmers to skilled workers who enjoy the allowance of technicians from the Beijing Municipal Government, when it comes to the future, Wu Xijun is full of confidence. He often said: "I am proud of the high-speed maintenance of the capital! I will do my best to maintain every road for the capital and make these roads a happy road, a safe road and a well-off road for the people! " (The pictures in this article are provided by the interviewee/proofread by Li Yingzhuo)