Right after the Dragon Boat Festival, I flew to Shenzhen without stopping, then rushed to transfer to Sanyapo, Dongguan, for the strategic reserve training. As it happened, the passenger in the next seat was a colleague traveling from Nanjing to the same training — but we didn’t know each other on the plane and didn’t talk. It was the hottest stretch of summer, and Dongguan was sweltering. Just inside the campus gate stood a huge rock engraved with a very Huawei line — “No way back is the way to victory.” A few steps further stood a magnificent building. Through an art gallery hung with paintings hand-picked by the boss himself, a few hundred meters on, I arrived at the Anpu Yueting Hotel. After settling in and resting that night, the training began the next day.
The two head instructors were both very young, born after 2000, veterans of the Tri-Service Guard of Honor. One instructor handled logistics, constantly worried that a trainee might break down. The training itself was nothing — easier than the military drills of middle school and college — except for the early rising. Up at six for a run; my blood sugar crashed. Worth mentioning: the drill competition on Wednesday. The drill itself went smoothly, and after the trainees performed, the instructors formed a squad and drilled too. The Tri-Service Guard of Honor, all the same height — running march and halt, calling out numbers, turns at the halt, marching off and halting — beautiful, perfectly uniform. Watching up close from the second row, I was in awe; you could see the endless repetitions behind it. At the end, egged on by the crowd, they demonstrated the goose step, keeping the rhythm until the next step would have hit the wall before calling a halt — another round of applause from the whole room. Between physical tests and classes, my biggest takeaway was a project-management chart called the “Fifteen Supremes.” That was week one. Week two arrived quickly, like a college finals week.
Week two was mainly self-study and exams for the squad; only after passing could you leave. A business trip from Nanjing to Dongguan came with a meal allowance: three vouchers a day, fifty yuan each, which I used for coffee and fruit. So every day was a combination of coffee, study, and exams. Classrooms, corridor coffee tables, cafés — anywhere worked for studying. When tired at night, I went out for a walk, stood on the bridge in the wind, and looked at the statues standing on the bridge — Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Qian Xuesen, Deng Jiaxian, Plato, Aristotle. The lights reflected on Songshan Lake; every small house in the European-style town had one golden window lit; the magnificent library looked like a castle; a white full moon hung in the deep blue night sky, intoxicating amid the sound of insects.
The beauty of Sanyapo is not only the scenery. It lies in the art. Every room of the Anpu hotel holds paintings by Van Gogh and Monet; the statues on the bridge include Greek philosophers and Renaissance giants; beautiful oil paintings hang everywhere in the teaching buildings. In this space, the architecture and the atmosphere are both trying to shed the stiffness of traditional engineering and move toward elegance and innovation.
After leaving Sanyapo, I went to Shenzhen, met my new leader, and saw colleagues and leaders from my old department. The week passed quickly, with little worth recording. The biggest takeaway was what the new leader said: our group does not encourage overtime, does not tolerate grandstanding, and values solid work and capability building. As for how it actually goes, that remains to be seen.
Last, a note of the eight characters our squad leader Wang Hui gave me — “Be humble and reserved; build deep, then let it show.”