"The company makes me feel at home"

RIYADH, May 12 (Xinhua) -- At the site of Jubail P&C TS-8 Freeway Project in eastern Saudi Arabia, a big and tall 33-year-old Pakistani, Abubaker Hussein, was busy talking with his colleagues in Chinese and sometimes in English and Arabic to coordinate the work here, which made him particularly eye-catching in the crowd.

"At the beginning, I was totally a novice with no experience. But now I've already finished my 'apprenticeship' and become a master with apprentices. Therefore, Sir Ma is the best teacher I think," said Hussein, the foreign labor supervisor of China Railway 18th Bureau Group Co., Ltd. in Saudi Arabia, holding his master Ma Zhaoguo's shoulder with a sincere and proud smile.

"It was hard to teach him because of the language barrier at that time. We couldn't understand each other," added Ma Zhaoguo, recalling the impressive moment that Hussein first came to the company in 2011. In order to teach the foreign apprentice well, Ma demonstrated how to do the work from the basics such as binding steel, mixing cement, and bricklaying, to professional ones covering water and electricity facilities installation, formwork erection and so forth. To overcome the language obstacle, Ma wrote down the Chinese words for materials, equipment and construction location on the paper, then asked Hussein to mark the corresponding Urdu (the official language of Pakistan) words. In this way, they overcame the initial communication barrier.

With the careful instruction of Ma, Hussein's professional ability had been rapidly improved as he had been gradually promoted from a reinforcement worker to a foreman and then to a foreign labor supervisor who, with drawings, can lead the foreign workers to construct independently. After working here for ten years, he has not only mastered construction technology, but also acquired fluent spoken Chinese, becoming a famous "China expert" in the expressway project.

Hussein's experience is an epitome of many foreign employees in China Railway 18th Bureau Group Co., Ltd. in Saudi Arabia. In order to accelerate the pace of localization based on the Saudi Arabian market, the company selected and employed thousands of local employees who had learned the construction technology while doing a good job on the project. In this way, local employees not only made progress in technology and capacity, but also formed deep friendships with Chinese members by learning from them.

According to Chen Debin, managing director of China Railway 18th Bureau Group Co., Ltd. in Saudi Arabia, since 2001 when the company launched its business in Saudi Arabian market, it has, led by the principle of integrating "Chinese technology, Chinese standards and Chinese culture" with local technology, standards and culture, successively participated in more than 20 major projects including Saudi Arabia's first light railway—Mecca Light Railway, Saudi Arabia's longest railway—North-South Railway which has won the Luban Prize, and the high speed railway designed to be the fastest in the desert regions of the world—Haramain High Speed Railway (HHR) from Makkah to Madina in Saudi Arabia. The company has launched a Chinese brand in construction in Saudi Arabia and made great contributions to promoting the Belt and Road Initiative to blossom and bear fruit in Saudi Arabia.

As a senior member of the company, Hussein has successively participated in four projects, especially the construction of Haramain High Speed Railway, which makes him very proud. At that time, due to the sheer size and complicity of the design, the controlling construction of K2 bridge was of great significance and difficulty to the project. In order to meet the construction deadline, he offered to give up his vacation after working for 14 months and lead the reinforcement team to speed up the progress. At the same time, he found that the previous random assignment of workers to teams affected the construction efficiency, so he proposed to form a "professional team" with fixed professional members. After a period of trial, the project department approved his proposal. In the following four months, the organization of dozens of professional teams in building, reinforcement, machinery and others was completed, convincingly ensuring the completion of the project five months ahead of schedule.

"I can learn technologies and earn a lot of money here. In Chinese, it's like my 'niangjia (a place where one feels at home)'. Many people in my family admire me very much." Hussein, with a full sense of belonging speaking of the company, said, "If permitted, I want to work in the company all my life. If possible, I also desire to work in China."