On a winter morning in the Gobi, Sergeant Lei Yaoming finished a five-kilometre run before heading to another shift. Stationed with a construction unit in Xinjiang, the 23-year veteran—known among comrades as the “ironman of the worksites”—is as much a mechanic, explosives technician and improvised engineer as he is a non-commissioned officer.
Lei’s story begins in Pingyao, Shanxi, where childhood fascination with guerrilla tales of the Eighth Route Army and spelunking in wartime tunnels fused into an early ambition to join the military. He enlisted in 2002 and soon discovered a personal link: the unit’s lineage traces back to a local guerrilla detachment, a coincidence that helped shape his sense of mission and duty.
His path was not theatrical but relentless: five months in a kitchen, then his own request to be sent to construction lines to be “tempered by hitting the front.” Repeatedly he endured backbreaking labour on sandy ground, blistering his hands into calluses and learning on the job; when an especially dangerous task required volunteers, Lei, not yet a party member, led the assault and later applied for membership.
The slogan he lives by—"the worksites are battlefields, construction is combat"—is illustrated by repeated episodes of improvised leadership. When rockfalls threatened deadlines and lives, Lei stayed on site for 13 hours straight to direct shifting crews and machinery. Once, on a night shift, his shout saved colleagues from an imminent collapse of massive boulders.
What distinguishes Lei is not only bravery but technical curiosity. He taught himself explosives theory and refined blasting techniques to suit variable geology. He reverse-engineered recurring hydraulic failures, persuaded equipment makers to alter dust seals, and translated dense English manuals word by word to get a complex new machine into service within months.
Over two decades he became the embodiment of an evolving NCO corps: a multi-skilled “soldier-expert” who can operate and repair three dozen machines, author new procedures, and train more than a hundred technical cadres. He also used spare hours to complete tens of courses and a bachelor’s degree, turning his workplace into a practical classroom for rank-and-file professionalisation.
Lei’s rise came amid institutional churn. In 2018 his unit faced restructuring and uncertainty, yet he stayed, saying “work looks to me; staying or leaving follows the Party.” That choice, and his capacity to compress training timelines for new equipment, illustrate a broader imperative inside the People’s Liberation Army (PLA): turn experience-hardened veterans into rapid adapters as the force modernises its kit and doctrine.
The practical implications are concrete. Remote frontier deployments, whether in Xinjiang’s deserts or other peripheral theatres, cannot rely on factory turnarounds or long supply lines when equipment fails. Local problem-solving—an NCO who can redesign a hydraulic seal or rework blast patterns—keeps projects and operations on schedule and helps sustain force readiness.
For international readers the story is both human and institutional. It is a portrait of grit and craft in an inhospitable place, but it is also a signal about how the PLA is building technical depth at the grassroots. In Beijing’s calculus—where political loyalty and operational competence are both prized—figures like Lei are useful symbols of the kind of low-profile, cumulative professionalism the leadership needs to sustain more equipment, new technologies and tougher missions across China’s western approaches.
Finally, this account has a domestic purpose: to promote retention, morale and a model of self-reliance among enlisted ranks. The narrative—an NCO who turned hardship into skill, who taught others, and who refused to leave in a moment of institutional uncertainty—operates as both recruitment tool and proof point for the Party’s broader project to professionalise and modernise the armed forces.