Roza Mehmet Buck: Making life better with knowledge
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 27, 2016
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Roza Mehmet Buck at work. |
Roza Mehmet Buck, a young man of Uygur ethnic group, is an oil worker at the Heavy Oil Development Enterprise of the Xinjiang arm of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). Over the past 20 years, he's managed to grow from a farmer boy to a technical specialist, changing his life through hard work.
Buck was born in 1976 in a small village in Hotan Prefecture in south Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In his village, all households were engaged in traditional farming. In 1991, he enrolled in the Karamay Oil Technical School and became the first person from his village to have a chance not to do farm work.
When Buck left home, his father told him to cherish the chance and work hard. "A man without knowledge is as clumsy as a hoe in farming, but once you have knowledge, you will become a tractor that can run much faster," his father said.
Bearing his father's words in mind, Buck studied hard in school and graduated with high scores three years later. He then got a position in the Heavy Oil Development Enterprise.
However, as he was about to begin a successful career and make his father proud, he found that his ability to speak Putonghua, or Mandarin, was a major obstacle.
Before Buck became an oil worker, he spoke the Uygur language at home, and all classes in school, including the vocational college, were taught in Uygur. Although Buck learnt a bit of Mandarin in his spare time, when he began to work he found it was far from sufficient, especially when technical terms were involved.
When Buck determined to overcome the language barrier, all his colleagues came to help him. They gave him a dictionary and a radio as gifts to help him improve reading and listening skills. Buck carried a notebook every day to write down every technical term he came across. In less than one year, he could speak and read Mandarin almost fluently.
When communication was no longer a problem and Buck thought that he could finally focus on work, he found that reality was not as rosy as he expected it to be.
Once at work, due to his wrong operation of a pumpjack, he got a shock of high-voltage electricity. The force knocked him down into a puddle one meter away. The painful experience made him realize that he had a long way to go to put classroom knowledge into real practice.
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Roza Mehmet Buck (2nd right) and his family. |
"One shouldn't make a hasty journey before knowing the way," Buck told himself, deciding to obtain a perfect command of oil production techniques.
Since that moment, he spent his time working and learning. When his team was at work breaks, he would go to watch how the others worked. A veteran worker, who had a long experience with oil extraction and well maintenance, was moved by Buck's perseverance and began to teach him hand by hand.
In 2004, Buck joined the Communist Party of China (CPC). He then studied management and oil engineering in the Party School of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the China University of Geosciences.
He also won awards in various contests of oil production skills, and was named as the technical specialist of Xinjiang oilfield and the CNPC group.
"The more one gains, the more one should give," Buck said. "I need to share my knowledge with others, and help create an atmosphere where co-workers can rely on each other."
With the help of other technical specialists in the company, Buck established an innovation workshop dedicated to solving difficult technical problems. They have obtained 16 national patent rights and helped the oilfield gain tremendous profits.
Buck also helped the company to train staff. He has taught more than 10,000 company employees and helped more than 150 workers gain higher professional qualifications. In his spare time, he wrote four textbooks on oil production skills for workers of minority ethnic groups.
Since 2006, Buck has invested around 50,000 yuan (US$7232.23) to set up a website named Salt Cedar Oil Web that provides free technical help to oil workers nationwide. Salt cedar trees are a common plant in his hometown. They tend to grow tightly together. "I'd like to help create an atmosphere, in which all workers can stick to each other like the salt cedar trees," Buck said.
Under Buck's leadership, his work team has also won several awards within the CNPC group and at national level. In his family, he is also an exemplary figure. His four younger brothers were all admitted into college, and two of them obtained national scholarships for overseas study.
"All my achievements should be attributed to national unity and the good time we are living in," Buck said. "As long as you work hard, you will get rewards."
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