Migrant workers from Qiyang County, Yongzhou City, Hunan Province, are happy and proud to participate in expressway construction.

They never forget to wear safety helmets before going to the site.

Having traveled far from home to a strange land, they rent a place near the site that serves as their home, eat and sleep at the construction site, and engage in water drill work for pile foundations. These migrant workers from Yongzhou City, Hunan Province, forge brilliance with their sweat and skills.

On November 19, the author visited Contract Section 14 of the Yilou Expressway in Maotian Town, Xiangxiang City, Hunan Province, and met several water drill workers who had just come up from the pile foundations. They were soaked all over, their clothes and trousers covered with mud and grime, busy changing clothes in the cold wind.

Lu Yinbao and Yan Xiaoren are two of them. The couple moved from Hubei to Contract Section 14 of the Yilou Expressway and have rented a place here for more than three months. In life, Lu Yinbao and Yan Xiaoren are partners; at work, they are partners under the pile foundation. Thanks to their hardworking spirit, the couple can earn over ten thousand yuan a month, and they live a comfortable life.

Migrant worker Lei Xuanming, 56, is sewing and mending. He has worked as a water drill worker for more than ten years, moving through Jiangxi, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, and other places. Lei Xuanming told the author that water drill work is the hardest job; besides good physical strength, the most important thing is to have skills and safety prevention abilities. Before starting work, they all undergo strict safety education and technical training and can only work after obtaining the relevant qualification certificates.

The drillers work from sunrise to sunset. In their spare time, most of them like to read books and newspapers. A couple added a portable color TV to their rented room for their companions to watch, enriching everyone's cultural life. At the same time, because they are far from their loved ones and can hardly return home a few times a year, after work, the workers often gather together to chat, dispelling their loneliness.