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[wenzili]

6） Contacting With USA Workers in Zero-Distance

Tan finished the story with tears.
We all kept silent and felt sorry to him. No one complained to his lodge misguide any longer.
Since no room for us to stay, he had to drive to and park on an open field outside Gerby.
It was extremely cold. We all sat closely to keep warm and to get over that bitterly coldness in midnight.
Gradually, the starred sky turned dark to indigo. Pieces of rosy downs were glinting above the east horizon in harmony with the twittering of birds. Then, longing under the blue welkin, all clouds became as red as a flame.
I had to admire the alien beauty, but no any poet’s impulse was ever burst, since, at that time, my body was dreadfully cold and my stomach was completely empty.
No one speaking, we all fell into a deep thinking, “why is the situation came to be so worse?” “As decent senior management in well-known Chinese enterprises, we come here for business on the up-and-up. We did nothing wrong. Why should such a confounded situation befallen to us? ”
Under the first sunrays in the morning, Mr. Shu checked the series numbers of wells and related bits again with Tan. Then, against the nippy wind, he got off the car and went to the boot. He had carefully checked the readiness of the bits one by one.
Found no fault, he got on car again. Then, our car was driven and we started our new journey again.
The tests were conducted in the west and northwest suburb of Gerby, about 40-50 miles away.
Our car was winding about the snow hills on a narrow and slippery path at a speed less than 20 mph.
It’s about 9 o’clock, when the profiles of several iron towers appeared in the horizon. We were so happy as to shouted out cheerfully.
The oilfield was deadly quiet. Nothing but a motor’s monotonous buzzing plus occasional metal bumping were sounded. All these gave us an extremely dull and depressive feeling.
As per original arrangement, we drove straight to the tower. Then, with collective effort, we managed to draw the bit No.1, weighted about 100kg, out and left it outside the door of the well enclosure.
In the mean time, with a squeaky sound, the door opened. A smeary worker, looked like a team leader, came out.
“Good morning, sir! I suppose you are Chinese.” He greeted to us with a resonant voice.
“Good morning! Yes, we are, and for Bit Test.” I came to him for handshake.
All my friends had handshakes with him in turn.
“Welcome all of you. Please left the bit over there and come in please.”
“Ok! Thanks!”
We followed him in file.
At this very moment, a sort of complicated feeling rose in my mind.
Yes, after such an arduous journey and with so much hardship, we finally got our products here and had such an opportunity to contact American workers in zero-distance.
How could we free from and conceal our excitement?
There were about half dozen of workers operating on the drilling platform.
Different from the scene shown on Chinese movies—all petroleum workers wearing exactly the same uniforms, they all wore various helmets and overalls with different colors and shapes. One of them even wore wadded pajamas.
To respond our enquiry, Tan explained to us: “Oh, that!” said he, “ Different from your workers in Da Qing Oilfield, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but why?” Mr. Huang asked further.
“Different from your state own enterprises, where all expenditures including overalls purchasing are on public bills. Here, almost all enterprises are run by private owners. They pay workers high salaries and the workers are responsible to buy their own overalls. Besides, they always change their job and transferred to different companies. Therefore, it is impossible for them to have uniforms like in China.” We fully understood the situation and had no surprise any more.
Under chilly wind and working in open area, the workers with dark mauve faces were operating hard but slowly.
With clouds of white vapor jets from their nostrils, they were repeating same processes again and again, loading and unloading the drilling bit to get core samples.
At that time the temperature dropped as low as minus 20 degrees. Without shade neither any conditioning facilities, the working condition was really beyond our imagination.
The team leader kindly led us leaving the platform and came to a so-called “dressing room”. Here, a whirring gas torch was used to warm up someone who had been frozen stiff. Since no cover on the room, the warm-up effect of flam radiation was very limited.
We were very thankful to his kindness. After a while, under the consideration of travel to other two sites, we had to say good-bye to him.
Mr. Shu came to him in time and asked him to sign a receipt.
About 3 hours later, we completed the delivery of other 2 bits to well No.2 and No.3 and got on Tan’s car again.
With heavy breathing, Tan said to us weirdly:” Ok! You had fulfilled your task. Now, you may either go back to Wichita or even go home waiting for the final test results.”
“Leave Here?, Why?”” We can’t understand what’s the reason. After such a long journey and spent so much money, we had come here. For what? It is incredible to leave this area before the final test results come out.” Mr. Huang and Mr. Shu said angrily.
“Yes, there is another reason for you to go home and recheck the cost carefully, since the quotation you offered before were too high to accept.”
I was shocked by Tan’s manner too, which, I thought, was far beyond the business practice and industrial regulations.
Without price recognition, why should you ask us to come here for testing? I was sure it by no means was John’s idea.
With a meaningful glance, I hinted to my friends “be careful” and “no need to worry about it”.

(To be continued by Part 7: A Dramatic Turning)
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