Volume One Chapter One: Please Expel Me

“Do you think you’re the factory director now?!”

In the personnel office of the Hydraulic Machinery Factory in Nianzigou, Urumqi, Deputy Section Chief Xu Aiping, in charge of labor discipline, glared fiercely at the young man before her and began to enumerate his “offenses.”

“Yesterday you, Mamat, offended Commissioner Ma and several senior workers. Today you shamelessly come to ask me for leave. Tell me, how many times have you taken leave this month?”

“Chief Xu, please calm down. You see, this time I really have urgent business. I know I was wrong before, making Commissioner Ma and the senior workers unhappy. I truly regret it in my heart.

Chief Xu, you are generous and broad-minded. Please, just approve my leave this once. I promise I’ll work hard when I return.”

“How come I never realized you could be so slick with words?” Xu Aiping sneered. “Don’t try to play the pitiful card with me. I know exactly what you’re up to. You want to go out of the region to find work? You must be out of your mind. Be careful or I’ll report you to the factory director, and you’ll be in big trouble!”

As she spoke, Xu Aiping slammed the desk forcefully, the loud noise drawing curious glances from the next office.

Faced with such an aggressive and relentless “formidable” woman, even someone as eloquent as Mamat was left speechless.

Yet his silence seemed only to give Xu more ammunition for mockery, as she pressed on: “I thought you’d finally learned to talk, but you’re still the same as ever.”

Hearing this, Mamat’s face darkened instantly.

This was no longer mere sarcasm; it had become a matter of his personal dignity.

“Chief Xu, if you’re not going to approve my leave, there’s no need for such harsh words. You’ll only hurt yourself,” Mamat replied coldly, suppressing the string of curses that surged to his lips.

After all, she was his superior, and he didn’t want to be accused of insulting or defying his leader.

With those words, Mamat turned and walked away without looking back, leaving Madam Xu fuming and cursing behind him.

Only after he had left the office area and the bustling sounds of discussion and greeting faded into the roar of machines and the lively sounds of the production floor did Mamat slowly regain his composure. After a long sigh, he headed directly to his workshop.

“Hey, brother, weren’t you supposed to be out on leave? Why are you back?” Before he had even reached his station, Mamat heard his dorm mate Yusup calling out to him.

Mamat could only offer an embarrassed smile. “Man, that iron lady Xu was in a foul mood today—she just wouldn’t approve my leave.”

“Careful what you say! If she hears you, you’ll be in for a hard time,” Yusup replied, glancing nervously toward the entrance. Xu Aiping’s domineering and tempestuous reputation was well known throughout the Hydraulic Machinery Factory.

“What can I do about it? Honestly, I wish she had the authority to fire me. That way—” Mamat spread his hands, but whatever complaint he had was drowned out by the bell signaling the start of the shift.

Both Mamat and Yusup worked in the same production area, and had both received training in mechanical processing at vocational school. But since the milling, drilling, and grinding stations were already full, the less capable Mamat had been assigned to an auxiliary station, responsible for moving materials and managing finished goods in and out of storage.

To put it bluntly, he was nothing more than a laborer, a menial worker.

Numbly, Mamat loaded raw materials onto the cart, transporting them to the workshop, then hauled scrap to the recycling area. After repeating this cycle countless times, he finally earned a brief moment of rest.

Slumped in the corner, he couldn’t help but exclaim from the depths of his heart, “What kind of life is this?”

If a month ago, Mamat had only himself to blame for being assigned such menial work—having failed to absorb knowledge during his studies—then perhaps it really wasn’t such a big deal.

But the Mamat of today was no longer the same as a month before. Inside this body now dwelled a soul from thirty years in the future.

A senior researcher from the Wind Power Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who—after some mishap during a large wind turbine experiment—had been sucked into a temporal rift and unexpectedly transported to a parallel world in 1986, awakening in the body of a menial worker at this hydraulic machinery factory.

After the initial shock and confusion, Mamat Tursun—well, let’s continue to use the original name of this body—gradually merged with the memories of this life and grudgingly adapted to the people and affairs around him.

Now he could call his parents naturally and smoke a cheap cigarette while joking and slapping shoulders with the likes of Yusup, Bartel, and Dilimulati.

But this didn’t mean he had truly accepted this identity deep down. After all, becoming an ethnic minority “brother” in this region meant adapting to many unfamiliar local customs. Life was inevitably awkward at times.

Still, the difficulties of adapting to these customs could be endured. The real problem was that his current status brought far more inconvenience than advantage.

First and foremost was work: Mamat saw no hope for promotion in the near future as a factory laborer.

From a long-term perspective, there were still twelve years until 1998, and at twenty-five, he could at least remain employed until thirty-seven or even forty.

Compared to being forced into early retirement before thirty-five in the future, wasn’t this… not so bad?

Of course, if Mamat chose to settle for this, it would be a waste of his foresight as a time traveler, not to mention the perspective and experience he had gained from years of work in Shanghai.

1986—Mamat understood exactly what this meant.

“One night fortunes,” “opportunities everywhere,” “great prospects”—these were the labels later generations attached to the 1980s and 90s.

But for ethnic minorities in the remote western borderlands, these labels were little more than distant dreams.

The proof was that he still hadn’t convinced his father in this life to allow him to give up his iron rice bowl and venture south.

They said the Uighur people were born traders, but in his family, it seemed the price was a few broken legs.

Then there was the hassle of obtaining the necessary documents for transfer—letters of introduction, migration certificates. For him, this was nearly impossible.

Otherwise, why would he have had to take so many days off this month just to visit the police station, enduring Xu Aiping’s acerbic scorn each time?

Mamat even suspected that it had something to do with his ethnic background.

Otherwise, why did the office always find some unheard-of excuse to send him away, while little Ming from Director Wang’s family next door had already received his documents and gone south to Shenzhen?

With his dreams of heading south on hold, Mamat’s mood this past month had been as bleak as a trip to Shanghai’s famed “Champs-Elysees,” only to find a steaming bowl of spicy hotpot and being too old and frail to taste it.

It was much like his later years in the institute—though mainly responsible for experimental research, he had misread the power struggles, ended up marginalized, and never saw his name on any major research reports. That was why he never revealed his name and, at first, had no desire to return to his own era.

Mamat always considered himself not someone obsessed with fame and fortune; otherwise, he wouldn’t have devoted half his life to wind turbine development.

Yet the persistent inequity he suffered left him frustrated and voiceless.

Still, deep down, Mamat maintained a profound respect and passion for mechanical engineering and the development of the nation’s industrial sector.

The question was, in his current position, how could he demonstrate his abilities and seize the surging tides of the era? That was the puzzle before him.

If Mamat remembered correctly, this was the very year Xinjiang first imported wind turbines from abroad for wind power experiments.

If he could use his knowledge and foresight to contribute to Xinjiang’s wind power development—or, better yet, help the nation’s wind industry avoid a few detours—it would be a worthy pursuit.

Unfortunately, the first impression this body gave to those around him was far from ideal.

If he wanted to open a restaurant or run a small business, people might believe him. But to speak of technological research and industrial planning? No one would take him seriously—they’d think he was daydreaming.

Yesterday’s scolding was a perfect example.

After all, he couldn’t simply confess that he was a time traveler and that the Mamat they knew was already gone.