WorldSkills gold medalist keen to nurture future champions

Competition turned teacher now honing talent at her old technician college

After winning a gold medal at a WorldSkills competition in Austria in 2022, 22-year-old Jiang Yuhe, a former assembly line worker, embarked on a career as a vocational school teacher last year.

Jiang, then 20, won China's first gold medal in the chemical laboratory technology event at a special edition of the WorldSkills competition in Salzburg in November 2022. Tears welled up as she stood on the podium and recalled the hardships she had experienced in life and skills training.

She was born in a small village in Nanyang, in Central China's Henan province, and her father and other members of the family were farmers. She found a job as an assembly line worker at an electronics factory in the southern province of Guangdong after finishing junior high school.

"I could only do some ordinary work because I didn't have much knowledge or skills," she said. "The boring existence then made me doubt the meaning of my life. I really knew at the time that it wasn't the life I truly wanted. I wanted a life full of hope, and I was afraid that the dreary work might ruin my ambition and dreams. I wanted to continue my education and get some skills."

Her parents supported her idea of giving up the job in the factory and she was admitted to Henan Chemical Technician College to study chemistry and chemical engineering in March 2018.

Her return to school was full of surprises, which she likened to opening an "amazing blind box". Thirsty for knowledge, she always sat in the front row of every class.

"I heard of the WorldSkills competition for the first time and got to know He Jiangtao, who won a bronze medal in industrial control at the 45th WorldSkills (in Kazan, Russia, in 2019)," Jiang said. "I wished to be as good as him and took him as a model at the time."

Jiang was selected for the college team for the WorldSkills trials in 2019 and then the national team for the special edition of the 46th World-Skills competition in December 2020 after winning a bronze medal in China's first State-level skills competition that month.

The WorldSkills chemical laboratory technology event requires contestants to analyze natural and synthetic materials by using various tools and methods, and perform qualitative and quantitative tests using modern analytical methods.

"It was a regular routine for me to repeat a single gesture thousands or millions of times when preparing for the WorldSkills for three and a half years," Jiang said. "I used to train for 14 hours a day during that period, and kept company with chemical reagents during Spring Festivals when other people had family reunions."

She said the event required contestants to conduct chemical titration with only 0.01 of a milliliter of a solution in a test tube each time.

"Even a slight hand tremble would waste all the previous efforts," Jiang said. "I spent almost 14,000 hours in training and stayed up until 2 am each day during the month of intensified training before the WorldSkills competition in November 2022."

Language was also a big challenge, as the event required contestants to write a test report in English.

"It's a hard nut to crack for many students with bachelor's or master's degrees, let alone for me, who only finished junior high school," Jiang said. "But thankfully, I got help from my teacher. I took a dictionary with me and recited words at meals, before sleeping and during walks.

"I finished an 11-page English test report at the competition, winning thumbs-ups from competitors from English-speaking countries and regions."