Lu Changfeng is an eighth-grade fitter who has worked at the Hongxing Machinery Factory for twenty years, with the best craftsmanship in the whole factory. To make a wooden horse for his six-year-old daughter Xiaomei, he picked up a piece of nearly worthless rotting wood from the factory waste pile, but was reported by his apprentice Ma Jianguo, whom he had personally trained for over a year, in order to compete for a regular employment quota. Factory Director Li Jianshe made an issue of the matter, publicly punishing Lu Changfeng at the factory-wide meeting, not only canceling his advanced qualification and deputy director promotion quota, but also illegally withholding the 6,000-yuan technical transformation special bonus and transferring him back to a third-grade fitter position.