Editor's note:With photographs captured through the decades, China Daily is presenting a series of visual chronicles to showcase how different fields evolved under the tide of China's reform and opening-up, and how that tide changed people's lives.
Some 1,800 veteran workers of the Neijiang Cotton Mill, many returning from places across the country, gather to celebrate the factory's 60th anniversary in September 2018. WANG DINGHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY
For the past 50 years, the camera lens of Wang Dinghao, now a retiree from Neijiang Cotton Mill in Neijiang, Sichuan province, has been focused on the steps of his enterprise — a representative firm of China's traditional industries.
From the rumbling all-day-long workshops to the everyday lives of workers, from the upgrading of machines to the growing-up of employees' children, his images document things as small as a single worker's dedication, and as big as the pivoting of the entire industry under the nation's master plan.
A model worker displays her skills at the factory in 1975. WANG DINGHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY
Established in 1958, the factory was once a landmark industrial enterprise in the city. In its heyday, there were some 6,000 workers and their family members sharing the community.
The factory's white cloth, along with the city's white sugar and baijiu spirits, were often dubbed as the "three whites of Neijiang" and hailed as the city's pride.
A worker holds a stencil partition board marking the factory's renowned products in 1975. WANG DINGHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY
But as the tide turned and the economy evolved, the factory's mission as a manufacturer came to an end. The production stopped in 2013, and in 2023, its revamp began.
Today, the neighborhood has been transformed into a combination of an industrial heritage park and commercial space, together with modern and highly automated logistics operation stations. But the memories of its past, captured in Wang's photographs,
