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Yan Huabing is well-aware of the Herculean task involved in building the world's largest iPhone plant from scratch. However, the 41-year-old said that struggle has been eclipsed by his work in the past three years: halting the spread of COVID-19 at the Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where about 70 percent of the world's iPhones are made.

"It felt like a real battle," said Yan, who oversees security and logistics at the plant. "I would rather build the factory from scratch again than going through the epidemic anew."

In 2010, a deal worth $12 million was finalized to create the factory. Betting on the growing opportunities in China's inland areas, Yan left his job at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen — a coastal megacity in Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong — and moved north.

However, what Yan saw at the plant's Zhengzhou site stunned him: there were no workshop buildings, no dormitories, no canteens, and none of the hustle and bustle of a major metropolitan area. Yan had worked at the Shenzhen plant for six years after graduating from college, and everything he had become accustomed to was missing in the central city of 12.7 million people. As far as the eye could see, the area was just a vast wilderness of jujube trees.

However, his gamble quickly paid off. In a little more than a month, a new factory had been erected in the wooded area and had started churning out electronic devices. The steady influx of capital and human resources prompted the local government to establish the Zhengzhou Airport Economic Zone in the plant's neighborhood to aid the local growth engine.

More buildings sprang up and more assembly lines were installed, fueling a decadelong expansion that earned Zhengzhou — previously known as a busy transportation hub where major railways converged — the new title of "iPhone city". During peak production seasons, more than 300,000 employees worked on the assembly lines.

As time progressed, Yan was promoted to a senior management position, overseeing the workers' accommodations.

"I am a witness of the 'Zhengzhou speed'," he said, referring to the city's economic momentum and efficiency.

Then came the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019. Many workers who had left for Spring Festival reunions were stranded at home because of travel restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the deadly disease.

To ensure smooth production, the management offered cash incentives in February 2021 to entice employees to work in what was described as a "closed-loop environment", where they need to stay within the factory compound.

To do that, employees who rented or owned apartments nearby had to move into dormitories within the factory. Yan was one of them: for months, he could only talk to his wife and teenage son and daughter via video calls. He said he dreamed of the taste of the dumplings his wife often made for him.

The control measures loosened and tightened in tandem with the epidemic situation in Zhengzhou, but they generally worked well to ensure smooth production while the trade and manufacturing sectors in many places worldwide were overwhelmed by the virus.

However, the greater contagiousness of the Omicron subvariants, which fueled outbreaks nationwide last year, also rendered the closed-loop strategy less effective. An outbreak in late October led to an exodus of workers and dealt a blow to Foxconn's production.

Moreover, given the milder nature of the dominant strains of the virus across the country, the central authorities began modifying the COVID-19 strategies and cut many testing and isolation requirements.

Despite the contagious virus, Yan said that the joint efforts of the local government and the company allowed many Foxconn workers to recover and return to their posts, making the impact of the virus on production manageable.

"I haven't visited my parents in rural Shandong province for Spring Festival since the onset of the epidemic," he said.

His parents, who are in their late 60s and have preexisting conditions, tested positive for COVID-19 recently, which has worried Yan as he knows that outbreaks could recur in some rural areas which are in need of more health resources.

"My biggest wish this year is to travel home and spend the holiday with them, and I will bring some masks and hand sanitizers for them," Yan said.