Initially a student of English at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Che Hongcai was sent by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study Pashto at the University of Kabul in Afghanistan from 1959 to 1963. When the State Council unveiled a national mission to create 160 foreign language dictionaries in Chinese in 1975, Che became the natural choice for making the world’s first Pashto-Chinese dictionary, commissioned by The Commercial Press in 1978.

Che went all-out digesting the historical and religious context for compiling the dictionary, commonly spending the whole morning studying only one word. However, the dictionary ended up 36 years in the making. It was halted in the late 1980s due to Che’s work as an envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and later by Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s. With no access to computers, Che made 100,000 note-cards to record the translation of each word —the dictionary ultimately clocked in at 2.5 million words. The Commercial Press later saved the 100, 000 cards as a “witness” to Che's diligence.

Even the publishing company had “forgotten” their commission by the time the 78-year-old Che climbed up the steps of the Commercial Press head offices in Beijing's Wangfujing district in 2014, and asked for directions to the foreign-language dictionary department with a 52,000-entry manuscript under his arm. Che hadn’t forgotten his mission, persisting at it even though he had worked as a farm laborer, university professor, employee of State Administration of Radio Film and TV, and foreign envoy in the meantime, surviving and thriving under every tribulation that comes with such delicate work in a troubled region of the world. After decades of danger and hard work, the Pashto-Chinese Dictionary was finally published in 2014, and Che was honored with the national medal by Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani the following year, for the unforgotten role the dictionary has played in bridging the two countries.