In the autumn of the millennium year, Xiao Man and his classmates from the chemical machinery repair program graduated from technical school. Before officially starting work, they still had to go through factory orientation training. The training took place in the large conference room of the administrative building. In addition to the technical school graduates, the participants also included newly assigned junior college graduates and demobilized soldiers.
The morning began with a session on factory history, led by Da Xu, a staff officer from the factory’s trade union propaganda department. Xiao Man had first come to know Da Xu back in the year Zhuang Ge had caused a scene at the evening gala. Before the lecture began, Da Xu first asked everyone: “Does anyone know why our factory is called a Third Front factory?”
“It’s just a military-industrial factory far from the cities,” many people answered from the audience.
“That’s not entirely accurate. The Third Front is actually a civil defense concept,” Da Xu corrected them. “In the late 1960s, in preparation for war, many important factories from coastal provinces and cities were relocated to strategic rear areas in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, and parts of the inland regions. These factories covered aviation, instrumentation, metallurgy, chemical industry, and even shipbuilding. The military-industrial sector was only one part of the Third Front factory system. Because military-industrial factories had to be laid out according to the special principles of ‘backing against the mountains, dispersed, concealed, and burrowed into caves,’ we took root in mountain valleys, and that’s how Xi Tie Cheng came to be.”
Da Xu asked Xiao Man to come up to the stage and help unfurl a large map of China, then used a teaching pointer to indicate each location: “The cities where Third Front factories are concentrated are too numerous to count — Chongqing, Panzhihua, Liupanshui, Jiuquan, Xichang, Jinchuan, Gezhouba, Liujiaxia, Hanzhong, Shiyan, Xianyang, Baoji, Luoyang, Pingdingshan, Zhuzhou… From now on, whenever you hear factory names like Red Light, Prairie Fire, Starlight, Struggle, Face East, Red Guard, Red Rock, East Wind, Qingdong, Red Sun, or Brilliant Light, nine times out of ten they’ll be Third Front factories. Counting all the Third Front factories and research institutes across the country, there were four million people in total!”
“Four million people?” the audience exclaimed. “That’s four times more than the million-strong army that crossed the great river! Our middle school history books never mentioned this.”
“Future history books will certainly write about it,” Da Xu said, rolling up the map. “After the founding of New China, the largest-scale population migration was the sending down of educated youth to the countryside, with roughly fifteen million people. The second largest was our construction and relocation of the large and small Third Front, but due to its classified nature, it wasn’t as widely known as the educated youth movement.”
Having laid this groundwork, Staff Officer Da Xu opened his teaching notes and formally began the factory history lecture: “Speaking of our factory’s glorious history, everyone remember this one phrase: ‘More than half a century as a military-industrial factory, thirty-four years as Xi Tie Cheng.’ As far back as 1946, our Party sent a contingent of veteran munitions workers from the Taihang Mountains to build a factory on the shores of Xingkai Lake in Heilongjiang. The very first factory director even received a personally written commendation from the Chairman, and many of your grandfathers were among those original workers from that era, isn’t that right?”
Below the stage, Xiao Man and his classmates all nodded. Their grandfathers’ generation were indeed the old revolutionary workers known as the “first generation of Red military-industrial workers.” Many households in Xi Tie Cheng had a copy of a book — Give Everything to the Party written by Wu Yunduo, the “Chinese Pavel Korchagin.”
“Our factory is a factory with founding merits for New China. The siege of Changchun, the taking of Jinzhou, the Beiping-Tianjin Campaign, the Huaihai Campaign, the million-strong army crossing the great river — all the gunpowder was supplied by our factory. After the founding of New China, during the War to Resist America and Aid Korea, our factory worked overtime, with supplies sent straight to the battlefield without even having time to be put into storage. Later, in the late 1960s, when Sino-Soviet relations soured, because the factory was too close to the Sino-Soviet border, Premier Zhou instructed our factory’s main body to relocate southward. Most of the production lines came to western Liaoning, and that’s how the Xi Tie Cheng factory came to be. Many of the first-generation workers who relocated southward with the factory, after they passed away, were buried on the western hillside of Xi Tie Cheng. They could not return to their roots as fallen leaves, having devoted their entire lives to the factory — the factory was the final resting place of their whole existence.”
Xiao Man raised his hand from below the stage: “My classmates and I speak with a Heilongjiang accent, yet none of us have ever even been to Heilongjiang. We were born in Tie Cheng, but our way of life is different from the local people of Tie Cheng! Where on earth do we of this generation actually belong?”
“That’s right — none of us speak the local dialect. Where do we really belong?” everyone chattered and asked.
“That is truly a very difficult question to answer. We belong everywhere, and we belong nowhere,” Staff Officer Da Xu said helplessly. “The Third Front factories are a special product of a special era. If one absolutely must speak of a hometown, the only answer is: wherever the heart finds peace, that is home.”
Below the stage, some nodded while others shook their heads, feeling that this answer was vague and unconvincing.
After the class ended, Da Xu led all the trainees on a visit to the factory history exhibition room. Dozens of people looked here and there; some carefully examined old photographs from the factory’s founding, others focused on medals, trophies, and inscriptions from leaders, while more were astonished by the models of high-explosive shells and armor-piercing rounds. Xiao Man found his grandfather’s figure in an old photograph, and Xiao Bai also found a photograph of his grandfather during his time as a militiaman — his grandfather was carrying a machine gun on his shoulder, gripping a copy of Selected Works of Mao in his hand.
After the visit concluded, everyone returned to the large conference room, where the factory’s education department head personally conducted training on confidentiality regulations.
The department head had no teaching notes either, simply reading through the confidentiality regulations by rote before distributing a copy of the Confidentiality Handbook to each person.
“It looks exactly the same as the one at home — it’s really hard to read!” Xiao Man remarked when his copy reached him.
“What’s hard to read about it?” The education department head walked over and asked.
“The handbook is full of those kinds of characters — none of us recognize them,” Xiao Man said, pointing to a line of text. “Look at this character for ‘diligent’ — it’s written as ‘well’ plus ‘strength’ plus ‘diligent,’ and this character for ‘establish’ is written as a walking radical combined with ‘occupy.’ If it weren’t for the context around them, I couldn’t even guess what characters they are.”
“Those are the Second Simplified Characters. It’s perfectly normal that you don’t recognize them,” the education department head explained. “This handbook was printed in 1978 — it’s older than any of you. Later, our factory’s confidentiality requirements were relaxed, and there was no need to revise and reprint it.”
“Department Head, after all these years of maintaining secrecy, has our factory ever actually caught a real spy?” Wang Dongdong interjected.
“Well… our factory has gone through different eras,” the head said. “As for the so-called Taiwanese spies, Soviet spies, and American spies — the factory spent decades hunting for them and caught over ten people, but in the end all of them were rehabilitated and exonerated. Not a single confirmed case.”
“Wasn’t our factory being overly paranoid?” Wang Dongdong continued.
“Staying vigilant is always the right approach. One must always be on guard against others. This was related to the international situation in the 1960s and 70s, when our military-industrial factory operated at the highest level of secrecy,” the head said. “Of course, now many conventional products no longer require confidentiality.”
“Does that mean there won’t be any more major wars internationally?”
“Well, even if there were another major war, it wouldn’t require so many conventional firearms and artillery. After the Gulf War, all nations have prioritized high-tech weapons, no longer relying on quantity for victory. Conventional gunpowder production at our factory will be reduced in the future, the technical school will also reduce enrollment, and you all may be the last generation of military-industrial workers’ children.” The head finished speaking, glanced at his watch, and returned to the lectern. “All right! That concludes the morning session. This afternoon there will be extremely important safety training — not a single person can be absent! As for how terrifying explosions at a military-industrial factory can be, I won’t say too much. Just take the year of the major explosion — the windows of half the buildings in Tie Cheng, fifty li away, were shattered by the shockwave, and wolves have never been seen in the mountain areas within a radius of dozens of li since.”
Upon hearing that last sentence, the university graduates and demobilized soldiers were all left gaping in astonishment. In the hearts of Xiao Man and the other factory-born workers, however, there was barely a ripple. Back in technical school, Teacher Teng had already frightened them with various explosives many times over, and everyone had long since grown accustomed to it.
By the end of that day, everyone was stiff from sitting so long. Once the afternoon training concluded, Wang Dongdong asked Xiao Bai what he was doing that evening. Xiao Bai said they might as well play pool together. Xiao Man said he was tired of playing pool every day, and suggested doing something different. Xiao Bai said, what else? Mahjong, cards, the three halls, two courts, and one club — that was about it. Xiao Man said, never mind, pool it is then.
Before internet cafés appeared, “the three halls, two courts, and one club” were the recreational and social venues for young workers. The three halls were the karaoke hall, the dance hall, and the game arcade; the two courts were the basketball court and the roller-skating rink; and the one club was the pool hall. Pool halls everywhere were often wreathed in smoke with cigarette butts covering the floor, where young workers and truant teenagers frittered away their time, shouting out “feather shot,” “double fly,” “cushion shot,” “reverse,” “back kick,” “free ball”…
At the pool hall on the south road in the evening, Xiao Bai and Wang Dongdong were competing in a game of eight-ball, while Xiao Man stood to the side watching with a bottle of beer.
As Xiao Bai rubbed chalk onto the tip of his cue, he asked Wang Dongdong: “In a few days we’ll be going to the workshops to apprentice under a master. Do you know who your master will be?”
“Should be Tanzania.”
“Got your apprenticeship gift ready?”
“Two bottles of Old Dragon Mouth liquor, one carton of Panax ginseng cigarettes.”
“Masters at the factory love taking apprentices as sons-in-law. Who knows, maybe Tanzania will betroth his daughter to you,” Xiao Bai said.
“No way,” Wang Dongdong said, leaning over the table to aim. “Tanzania’s skin is as dark as the black eight ball — his daughter definitely won’t be any lighter.”
“Tanzania” was the nickname of Master Tan from the machining workshop. Master Tan was a well-known figure in Xi Tie Cheng — dark-skinned with white teeth, he had been famous throughout the factory for thirty years. That year, all over the country people were organizing “welcoming mango” celebrations, and Xi Tie Cheng’s factory revolutionary committee also staged a decorated float parade. On the float, workers representing the laboring peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America held up a large wax mango. Master Tan played the role of an African proletarian brother, showing up without any makeup at all — no need to black his face with shoe polish — which earned him the nickname “Tanzania,” famous throughout Xi Tie Cheng.
Xiao Man happened to know Master Tan’s daughter, and he also urged Wang Dongdong: “Tanzania’s daughter is a nursery school aide at the south road kindergarten now. She looks decent enough — you should really consider it.”
“Setting aside what she looks like, I just have one question: is she dark or not?” Wang Dongdong asked.
“Dark or light — with the lights off, it’s all the same,” Xiao Bai said.
“Get lost! Xiao Bai, you big degenerate!” Wang Dongdong jabbed at Xiao Bai’s backside with his cue.
Xiao Bai covered his backside and turned to ask Xiao Man: “By the way, Xiao Man, do you know who your master is yet?”
“I already know. It’s Master Ding — the one who saved my life,” Xiao Man said.
“Master Ding!” Wang Dongdong and Xiao Bai called out together. “Then Master Ding can take you as his adopted son!”
After orientation training ended, the new workers were assigned to report to their respective workshops. Xiao Man was assigned to Workshop 203, Xiao Bai to 401, and Wang Dongdong to 502. The production workshops at the military-industrial factory all went by numerical codes — outsiders could make little sense of them, and only internal staff knew what the numbers signified.
Xiao Man arrived early at the Workshop 203 office, waiting for Master Ding to take him down to the work unit. He waited for a good long while with no sign of the old man. The HR officer, an older woman, counted on her fingers and said, “Oh right — I forgot that Master Ding went for his injection this morning. Well then, I’ll take you down to the work unit myself.”
The HR officer changed into anti-static rubber-soled shoes and led Xiao Man through a maze of valves and pipelines, arriving at the machinery repair unit’s break room. A group of workers of various ages inside were loudly playing cards. “Everyone’s getting their bonuses docked, getting them all docked clean!” the HR officer raised her voice, and the crowd scattered at once, sending playing cards scattering across the floor.
A young worker named Da Shi, reluctant to give up a hand of double rockets, muttered under his breath: “We haven’t seen a bonus in six months — what’s left to dock anyway?”
“It’s not just your work unit without bonuses. The whole workshop is the same, isn’t it?” the HR officer said.
“It’s not the same at all! Workers are poor, leadership is rich — the workshop director cries poverty while the factory director sits there hugging a fat white rabbit!”
“Shut your mouth! Da Shi, you mark my words — any future transfers to the celluloid branch factory, and you won’t get a chance!” the HR officer threatened.
While the two were bickering, Master Ding happened to hurry back to the work unit. “Blame my apprentice! He’s been so cooped up without a girlfriend that he’s acting like a braying donkey. Please don’t be upset, really, don’t be upset!” He made apologies to the HR officer on Da Shi’s behalf.
“Old Ding, teach your new apprentice well — don’t turn out another defective product!” the HR officer rolled her eyes, then turned to speak to Xiao Man: “Don’t follow your senior apprentice’s example — that foul mouth of his is why he can’t find a partner for life!”
After seeing the HR officer off, Master Ding returned to the break room and set the record straight with Xiao Man: “Don’t listen to that woman’s nonsense. Your senior apprentice is no defective product. His work is solid — dependable!”
“Dependable at work?”
“That’s right. Remember — when you work in chemical industry, you must have steady hands and feet!” Master Ding tapped Xiao Man on the forehead with his finger. “Your master will give you three pieces of wisdom. First, whatever you do, don’t get drowsy on the night shift. Accidents always happen in the early hours of the morning, when people are exhausted and their attention falters. Second, if an accident occurs, don’t crowd around to watch — watch for the upwind and downwind directions and run for your life. If you can’t tell which way the wind is blowing, lick your finger and hold it up — whichever side feels cooler, run that way. Third, and most importantly — never, ever work alongside a reckless fool who doesn’t take care on the job. Even if you don’t have an accident yourself, if he does, it’ll cost you your life just the same!”
Having memorized his master’s three golden pieces of advice, Xiao Man’s apprenticeship thus began.
Just like his parents’ generation before him, every morning he tucked his red plastic-covered work ID into his pocket, mounted his bicycle with an aluminum lunchbox hanging from it, and pedaled into the production zone, riding toward the sunrise to the sound of radio broadcasts. At eight o’clock he changed into his work clothes and brewed his tea. At eight-fifteen, five of the ten people in the work unit headed into the operations room to work, while the remaining five stayed in the break room drinking tea, playing cards, and reading tabloids. After lunch, the two groups switched: the five who had worked in the morning came out to take their leisure, and the five who had been relaxing went in to work. The production line in the operations room ran without stopping, and the card games in the break room ran without stopping either.
When the group grew tired of cards, they entertained themselves at Da Shi’s expense over his failure to find a girlfriend. Da Shi was eight or nine years older than Xiao Man, and with thirty approaching, he still couldn’t find a romantic partner. The coworkers, drawing on their abundant imaginations, tried to serve as matchmakers for him, going from the ancient beauty Daji all the way to American pop star Madonna, from the girl who made noodles in the cafeteria to the female teacher at the village primary school.
And it wasn’t just Xiao Man’s workshop that was so slack — just as the HR officer had said, the other military-product workshops were the same. Military orders were fewer and fewer; there simply wasn’t that much work to do.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just give everyone time off? It’s certainly better than coming in just to play cards,” Xiao Man said to his master.
“If we give people time off, hearts start to wander. If an urgent order came in, we might not be able to muster enough hands,” Master Ding said.
“Master, you’re dreaming! You’re consulting a calendar from ten years ago!” Da Shi chimed in to argue. “The last urgent order was during the Iran-Iraq War. Those two countries have long since beaten each other into poverty — they’ll never be able to fight again.”
As Master Ding grew older, he lost interest in card games. Instead, he cultivated vegetables on a patch of hillside beside the factory building — row upon row of tomatoes and small chili peppers. Xiao Man, serving as an apprentice in the workshop for half a year, had failed to learn a single skill in lathe work, metalwork, riveting, or welding, but had instead followed Master Ding in learning how to grow vegetables. From time to time he would set down his hoe and feel lost, wondering: just what the hell am I — a worker or a farmer?
The main product of the Xi Tie Cheng factory was smokeless gunpowder, and production targets decreased year by year. To break out of the losses, the various branch factories had once launched a slew of civilian product initiatives — things like nail gun cartridges, electroplated tables and chairs, and float glass. Most of these “military-to-civilian conversion” projects ran at a loss. Only one — the celluloid branch factory — was running at full steam.
Celluloid is composed of primary nitrocellulose, similar to smokeless gunpowder but with a lower nitrogen content, making it burn more slowly. It is the basic raw material for early film stock, ping-pong balls, and bottle-cap seals. At the time, the vast majority of celluloid raw material throughout the country was produced by the Xi Tie Cheng factory. The bonuses at the civilian celluloid branch factory were generous, and orders frequently couldn’t keep up with demand. The main factory issued orders for each workshop’s work unit to second one veteran worker to provide reinforcement.
When the news reached the machinery repair unit, the team leader said they might as well draw lots and let fate decide. The draw selected Master Ding. Master Ding was so pleased his heart gave a little flutter, and he hurried into the operations room to inhale some nitroglycerin fumes. Once his heart rate had settled, he remembered his new apprentice, Xiao Man.
“Xiao Man, hurry up and pack your things. Tomorrow we report to the celluloid branch factory,” Master Ding said, packing up his work locker as he spoke.
“Will the celluloid factory agree to take me?” Xiao Man asked.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Master Ding said. “You’re an apprentice — you work for free with no bonus. What branch factory wouldn’t be happy to take you?”
The people of Xi Tie Cheng had deep affection for the finished celluloid products, and especially for celluloid bottle-cap seals. The red celluloid seal, known as the “red skin,” had once graced the tops of soy sauce bottles, liquor bottles, and even Maotai bottles. In the old days, many people didn’t know how to remove the “red skin.” They’d tear at it with their fingers, bite it with their teeth, cut it with knives, and pry at it with scissors, constantly complaining they couldn’t get it open. Whenever this situation arose, people from Xi Tie Cheng would always volunteer to light the “red skin” with a cigarette lighter. As the flame leaped up in an instant, the onlookers would let out a collective “ah” of surprise, as if they had witnessed a little fireworks magic trick.
Demonstrating how to burn off a “red skin” was the natural-born duty of Xi Tie Cheng people. At dinner gatherings, Xi Tie Cheng women could always deftly burn open liquor bottle seals with practiced ease, giving the impression of heroic female drinkers. Once the demonstration was done, they invariably had to add a word of explanation: “You go ahead and drink — I really can’t hold liquor, but these celluloid bottle seals are made by our factory.”
Celluloid was a by-product of manufacturing gun-cotton explosive, so cheap it was virtually costless. If it hadn’t been repurposed for civilian use, it would all have been discharged as waste liquid from the production process. Propped up by the profits from celluloid civilian products, the Xi Tie Cheng factory managed to survive three to five years longer than other state-owned factories. But even fine flowers don’t last forever. New materials replaced old ones generation by generation, and eventually heat-shrink seals — more flexible and safer — appeared in the south. The World Table Tennis Federation also gradually banned celluloid ping-pong balls in favor of ABS plastic balls. The collapse of these two markets sent the Xi Tie Cheng factory’s celluloid orders plummeting, and it no longer had any flagship civilian product worth mentioning.
In the 1990s, military-industrial factories went through extraordinarily difficult times during the “military-to-civilian conversion” phase. Not many civilian brands survived. The notable ones included Chang’an Automobiles from Factory 456, Cheetah Automobiles from Hunan Factory 7139, and Changhong Color Televisions from Sichuan Factory 780. Most of the military-to-civilian products gradually faded into obscurity, including Jialing motorcycles, Hongdu motorcycles, Jincheng motorcycles, Shuangyan refrigerators, Bole refrigerators, Changling refrigerators, Baiyun refrigerators, Fenghua refrigerators, Tiane air conditioners, Yunque sedans, Bianfu electric fans, and Ostrich brand bicycles. In the later stages of military-to-civilian conversion, once-mighty factories one after another were approaching their end, even stooping to produce low-end consumer goods — like Hafei making gas cylinders, Guiyang’s Liyang brand ice cream, Shenyang’s Liming factory making pressure cookers, Guizhou Aviation’s tin cabinets, and as for the kitchen knives produced by various military firearms factories, the brand names were beyond counting.
At month’s end, Xiao Man went to the branch factory’s finance office to collect his wages: two hundred and fifty-one yuan and seventy cents, including a four-yuan hygiene allowance and a twenty-yuan chemical industry post subsidy. Xiao Man asked what the hygiene allowance was for. The finance clerk said it was for bathing and haircuts. Xiao Man said four yuan wasn’t even enough for a haircut. The finance clerk glared at him and asked: do you want it or not? If you don’t, I’ll deduct it!
“I want it, I want it! Every little bit counts!” Xiao Man hurried to tuck the money into his chest pocket.
The money lay in his pocket for only two days. On Sunday, Xiao Man took the shuttle bus to the big shopping center in the city. First he bought Teacher Tong a fashionable new home textile set — the kind that had just come into style — then bought Master Ding a carton of Yuxi cigarettes and a bottle of Jiannanchun liquor, and then bought Officer Ma’s son a student’s eye-protection lamp.
In the evening he returned to the factory, first going to Officer Ma’s home to deliver the gifts. Officer Ma was at home helping his child review homework when Xiao Man walked in, giving a thumbs-up: “Uncle Ma, you’re a model father — and just in time, let’s try out this new desk lamp for the child.”
“No, no, please — Xiao Man, return it right away,” Officer Ma waved his hand. “You’re living on your own without much to spare. This is too extravagant.”
Xiao Man glanced around and jabbed a large hole in the packaging box: “Uncle Ma, look — the outer packaging is damaged now, so it can’t be returned.”
“You’ve learned some tricks, you little rascal!” Officer Ma said, half-laughing, half-exasperated. “All right, I’ll accept it.”
After chatting for a while at Officer Ma’s home, Xiao Man hurried over to Master Ding’s home to deliver his gifts. Master Ding was soaking his feet, and upon seeing Xiao Man, he quickly got up and dried them off. Xiao Man pulled out the cigarettes and the liquor and set them on the cupboard. Master Ding picked up the Jiannanchun and studied it for a long moment, saying: “This liquor is way too damn expensive — not the kind that old workers like us drink.”
“Take a page from the corrupt officials’ book — you’ve got to indulge yourself at least once,” Xiao Man joked.
“All right then, let’s all indulge together, old and young alike,” Master Ding said. “I’m having a root cellar dug at my place next week. Come with your other senior apprentices then. Once the work is done, we’ll drink this bottle up together.”
On the day of the root cellar digging, all four of Master Ding’s apprentices showed up. Master Ding sat on a wooden roller, smoking his pipe while directing the apprentices to break up the ground.
Xiao Man wasn’t very good with a pickaxe and hadn’t managed to dig very deep after swinging at it for a long time. Master Ding instructed him: “You’ve got to aim at the ground first — swinging around like that, you’ll throw your back out!”
“Xiao Man is a skilled technician, not a manual laborer!” The master’s wife spoke up in Xiao Man’s defense.
Master Ding said dismissively: “Back in our day, we didn’t distinguish between types of work — we dug out entire mountain tunnels.”
“Xiao Man, take a rest. Don’t listen to your master’s nonsense,” the master’s wife said.
“How is it nonsense?” Master Ding said. “Digging a root cellar is one of the four great skills of a proper Northeast man — it must be passed down from generation to generation.”
“What are the other three skills?” Xiao Man asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Will our generation even have use for them?”
“Pickling sauerkraut, nailing a sled, and building a heated kang bed! Useful or not, we can’t forget them!” Master Ding said.
By midday, the master’s wife had spread out the table and invited everyone to eat. Xiao Man, as the youngest apprentice, was directed by Master Ding to sit by his side. Master Ding opened the Jiannanchun and sniffed it, saying: “Today is practically a holiday — we drink Jiannanchun!”
“Wonderful — we’ve heard of it but never tasted it,” the apprentices all said happily.
“Xiao Man bought the wine. This young blockhead went and got something this expensive — he would have been better off exchanging it for a hundred eggs, enough to eat for half a year.”
“Old Ding, you really have a way with words — isn’t this Xiao Man’s heartfelt gesture?” The master’s wife chided him again.
“Right, right. Today we’ll all experience the extravagance of being leaders for a day — drinking a hundred eggs’ worth in one meal.” Master Ding carefully poured out drinks for everyone.
Master and apprentices all drank and smacked their lips in appreciation afterward. Master Ding asked the apprentices how it tasted. Everyone said it was delicious.
When the wine had gone three rounds, Master Ding’s face had grown flushed. He half-squinted his eyes and asked Da Shi: “Can your master say a word about your personal life?”
Da Shi said: “Of course!”
“I hear you’ve been seeing a girl from the village?”
“Someone introduced us. We just started.”
“Let me say this upfront — if you can avoid it, don’t find a village girl. This place — rough mountains and foul waters breed difficult people!”
Master Ding had always harbored deep prejudice against the nearby villagers. As he put it, well water doesn’t interfere with river water, but river water always interferes with well water. When the factory was first established, the local villagers and the factory had constant friction over trivial matters and had even come to blows, with Master Ding’s brother-in-law left with a scar on his face as a result.
Seeing that Da Shi wasn’t saying anything, Master Ding lit a cigarette and began to ramble: “Why don’t I want Da Shi to find a village girl? Let me take the occasion of this drink to explain. This was when the factory had just been built — villagers broke through the electrical fence, slipped into the production zone, and stole things, causing a workshop to halt production for a whole day, resulting in losses of over ten thousand yuan. The factory’s security department caught several people who had stolen electrical motors. Within half an hour, the entire village came to the security department with kitchen knives and pickaxes to take the people back by force. The head of security fired a warning shot into the air, but it was no use — the villagers weren’t afraid in the slightest.”
Including Xiao Man, all the apprentices present had heard some version of these old stories from the factory’s founding. In those days the nearby mountain villages were still very backward — apparently some old men in the villages still wore the queues of the former Qing dynasty, and the villagers had never seen a truck. Revolutionary workers like Master Ding naturally looked down on the ignorant villagers, disdaining their low consciousness.
“The villagers finally became well-behaved, and for that we have the 1983 crackdown to thank,” Master Ding continued. “That year, large trucks paraded condemned prisoners through the streets, each prisoner wearing a large placard on their chest with a big red X. The execution ground was set on the riverbed near the cornfields. Villagers came from near and far to watch the executions. Bang, bang, bang — a few shots, and the condemned prisoners’ blood soaked the ground. Only then did the villagers understand: if you sabotaged military-industrial production, that was the price you’d pay.”
“After watching the executions, did the villagers calm down?” Xiao Man asked.
“Actually, they didn’t calm down at all!” Master Ding went on. “Later, the villagers got smarter. They stopped stealing equipment and switched to stealing electricity instead. They covertly tapped the factory’s power lines into the village, and the whole village got free lighting. Then later, they also tapped into our factory’s industrial power lines. The whole village was running well pumps and feed mixers without paying a single cent for electricity.
“When our factory discovered the village was stealing electricity, we cut the power. The village chief came to negotiate with the factory director, saying: ‘Your chemical factory has been here all these years — the soil has gone acidic and the water has gone foul, the crops won’t grow, and people are dying younger. Can’t we at least use a bit of your electricity?’ The factory director said: ‘The land compensation fees were paid to the local government long ago — we settled our accounts years back.’ The village chief said: ‘The compensation was never paid to our village specifically — we can’t just accept getting the short end of the stick!'”
“To say our factory has polluted the environment — that’s the truth too,” the master’s wife interjected. “For the past few years, nobody eats fish caught from the river anymore. Eat it and you’ll feel muddled and get diarrhea.”
“True. The factory director didn’t really care about that small amount of electricity costs, but there still had to be some kind of exchange,” Master Ding said. “At the time, the factory director asked the village chief: I’ll get the electricity connected to you as a contribution to agriculture and to learning from Lei Feng. In return, you must not come to the factory causing trouble anymore. The village chief said: Not good enough. Besides the electricity connection, I also want my son registered as a factory worker. The factory director said: Can you control your villagers so they don’t make trouble? The village chief said: Resolve my son’s factory enrollment and I can manage them. The factory director said: Fine. I’ll get your son enrolled, but if you can’t control the villagers, I’ll expel your son from the factory registry and send him back to farm the land.”
At this point, everyone finally understood — that’s why the nearby village had been so quiet these past few years.
“The relationship between our factory and the village used to be hardheaded confrontation — you give me one shot, I give you a cannon blast,” Master Ding summarized. “Now both sides have wised up. When there’s nothing going on, nobody fights. When something comes up, everyone sits down and negotiates conditions. Whether it’s buying people off or making threats, there’s always a price that can be agreed on.”
“It’s the same pattern internationally,” Da Shi chimed in. “After the Gulf War, countries stopped picking fights with guns and cannons. Our factory’s export orders dried up too.”
“I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent today — there may be some old-fashioned bias in what I’ve said,” Master Ding said, his eyes bleary with drink, looking at Da Shi.
“I know the master means well for me,” Da Shi said. “But the villages around here aren’t poor anymore — they’ve changed more than we have. Look at the new brick houses they’ve built, one after another. They’re earning no less than we are on our fixed wages.”
“You make a fair point. The villages have advanced, while our factory has fallen behind,” Master Ding thought for a moment before saying. “The wheel of fortune turns — thirty years one way, thirty years the other. Who knows, in a few more years it might be their turn to look down on us factory workers.”
By year’s end, Xiao Man and Master Ding finished their secondment to the celluloid branch factory. When they returned to the military-products workshop, master and apprentice found that the scene of ten people on shift with five actually working was gone. The break room that had once been noisy with laughter and banter had grown completely silent.
Xiao Man asked senior apprentice Da Shi what was going on.
Da Shi said that from now on, military exercises would all be done with electronic simulation — orders for real guns and ammunition had become even fewer. Military products would be subject to production limits and inventory storage, and the workshop would be put on extended leave.
Xiao Man asked: would they still get paid?
Da Shi said they’d get a standby living allowance — a pittance, barely enough to buy toilet paper.
Xiao Man said: being on standby for two or three months wasn’t such a big deal.
Da Shi said they needed to prepare for both possibilities. All the factories in the city first went on standby, then got reassigned, and in the end they all got laid off.
“It can’t be that bad!” Xiao Man thought Da Shi was being an alarmist. “Those were all small neighborhood workshops that could fold any moment. Besides, even if there’s reassignment, it shouldn’t be our turn — we’re young workers, not the old, weak, or disabled.”
Having been placed on standby, Xiao Man whiled away two or three months at the pool hall and basketball court, but still no news came of returning to work. So he called Zhuang Ge to see if he could do odd jobs at the Bili Jeans store.
On the other end of the phone, Zhuang Ge asked if Xiao Man had considered going abroad to work in Japan. Xiao Man said he wasn’t laid off, just on standby, and that he couldn’t go far. Zhuang Ge said, all right, if you won’t go far, come to the city and help me run the outside sales for the store.
What Zhuang Ge meant by “outside sales” was selling merchandise outside the shop itself — at night markets, open-air markets, and various trade fairs. Xiao Man would usually arrive at the Bili Jeans store in the afternoon, sort out the old stock and discontinued sizes from the shop, pack them up, then sling the large bag over his shoulder and head to the biggest night market in Tie Cheng to hawk the goods.
The night market was clamorous, and Xiao Man would stand on a stool holding a megaphone, shouting: “Come and take a look! Bili Jeans! The jeans that Bill Clinton loves most!” When Zhuang Ge later brought in a batch of counterfeit Levi’s jeans, Xiao Man’s night market pitch changed to: “Come and take a look! Levi’s jeans — the jeans Lewinsky loves most!”
The owner of a nearby fake Nike sneakers stall asked him: “How did those jeans of yours end up mixed up with a scandal?”
Xiao Man glared at him and grabbed the megaphone again: “Scandal or not, wear Nike — they’ll never wear out!”
One day, Zhuang Ge asked Xiao Man to take some leftover stock to the Tie Cheng Exhibition Hall, saying that a Jiangnan silk and clothing trade fair was being held there.
In those years the Tie Cheng Exhibition Hall had hosted many trade fairs from the south: Shanghai knitwear, Huzhou silk, Nantong textiles, Jingdezhen ceramics, and furniture and jade ornaments of uncertain origin.
Xiao Man shouldered the leftover stock and headed to the exhibition hall, slipped a pair of jeans onto a plastic mannequin, and opened his throat to shout: “Come look, come shop! American Bili Jeans! Washington originals…”
“My friend, do you know the rules here? This is not a street stall — you cannot hawk like that,” objected the Zhejiang auntie at the neighboring booth.
Xiao Man looked around and indeed nobody else was hawking their wares like him. Still unwilling to give up, he found a large sheet of red paper and wrote “Clinton’s passionate White House recommendation — jeans at fifty percent off!” and pinned it around the waist of the plastic mannequin.
The Zhejiang auntie stared in amazement. She asked Xiao Man: “Don’t you watch the news? Clinton is already out of office — it’s Little Bush now.”
Xiao Man said: “Little Bush is a fool — not interesting.”
“Exactly, exactly! Clinton was better at everything,” the Zhejiang auntie laughed heartily.
The opening ceremony of the “Jiangnan Silk and Clothing Trade Fair” was quite grand — first a spirited gong and drum performance, then an eight-person southern lion and northern dance routine, and finally a succession of leaders taking turns at the podium to give speeches. Among them, a man in a silk shirt with a boutonnière pinned to his chest babbled on endlessly. The Zhejiang auntie said he was the chamber of commerce president from their township.
“Is the president your top leader?” Xiao Man asked the Zhejiang auntie.
“He hardly qualifies as a leader — team leader is more like it.”
Xiao Man shook his head — he didn’t understand. Having grown up in a state-owned factory, he only knew about trade unions; he had no concept of what a chamber of commerce was.
“The chamber of commerce is something we organized together, and the president was elected by everyone,” the Zhejiang auntie explained. “Our township has over a hundred garment factories. Everyone put their heads together, set up a chamber of commerce, and the chamber goes around to different places to arrange trade fairs. Once a deal is made, they bring us to the fair.”
“Ah, I see,” Xiao Man said. “The trade union spends money for everyone; the chamber of commerce leads everyone to make money.”
When the opening ceremony ended, the president strolled around the exhibition hall with his hands clasped behind his back, looking self-satisfied. He walked up to the Zhejiang auntie’s booth and asked: “Sister, is all your stock stocked up? Don’t run out of inventory too fast!”
“It’s all ready. The atmosphere at this one is quite grand — you’ve worked hard!” the Zhejiang auntie said.
“Keep at it, everyone! Let’s make money!” The president smoothed back his pompadour, looking pleased with himself.
Unfortunately, the fair was only lively for the morning session. By afternoon, the number of visitors had already dwindled. As the evening closing time drew near, the president made his second round of the booths. The Zhejiang auntie called out to him: “Look at how few people came this afternoon!”
“No need to rush. The people of the Northeast have all gotten smart now — they know that discounts get deeper the later in the fair it gets, so they wait. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.”
“We absolutely cannot end up just making back the booth rental fee.”
“Don’t worry — we have guarantees in place. This time we negotiated with the trade fair organizer. They handled the advertising and guaranteed twenty thousand visitors.”
“Who’s counting heads at the door? Won’t it end up a muddled mess of numbers?” the Zhejiang auntie asked.
“The trade fair company installed an infrared counter. Every time a person enters and breaks the infrared beam, it counts as one visit,” the president said. “This is high-tech, very scientific — more accurate than counting heads manually.”
“What if it doesn’t reach twenty thousand?”
“The other side made a commitment — if it doesn’t reach twenty thousand, the rent gets cut in half,” the president said. “All of this is written in the contract, so everyone can rest easy.”
The Zhejiang auntie was about to ask for more details, but the president waved impatiently and walked away. Xiao Man, who had been listening and understood about seven or eight parts in ten, reassured her: “Your president seems pretty confident. It should be fine.”
“If they make money, he gets his commission too. If they don’t, the fellow villagers will curse him to death,” the Zhejiang auntie said, spitting out a melon seed husk.
The second day of the trade fair saw just as few customers. Xiao Man and the Zhejiang auntie sat and chatted idly. The auntie jokingly suggested Xiao Man become her live-in son-in-law. Xiao Man said that wouldn’t look right — better to bring her daughter to his place as his wife. The auntie said not to look down on their township workshops: every family had a villa and a van. Xiao Man smiled and took it as the auntie boasting.
The day passed quickly and still very few people came in the afternoon. Before packing up, Xiao Man gave the Zhejiang auntie a pair of American Wenzhou jeans, and she in return gave him three French Shaoxing neckties.
On the third day, the visitor count still didn’t rise. The Zhejiang auntie’s patience ran out: “Where’s this twenty thousand people? It’s obvious the president was swindled by the trade fair company.”
The president was also anxiously pacing the exhibition hall, his hair no longer as immaculate as the first few days. Every merchant was complaining to him about the low foot traffic. The president forced himself to stay upbeat and encouraged each of them: “Don’t worry! If it’s still not twenty thousand tomorrow, I’ll go to the trade fair company and demand the rent be cut in half!”
By the fourth day in the afternoon, the president found the Zhejiang auntie with a deflated look and said: “We’re just barely over ten thousand visitors now. I’m going to the trade fair company to get back half the rent.”
“Well, if we get half back, this outing hasn’t been too bad,” the Zhejiang auntie said.
“What do you mean by ‘not too bad’?” Xiao Man asked the Zhejiang auntie.
“Sold four thousand yuan in goods, gross profit three thousand. Take away the booth rent, shipping, food, and accommodation — two thousand yuan. Four days’ work, one thousand yuan profit. Not much to show for it.”
“You call one thousand yuan ‘not much’?” Xiao Man was taken aback.
“For someone who works at a factory, you’ve wasted your time,” the Zhejiang auntie said. “I’m not joking — you’d really be better off as my live-in son-in-law.”
With less than an hour left before closing, Xiao Man planned to use the bathroom and then break down his stall. He had just entered the restroom when he saw Teacher Dai standing at the urinal.
“Teacher Dai, you’re here shopping for clothes too?” Xiao Man asked from behind him.
Teacher Dai was concentrating on his business when Xiao Man’s voice caught him off guard. His stream nearly ended up on his shoes. “Oh, it’s Xiao Man,” he said, turning his head. “I’m not buying anything — it’s a task assigned by Principal Hou. The whole school’s students are here to visit.”
“Visit what?”
“The trade fair, of course.”
“Students don’t have money — what’s there to visit at a trade fair?” Xiao Man was bewildered.
“Principal Hou said they came to help pad the numbers,” Teacher Dai said, pulling up his trousers. “Once the visit is done, the whole school goes to see a movie.”
“So you’re here to inflate the count!” Xiao Man suddenly understood.
“That’s right — pad the numbers, go through the motions.”
“That’s absolutely brilliant!” Xiao Man exclaimed in surprise, then quickly had a thought. “So how much did the trade fair company give Principal Hou for this?”
“Principal Hou personally, I don’t know. The school should be able to collect two or three thousand yuan,” Teacher Dai said. “Principal Hou called it the small treasury, to be kept for teacher welfare. You know what things are like now — teachers haven’t seen their wages for months and are utterly broke.”
“And… won’t the students’ parents have objections?”
“They won’t. Arrangements have been made — the trade fair company included a movie screening. Once they’ve toured the fair, we’ll go watch The Legend of Nezha.”
As the two talked, over a thousand Xi Tie Cheng students lined up outside, led by their homeroom teachers, filing in one column after another through the entrance. They didn’t stop for a single minute at any booth, but walked straight through the trade fair hall and out the exit, then looped back around to come in again.
The stallholders at the fair stared at each other wide-eyed, watching wave after wave of children walking in, walking out, walking out, walking in. Finally they realized: as long as the students made five laps, the infrared counter would show a surge of five thousand visitors. Ten laps would be ten thousand!
The poor chamber of commerce president stood at the exhibition hall entrance, trying to block them left and right, but was completely helpless against the tide of children pouring in like floodwater. Perhaps these children, as adults years later, would remember this very scene: a wretched southerner standing at the fair entrance, shouting and cursing: “You shameless swindlers! You even dragged out the students to pad the numbers…”
The Jiangnan clothing trade delegation had crashed and burned at the Tie Cheng Exhibition Hall. As for how the lawsuit was fought out afterward, Xiao Man had no way of knowing. He frequently told this story as a joke to the night market vendors. The vendors all gave him a thumbs-up, saying your principal has quite a head on his shoulders — he should be transferred to the factory as director and improve Xi Tie Cheng’s bottom line.
Xiao Man asked: do you even know what “bottom line” means?
The vendors said: making money, right?
Xiao Man said: then just say “making money” — all this talk of “bottom line,” it sounds like our factory’s loudspeaker broadcasts.
In those years the whole of society was talking about efficiency and the bottom line, and Xi Tie Cheng’s loudspeakers were broadcasting it all day long too: “Efficiency is life; efficiency is everything.” In the end everyone finally understood — without money, everything is empty talk. Making money matters more than keeping face. Squatting to eat dry bread beats standing in the cold wind with nothing.
With their minds finally awakened, the people of Xi Tie Cheng each tried their best to turn a profit. Primary school teachers opened lunch supervision services, middle school teachers started tutoring classes, doctors redirected patients to their own private clinics, accountants took on private bookkeeping on the side, truck drivers took on freight for the empty return journey, and workers — with no particular skills to offer — smuggled copper and iron out of the production zone. Within the factory compound stretching for ten li in all directions, the first thing people asked when they ran into each other was: “How’s it going — made any money lately?”