"Second prize: Wu Zhangfa, Han Sumin, Zhang Zongtao. Prize: one motorcycle."
"First prize: one Xiali sedan."
Friday, January 1, 1993. High temperature: six degrees above zero.
First Branch Factory's annual year-end commendation conference was held on schedule, as usual.
Though First Branch Factory had already grown rich and powerful, it still had not built any grand auditorium. The commendation conference was still held outdoors, with a huge crowd packed together.
But the atmosphere was blazing hot. The conditions on site might have been crude, but the prizes were more than generous!
Motorcycles, refrigerators, big color TVs—the grand prize was a sedan. Tell me, if the money spent on building an auditorium were converted into prizes and handed out to the worker brothers, would everyone support that?
Was that even a question?
The building might look grand and imposing, but what benefit would the workers actually get from it?
For all these years, even First Branch Factory's office building had looked shabby, becoming a laughingstock among its sister units. Yet the workers' wages had never stopped rising, while the year-end bonuses and prizes climbed higher and higher.
After so many years, even the dullest child understood that "the filling in a bun isn't in its folds." So no one felt that standing outside in the freezing cold was a living torment.
And every time the list of winners was announced, everyone expressed their support and enthusiasm with thunderous applause.
This was not the fake enthusiasm of applause they had no choice but to give. It was genuine support from the bottom of their hearts.
Because the winners were all ordinary people just like them, selected through collective voting by everyone in each workshop and department.
At First Branch Factory, votes were counted aloud on the spot. Anyone who wished could personally