Father's Past

"I really didn't know anything about my father when he was young. Could you tell me about it, County Chief?" Zhang Yi had always wanted to know about his father's younger years, but whenever he asked, his father refused to say anything. Now that he could learn about his father's past from the County Chief and the others, he was naturally interested.

"All right. Since you asked, I'll tell you about your father. I think you must know some things already. For example, the state-owned mechanical factory Xian County once had. It used to be the largest mechanical factory in all of Xian County. Even Zhu Gang's factory now was only a drop in the bucket compared with the former Xian County Mechanical Factory. At its peak, Xian County Mechanical Factory had more than ten thousand employees.

"Back then, the factory had complete technical teams and worker teams. We could independently manufacture even things like automobiles, though they certainly weren't advanced cars.

"Even compared to the largest mechanical factory in Zhou Tai City at the time, it was not inferior in the slightest. Although your father was young then, he was already the technical deputy factory director of Xian County Mechanical Factory. You should know that, based on administrative rank, a deputy factory director at that factory was equivalent to today's Deputy County Magistrate. In other words, my current administrative rank was only equal to your father's rank back then. At the time, I was merely a technician at the factory.

"The factory had originally been developing very well. If it had ignored other distractions and continued steadily in the machinery industry, then even if Xian County Mechanical Factory could not have become a Fortune 500 company, it would at least not have been worse than an ordinary mechanical factory. It certainly would not have gone bankrupt outright.

"But just as the factory was thriving, the old factory director retired due to his age. According to the usual practice, your father should have become the new factory director.

"Although your father was very young at the time, there was no questioning his technical ability. He was also one of the few Advanced Technicians in the factory. More importantly, your father was a university graduate.

"Yet for some reason, the higher-ups did not appoint your father as factory director. Instead, they parachuted in a factory director from above, saying he was going to carry out some kind of reform at the factory.

"Originally, that would not have been a problem. The factory's foundations were there, after all. Unless something major happened, it would not have had much impact on the factory.

"But the problem was that this parachuted factory director understood nothing. After arriving, he first forced several of the factory's old hands into retirement. You have to understand, those old hands were the technical pillars of the mechanical factory! Without them, the factory's technical capabilities would drop by an entire level.

"Everyone in the factory, from top to bottom, firmly opposed the new factory director's decision, but it was useless. In the end, several technical backbones were still forced into retirement. All at once, there were many things our factory could no longer produce. Fortunately, the factory managed to hold on. It did not collapse immediately, and it could even still turn a profit.

"If that factory director had not made any further moves, the factory could still have weathered that crisis. After all, it still had some technical backbones at the time, such as your father and the others.

"But somehow, that factory director got the idea of transforming the factory and launching refrigerator production. At the time, there were no domestic refrigerator production lines. Importing one would have been extremely expensive, and the factory's funds were nowhere near enough to buy one.

"Ignoring the opposition of most people in the factory, including the technical deputy factory director at the time—your father—he went ahead anyway. Your father had even stated clearly that it would never work. How many manufacturers across the country had already entered, or were preparing to enter, the appliance market at that time?

"At Xian County Mechanical Factory's level, if it had focused on the machinery industry, it would still have had a future. It had been in the industry for so long and had accumulated technical expertise. But in appliances, we had neither a technical advantage nor a financial advantage. We even had to sell off the factory's machinery and withhold the workers' wages for more than half a year just to scrape together enough money for a production line. How could we possibly succeed?

"Your father was so furious that he quarreled with the factory director. The incident became quite a big deal and even alerted the city authorities. But since most of the equipment had already been sold, it was too late. There was no way to undo it.

"Watching the mechanical factory he had worked so hard to build become like that in such a short time, your father became utterly disheartened and resigned. Since the factory was in the middle of transforming and had just bought a production line, it had no money to pay the workers' wages. So it gave your father an old lathe as his wages.

"After your father resigned, the factory was still forced to continue its transformation. There was no other choice; they could not exactly stop halfway through. The arrow was on the string and had to be fired. Because the factory lacked funds, that director discarded some of the factory's machinery and sold the rest. After struggling to buy a refrigerator production line, they discovered that technical limitations meant they could not produce the refrigerator's core component—the compressor.

"Even the refrigerators they did produce found no buyers. And even if they wanted to manufacture them, they still had to import the compressor, the refrigerator's main component, from abroad, since none were available domestically. And so, the mechanical factory that had once flourished collapsed just like that.

"If that factory director had not been parachuted in back then, the mechanical factory would not have gone bankrupt. Xian County would not be like it was now, unable to produce even one respectable enterprise." After speaking, the Deputy County Magistrate let out a long sigh.

Zhang Yi had nothing to say about that. After all, he did not understand the situation back then. But one thing was very clear to him: countless promising enterprises across the country had fallen for precisely such reasons. Otherwise, the Great Hua Empire's manufacturing industry could certainly have advanced another step.

"Yes, it has to be said that this was a great tragedy for Xian County. The county's only enterprise of any scale vanished just like that. Later, they even discovered that the production line they bought was secondhand and outdated equipment. How much better would it have been if they had not produced refrigerators back then?

"Even producing motorcycles or something similar would have been better. At least if they had produced motorcycles, most of the factory's equipment could have been used. There would have been no need to spend so much money on such a worn-out production line, causing the factory to collapse." The County Bureau Chief spoke up at this point.

It seemed that they still could not let go of what had happened back then. That was only natural. The mechanical factory had once been the largest enterprise in all of Xian County and could even be considered one of the notable factories in Jiangnan Province. It had been a major factory with more than ten thousand workers. If it had developed until now, how could Xian County have become one of the most backward counties in the entire province?