Father's Past

"I really don't know anything about my father's younger days. County Magistrate, could you tell me about it?" Zhang Yi was actually very curious about his father's youth, but no matter how many times he asked his father, his father wouldn't say anything. Now that he could learn about his father's past from the County Magistrate and others, Zhang Yi was naturally interested.

"Alright! Since you asked, I'll tell you about your father. I think you must know some things, for example, the former state-owned mechanical factory in our Xian County. It was originally the largest mechanical factory in the entire Xian County. Even Zhu Gang's current mechanical factory is just a drop in the ocean compared to the original Xian County Mechanical Factory. You should know that at its peak, the original Xian County Mechanical Factory had over ten thousand employees.

And at that time, the mechanical factory had a complete technical team and worker team. Even things like cars, we could produce independently, although certainly not advanced cars.

So, even compared to the largest mechanical factory in Zhou Tai City at that time, it was not inferior at all. And your father, although young at that time, was already the Deputy Director of Technology of the Xian County Mechanical Factory. You should know that at that time, the administrative level of the Deputy Director of this mechanical factory was equivalent to the current Deputy County Magistrate. In other words, my current administrative level is only the same as your father's administrative level at that time, and I was just a technician in the mechanical factory at that time.

Originally, the mechanical factory was developing very well. If it hadn't thought about other things and had developed steadily in the mechanical industry, then the Xian County Mechanical Factory might not have become a Fortune 500 company now, but at least it wouldn't be worse than a general mechanical factory, and it certainly wouldn't have directly gone bankrupt.

But just when the mechanical factory was developing very smoothly, the old factory director retired due to old age. According to the usual practice, the new factory director would definitely have been your father.

Although your father was very young at that time, his technical skills were indeed impeccable. At the same time, he was one of the few senior technicians in the factory, and what's more, your father was a university student.

But I don't know what the higher-ups were thinking at that time. They didn't let your father be the factory director, but instead parachuted in a factory director, saying that they were going to carry out some reforms in the factory.

Originally, this was nothing. After all, the foundation of the factory was there. If it wasn't a big deal, it wouldn't have much impact on the factory.

But the bad thing was that this parachuted factory director didn't understand anything. After coming down, he first retired several of the old people in the factory. You should know that these old people were the technical pillars of the mechanical factory at that time! Without them, the technical strength of the factory would drop by a level.

At that time, everyone in the factory, from top to bottom, firmly opposed the new factory director's decision, but this was completely useless. In the end, several technical backbones of the factory were still retired, so suddenly our factory couldn't produce many things. However, fortunately, the factory could still hold on and didn't collapse all at once, and could even make a profit.

If this factory director hadn't made any new moves, the factory would still have been able to get through that difficult time, after all, there were still some technical backbones in the factory at that time, such as your father and the others.

But this factory director didn't know who he listened to, and prepared to let the factory transform and start producing refrigerators. You should know that there were no refrigerator production lines in the country at that time. If imported, the price of the production line was very expensive, and the factory's funds at that time were not enough to buy the production line.

He disregarded the opposition of most people in the factory, including the Deputy Director of Technology at that time, which was your father, and your father also clearly stated that this would definitely not work. You should know how many manufacturers across the country had already entered or were preparing to enter the electrical appliance market at that time.

With the level of the Xian County Mechanical Factory at that time, if it had developed steadily in the mechanical industry, it would still have had a chance to succeed, after all, it had been in the mechanical industry for so long and had accumulated technology. But in terms of electrical appliances, we had neither a technical advantage nor a financial advantage. Even the production line had to be put together by selling the factory's mechanical equipment and defaulting on workers' wages for more than half a year. How could it possibly succeed!

So your father got angry and argued with the factory director at that time. This matter was quite a big deal at the time, and it even alarmed the city. However, since most of the equipment had already been sold, everything was already too late, and there was no room for recovery.

Seeing the mechanical factory that he had worked so hard to build become like this in a short period of time, your father was disheartened and resigned. Since the factory was transforming at that time and had just bought a production line, there was no money to pay the workers' wages, so they gave your father an old machine tool as his wages.

Finally, after your father resigned, the factory was still forced to choose to transform. However, this was also unavoidable. It couldn't stop halfway through the transformation. It can be said that the arrow was on the string and had to be shot. Since the factory's funds were insufficient, he directly threw away or sold the factory's mechanical equipment at that time. After finally purchasing the refrigerator production line, he found that due to technical reasons, he couldn't produce the core equipment of the refrigerator, which was the refrigerator compressor.

And even if it was produced, no one would buy it. At the same time, even if it was produced, the main component of the refrigerator, the compressor, still had to be imported from abroad, as there was none in the country. So the once prosperous mechanical factory just collapsed like this.

If that factory director hadn't been parachuted in back then, the mechanical factory wouldn't have gone bankrupt, and our Xian County wouldn't be like it is now, unable to even produce a decent enterprise." After saying this, the Deputy County Magistrate sighed deeply.

Zhang Yi had nothing to say about this, after all, he didn't understand the situation at that time. However, he was very clear about one thing, and that was how many promising enterprises across the country had collapsed because of this. Otherwise, the Great Hua Empire would definitely be able to take another step forward in manufacturing now.

"Yes! This has to be said to be a great tragedy for our Xian County. The only large-scale enterprise in our county just disappeared like this. Even the production line that was bought later was found to be a second-hand backward equipment. How good it would have been if we hadn't produced refrigerators back then!

Even producing motorcycles or something like that would have been better than this. At least if we had produced motorcycles, most of the equipment in the factory at that time could have been used, and we wouldn't have needed to spend so much money to buy such a dilapidated production line, leading to the factory's collapse." At this time, the director of the county bureau also said.

It seems that they are still bothered by the events of that year, but it is understandable. After all, the mechanical factory was the largest enterprise in the entire Xian County at that time, and it could even be ranked in the entire Jiangnan Province. You should know that this was a large factory with over ten thousand workers! If it had developed to the present, how could Xian County be like it is now, becoming one of the most backward counties in the entire province.