Rebirth in 1960, My Industrial Age

Chapter 139: Talking about export plans (Subscription required)

When it was still dark, Zhou Fengnian opened his eyes and got up after the alarm on the clock in the room rang.

Supplies are in short supply, so you have to buy meat early.

Zhou Yan also slowly woke up. Seeing Zhou Fengnian getting dressed, she asked vaguely, "Are you going to buy some meat?"

"Well, you should continue to rest. It's not dawn yet."

Zhou Fengnian covered Zhou Yan with a blanket and said that Zhou Yan had been tormented by him last night; Zhou Yan's figure had not changed after giving birth, and it took her several hours to fall asleep.

I probably won't be able to get up until morning today.

Zhou Fengnian took the money and went out. There were still a lot of meat coupons left for this month. Zhou Yan was quite frugal when he was not at home.

Apart from feeding her child milk powder, she basically ate in the cafeteria and never ate meat. She didn't gain weight after giving birth, probably because she was thrifty.

Zhou Fengnian rushed to the farmer's market and queued up. This time he bought a piece of second-grade meat that was half fat and half lean, and went back satisfied.

Stir-fried cabbage with pork scraps, shredded pork with green peppers, a plate of mapo tofu and two vegetarian dishes will definitely make Zhou Fugui smile happily.

We cut a pound and a half of meat, which we estimate will be enough for today's meal, not just for them.

Zhou Fengnian also asked his father to bring a portion back to his mother and Zhou Xiaomei at home. In the village, they certainly didn't have as many opportunities to eat meat as Zhou Fengnian did.

After buying meat from the farmers' market early in the morning, Zhou Fengnian went to buy breakfast, meat buns and soy milk.

As soon as I got home with breakfast, I saw Chunhua coaxing her son.

"He's so energetic so early in the morning. I have to send this kid to sing in the future. His voice is so loud and clear."

Zhou Chunhua knew that her third brother liked to tease her son, so she didn't dare let him take over and said, "Maybe he's hungry. Third brother, go make some milk powder."

"Okay, just wait a moment."

Zhou Fengnian had just put down breakfast in the backyard when he saw Zhou Yan coming out dressed. He asked, "Why don't you sleep a little longer?"

"How can I sleep when Xianyang is shouting so loudly?"

After Zhou Yan prepared the milk powder, she went to coax her child and only came back to eat breakfast after the child was quiet.

The three of them ate ten buns, Zhou Yan and Chunhua ate two each, and Zhou Fengnian ate six alone.

After dinner, Zhou Fengnian had nothing to do, so Zhou Yan sent him directly to the study. It seemed as if he was forbidden to get close to the children, saying that he just liked to make the children cry when he had nothing to do.

Near noon, Zhou's father arrived, still carrying about 20 kilograms of mushrooms.

Seeing this, Zhou Fengnian said, "Dad, bring less next time. We don't lack food at home."

"Give your eldest brother some shares. These mushrooms are growing well. This year's mushroom income is expected to be much higher than last year. Third brother, guess how much we sold this time."

There was a hint of arrogance in Zhou's father's tone, but Zhou Fengnian could understand it. After all, he was the leader of the production team, and he wanted to show off when the production team had achievements.

Zhou Fengnian also cooperated and asked, "How much did you sell?"

"Four hundred and ninety-two dollars and four!"

"Almost five hundred?"

Zhou Fengnian was really surprised when he heard this number, and then asked: "You guys don't spend all your free time growing mushrooms, do you? Don't you have any rest?"

"There will be plenty of rest time in the future, and the villagers themselves are not happy about it even if we ask them to rest."

After taking a sip of water, Zhou Fugui continued with a smile, "Last year, I earned so much money with my work points. If I don't work hard this year, I'll just have to watch others eat meat by the end of the year!"

Many people now earn more work points than him, the production team leader.

Especially for a family of four or five who earn work points, by the end of this year, they are estimated to be able to share fifty or sixty yuan.

The Zhou family is not doing well. Now Zhou Fugui is the only one who earns work points. Zhou's mother occasionally earns some work points, and at the end of the year, they only get about ten points.

However, the Zhou family did not think highly of the work points from the production team. Zhou Fengnian alone gave the family 120 yuan every year. Together with the money given by other brothers and sisters, Zhou's mother earned more than 200 yuan a year.

When it was time for lunch, Zhou Fugui was still talking about the production team.

Hongjia Village is apparently getting richer. After saving money for five or six years, everyone in the village will probably be able to build a big red brick house.

Building a big house in the countryside only costs fifty or sixty dollars, which is much less expensive than in the city.

The only thing Zhou Fugui could brag about in front of his son Zhou Fengnian was the good things he had done for the village.

Zhou Fengnian also listened with a smile, praising him for his high awareness from time to time.

Fortunately, the eldest brother was not called today. If Zhou Weitian was here, he would probably say directly: "Dad, what does this have to do with you? Wasn't this the third brother's idea?" and then Zhou's father would start to sacrifice his own relatives for the sake of justice.

"Dad, why didn't Secretary Changshan come?"

"He has nothing to do, why would he come over? If he comes, you should treat him to a meal. Who would often go to someone else's house for a meal these days?"

Zhou Fugui shook his head and said that if this person was not his son, he would not be embarrassed to come to the house like this.

Zhou Fengnian said, "I have something to ask you. Does Sanshui Commune have any pigs that are not in the plan? If there are any and they are planning to sell them, please send them to our factory."

"Send it to your factory? Do you still care about this?"

"I am a leader after all. I have to fulfill my promise to reward my subordinates. Besides, I am just asking. If they don't give me any reward, forget it."

If there is one, he will help to make the connection. If not, he will not deliberately look for it. After all, he is not in charge of logistics. This is Zhou Fengnian's attitude.

"There should be some. We have them in our village, but they are not ready for sale yet."

Zhou Fugui thought for a moment and said, "I'll go back and ask around for you. If there's any for sale, I'll bring it directly to the city for you. Is it the Huaxia Machine Tool Factory?"

"Yes, when the time comes, just bring it directly to the factory and tell me your name."

Pork is hard currency these days. Even if you have no connections, the security department won't be too strict if you pull a pig to the factory gate. They might even offer you a cigarette as a courtesy.

One pig is shared by all the people in the factory, which yields almost half a pound of meat.

After asking about the pigs, Zhou's father looked at his grandson for a while and then left.

Zhou Fengnian asked him to rest for a while but he refused, so Zhou Fengnian had to pack two boxes of food for him to take back for his mother and fifth sister.

------

"Director Gao, if I hadn't called you, you wouldn't have even told the ministry that you had developed the new machine tool."

On the other end of the phone, Gao Zhiyuan hurriedly explained, "Leader, this is unfair. We were off work on Saturday and didn't have time to report it. In addition, Deputy Director Zhou didn't think it was an important achievement and we were planning to report it to the ministry on Monday."

Li Hetong snorted and said, "Forget it, I'm not here to blame. I'll go to your factory on Monday to take a look." "Okay, okay, our entire factory is waiting for the leader to come and give us guidance."

"Don't be so pretentious. I'll just take a look at the machine tools and leave after that."

After Li Hetong finished speaking, he hung up the phone. He was more happy than blamed now, and his mood was the same as that of the people in the technical department of Huaxia Machine Tool Factory.

He originally thought that he would see the new machine tool at the end of the year, but he didn't expect that Zhou Fengnian would hand in his test paper before the year was even halfway through.

He will go to check it tomorrow. If the "test paper" gets full marks, the production tasks for the second half of the year will have to be adjusted.

On Monday, the ministry's car slowly drove to the gate of the machine tool factory. It was stopped by the security department at the gate. After showing its ID, it respectfully made way.

When they arrived at the factory office building, Li Hetong just saw Zhou Fengnian and Gao Zhiyuan coming down from upstairs.

"Haha, Comrade Fengnian, you always manage to surprise me and the Minister. Didn't you say that the manufacturing would be completed by the end of the year? It's only the end of June now."

After Li Hetong got off the car, he immediately said to Zhou Fengnian with a smile.

Gao Zhiyuan, who was standing by, was extremely envious when he saw this. From the time he joined the revolution until now, he had never been valued like this.

Thanks to Zhou Fengnian's technical staff, his skills cannot be replicated by others.

"Leader, I can't do it so fast by myself. The whole factory is working hard. If it weren't for the technical department and the factory director helping us solve our worries, the machine tools wouldn't be produced so quickly."

Zhou Fengnian shared the credit with a smile, and then continued: "Leader, I was just about to go to the workshop to take a look, let's go together."

"Okay, let's go."

Li Hetong came here to learn about machine tools. After agreeing, he followed Zhou Fengnian to the workshop.

After saying that, several people walked towards the workshop.

At that time, the only machine tool was a five-axis linkage heavy-duty CNC machine tool, which would be gradually produced later. In the future, the machine tool factory would definitely focus on producing this type of machine tool.

We can produce high-end machine tools and try not to produce low-end ones; because five-axis machine tools can only be produced by Huaxia Machine Tool Factory, and there are too many factories in China that can produce other types of machine tools.

"Leader, this is a five-axis heavy-duty machine tool. The processing method is completely different from before. There are finished products over there. It's still being processed. Let's go and take a look first."

Zhou Fengnian took Li Hetong to the machine tool, explained it to him and let Li Hetong watch it himself.

After roughly explaining the meaning, Zhou Fengnian took Li Hetong to see the processed car model.

After watching for a long time, Li Hetong nodded and said, "Okay, Comrade Fengnian, you did a good job. Next, your factory should adjust the production plan and focus on producing this five-axis machine tool."

Gao Zhiyuan immediately said, "Don't worry, leader. Deputy Director Zhou suggested that we do this yesterday. After discussion, we decided to cut some 'old' machine tool production lines and concentrate all manpower and material resources on producing five-axis heavy-duty machine tools."

"Not bad, well done!"

Li Hetong nodded with satisfaction, then looked at Zhou Fengnian and said, "Comrade Fengnian is still far-sighted."

"Thank you for the compliment, leader. I can still tell the difference between the important and the unimportant. We are the only one in the country that can produce this kind of machine tool, so of course we should give priority to its production."

Zhou Fengnian went on to say: "This type of machine tool has many development directions, including vertical structure, seven-axis five-link and other more perfect technologies.
Although we are already number one in the world, we will strive to make sure that even foreigners can’t catch up with us!”

"If you have ambition, you have to dare to think like this!"

Li Hetong couldn't help but praise him. If it were someone else, he would at least have muttered in his heart whether it was a residual symptom of the big bar training, but since these words came from Zhou Fengnian, he completely believed them.

Moreover, Li Hetong also slowly figured it out. It seemed that Zhou Fengnian was constantly leaving room for himself.

It seems that CNC machine tools had been talked about for a long time before, but they were researched and manufactured very quickly.

The same goes for the fully automatic CNC production line. It was said to be launched at the end of the year or even after the New Year, but it was actually brought forward to after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

This time, they promised to complete this five-axis heavy-duty machine tool by the end of the year, but it was suddenly stuck in the summer and they had to take it out.

Others would try to keep it as short as possible and then work hard on researching, but Zhou Fengnian would talk for a long time first, leaving himself enough room before suddenly giving a surprise.

Afterwards, Li Hetong talked with Zhou Fengnian for a long time about machine tool issues, during which Zhou Fengnian also took the initiative to mention the issue of exports.

At this time, the Americans had only been developing this technology for five years, and there certainly hadn’t been any further breakthroughs in the technology; the Japanese and Germans probably hadn’t developed it yet, but their five-axis machine tools were already at the most advanced level.

Once Zhou Fengnian develops and manufactures machine tools with even more advanced technology, the inferior ones can be exported, thus blocking the export of machine tools for these two countries.

They are different from the domestic situation. If capitalism does not see profits, it is likely to cut off the policy across the board.

If the products produced cannot be sold, then why continue researching and producing? In this way, the possibility of the Japanese and Germans continuing further research is very small.

This has both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that the technology may be leaked, but by then the country will have more advanced machine tool technology.

After Zhou Fengnian finished speaking, Li Hetong pondered for a long time, but in the end he still did not give a definite answer.

It’s just that it’s not possible now, and many places in the country need this kind of machine tool more.

There are hundreds of factories or research bases of all sizes in the military, aerospace, shipbuilding and other industries, all of which need this kind of machine tool, and more than one.

In the next one or two years, the five-axis heavy-duty machine tools produced by Hua Xia Machine Tool Factory may have to give priority to domestic demand.

Just when Li Hetong and Zhou Fengnian were talking intently, Gao Zhiyuan knocked on the door, came in and asked, "Leader, Fengnian, do you want to eat first? It's already noon."

"So fast?"

Li Hetong looked at his watch. It was already half past twelve. He was so engrossed in the conversation that he didn't even notice when Gao Zhiyuan went out.

"Then let's eat first, Comrade Fengnian. Don't go hungry with me. You are a hero."

“Haha, leader, this credit doesn’t belong to just one person, it belongs to everyone in our factory.”

After saying that, Zhou Fengnian followed Li Hetong to the cafeteria's private kitchen box.

There was no private kitchen room before, it was specially separated after the factory merger.

Not long after they sat down, the kitchen staff brought the dishes.

Li Hetong tasted it and said, "Well, it tastes different from last time. Oh, by the way, you changed the factory. I am a little confused.

But it’s delicious, not bad.”

Zhou Fengnian also tasted a few dishes and immediately tasted two flavors. One of them was very familiar to him. It must have been made by his eldest brother, and the seasoning recipe was given by him.

The other one is a bit unfamiliar. When did another chef come to the machine tool factory?
"They were all introduced by acquaintances, leader."

Gao Zhiyuan smiled and said: "Having a good chef can also help the workers eat better."

(End of this chapter)