Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

The middle-aged man nodded, asked no further questions, and lowered his head to continue reading. He turned to a page with a complex diagram of a mechanism, and traced the lines with his finger, examining each one carefully. His fingers were short and thick, with black grime under his fingernails, a sign of someone who worked in a factory year-round.

Jiang Cheng leaned against the car window, looking at the fields outside. The corn harvest was over; the fields were bare except for the stalks standing upright, row upon row, like soldiers. The sky was high and blue, the clouds white and light, like cotton candy. Smoke rose from the distant village, grayish-white, drifting above the treetops. A farmer drove an oxcart along the dirt road between the fields, the cart loaded with golden ears of corn.

He closed his eyes, his mind racing with thoughts of the equipment upgrade. The people from the Automation Research Institute were arriving today, and he needed to coordinate with them. The plan was finalized, but the details still needed confirmation. Electrical interfaces, control logic, safety protection… every single one had to be perfect.

The train arrived in Beijing at 3 PM.

Chen Siyuan came to pick Jiang Cheng up from the station in a gray van, its body covered in dust and a few locust leaves on the roof. He helped Jiang Cheng throw his luggage into the trunk, which also contained a bundle of old newspapers and a pair of gloves.

"Brother Jiang, Old Zhou asked me to pick you up. Let's go back to the guesthouse to drop off our luggage first, and then go to the research institute."

"it is good."

The van drove onto Chang'an Avenue. Tiananmen Square flashed past the window, its red walls and yellow tiles shining brightly in the sunlight. Jiang Cheng leaned against the window, looking at the buildings, and a strange feeling suddenly came to him—BJ was still BJ, but this time, he felt different.

It's not just the technology that's changed, but more importantly, the mindset. Before, it was about "doing it," now it's about "coming back to do it."

I used to think BJ was big and I was small, but now I think BJ is still big, but I'm not so small anymore.

He stayed in Beijing for over a month, got to know several streets, knew which steamed bun shop had the best buns, and knew when the locust tree in front of the guesthouse started to shed its leaves.

Upon arriving at the guesthouse, Jiang Cheng put down his luggage, washed his face, and then went to the research institute.

Huang Deqing was already in the lab. He was squatting in a corner, holding an oilstone and sharpening a scraper. The blade made a steady, resonant scratching sound on the stone. Water had been poured onto the oilstone, producing a gray slurry. He wiped it with his finger and continued sharpening. A small puddle of water on the floor glistened under the overhead light.

Sun Deming stood in front of the equipment, talking to two strangers. One was a tall, thin man in his forties, wearing glasses and holding a folder. The other was a man in his late twenties, with a round face, wearing a dark blue overall uniform and a badge of the Institute of Automation pinned to his chest. Both men's shoes were dusty, indicating they had been traveling. The tall, thin man's shoelace was loose, though he hadn't noticed.

"Brother Jiang, you're back!" Sun Deming saw him and quickly walked over. "These two are from the Automation Research Institute. This is Engineer Liu, who works on electrical control. This is Xiao Ma, who works on software programming."

Jiang Cheng walked over and shook hands with them. Engineer Liu's hands were dry with prominent knuckles; Xiao Ma's hands were sweaty and slippery.

"Master Jiang, we've reviewed your proposal. The mechanical parts are fine, and the electrical parts are basically feasible. But there's one problem—the precision of the control system. You require a positional precision of 0.1 millimeters, but our existing servo system can only achieve 0.2 millimeters. That's half the precision." Engineer Liu's voice wasn't loud, but every word was clearly pronounced. His fingers pointed at the drawings in the folder; his knuckles were thick, showing that he was used to tightening screws.

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment. "Engineer Liu, is 0.2 millimeters enough? The coating thickness is 300 micrometers. An error of 0.2 millimeters will affect the uniformity of the coating, but it can be compensated for by process parameters. Give me a week, and I will conduct a set of verification experiments to see if the coating performance can meet the standard with an accuracy of 0.2 millimeters."

Engineer Liu glanced at him and nodded. "Okay. You do the verification, and we'll do the system design simultaneously. It won't delay anything."

Xiao Ma didn't say much, but he kept looking at the equipment. He walked to the control cabinet, opened the door, looked at the circuit boards inside, and then closed it again. Several capacitors on the circuit boards were bulging; he pressed them with his finger without saying anything. He then opened the cabinet door again, took out a small flashlight, and shone it inside for about ten seconds.

"Xiao Ma, what are your thoughts?" Jiang Cheng asked.

Xiao Ma turned around and adjusted his glasses. "Master Jiang, what programming language do you plan to use to write this control program?"

"What suggestions do you have?"

"I've used a new programming language called C, which is easier to write and modify than CSS. But it requires a specialized compiler. The Institute of Automation has one, and I can borrow it."

Jiang Cheng nodded. "Okay. You write it."

Xiao Ma paused for a moment. "I'll write it?"

"Yes. You write it. Deming will cooperate with you and be in charge of debugging."

Sun Deming, standing to the side, blushed slightly. "Brother Jiang, I don't know anything about programming."

"If you don't understand, learn it. You can learn it."

Sun Deming opened his mouth, as if to say something, but didn't. He looked at Xiao Ma, who nodded. The two walked to the control cabinet, and Xiao Ma pointed to the circuit boards inside and began to explain. He spoke slowly, asking Sun Deming "Do you understand?" after each sentence. Sun Deming sometimes nodded, sometimes shook his head. When he shook his head, Xiao Ma would explain again. Sun Deming's notebook quickly filled with diagrams, circuit symbols, signal flows, and interface definitions, densely packed together.

His handwriting is much better than before.

Huang Deqing stood up from the corner and walked to Jiang Cheng's side. He placed the oilstone on the windowsill and patted the dust off his hands.

"Chengzi, can you handle this automation?"

"Master, it wasn't me who took care of it. They took care of it."

Huang Deqing glanced at him but didn't speak. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and slowly exhaled. The smoke, not blue but grayish-white like winter morning mist, dispersed under the light, slowly spreading in the air before being drawn away by the ventilation ducts. The smell of smoke filled the laboratory, mixed with the smell of machine oil.

"Chengzi, do you know why I've never learned these new things?"

Jiang Cheng shook his head.

"It's not that I can't learn, it's that I don't want to learn at all. I've repaired machines my whole life, by touching them, listening to them, and seeing them. If a machine is not working properly, I can tell just by touching it. If you ask me to use a computer and write programs, I feel like that's not repairing machines." He took a drag of his cigarette, the red glow of the butt flickering in the dim corner. "But now I've figured it out. The machine is still the same machine, but the way it's repaired is different. You're repairing the future, I'm repairing the past. The future belongs to you, not me."