Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

Wang Jianguo took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the corner of his shirt. There was a layer of fog on the lenses, and he had to wipe them twice to get them clean.

"Here's what we'll do. Attach these performance records, along with the official seals and contact information of the user companies. For the issue of the self-made equipment, get an evaluation report from the Economic Commission. Once you have all the materials, we'll proceed with the review."

He stood up, and the other two people stood up too. The woman closed the folders, stacked them together, and patted the corners with her palm to align them.

The man put the pen back in his pocket and zipped up his canvas bag.

Jiang Cheng saw them to the door. The black sedan started, its exhaust pipe emitting a puff of white smoke that dissipated into the winter air. The wheels skidded on the snow, making a squeaking sound, and then drove away. The tire tracks stretched into the snow to the gate, two deep furrows like plowed fields.

"Brother Jiang, what should we do?" Sun Deming stood to the side, still holding a broom. His face was red from the cold, and a drop of clear snot hung from the tip of his nose. He wiped it with the back of his hand and then wiped it on his trouser leg.

Jiang Cheng did not answer.

He turned and walked back to the conference room, sitting down. The chair was wooden, cool to the touch. A stack of folders lay on the table, the labels still clearly visible—staffing, equipment list, past performance, financial status, management system. Sunlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the blue labels and reflecting a cold light.

He picked up the past performance record and flipped through it; every page was accurate. He remembered every single number: the user's name, the equipment model, the date of the upgrade, and the results. But the system wasn't rigorously implemented; it was all just a formality.

Han Zhiguo walked in and sat opposite him. His hands were crossed on the table, his fingers interlacing.

"I've worked in this department for eight years, and I've seen this kind of thing countless times. They're not trying to make things difficult for you; they're just following the rules. That's how the rules are; you can't say they're wrong. You can't do without rules, but rules that are too rigid are also problematic."

"I know," Jiang Cheng put down the folder, "but I don't know where to find a third party. I've never been to the Economic Commission, nor the Institute of Metrology, and I don't even know which way the door faces."

"Go to the Economic Commission. They can issue a report on the certification of self-made equipment. Go to each user unit, one by one, to get their official seals. Half a month should be enough."

Han Zhiguo stopped pinching his fingers back and forth, and laid them flat on the table.

"Half a month?"

"The review panel won't release the final results until next month. They've given us two weeks to submit supplementary materials. Two weeks is enough. If you visit three companies a day, you'll visit fifteen in five days. That should be enough."

Jiang Cheng didn't speak. Half a month, fifteen days. He still had to go to Beijing for a summary meeting and prepare report materials. With the two things overlapping, time was like a stretched rubber band, getting thinner and thinner until it was about to break.

He picked up the calendar on the table and looked at it. The two-week deadline coincided with BJ's meeting date.

Sun Deming stood at the doorway, a broom still in his hand. The broom was upside down, resting on the ground, his hands on the handle. "Brother Jiang, I'll handle it for you. I'll contact the client companies and get the official seals. You just prepare the materials at the center."

Jiang Cheng looked at him. Sun Deming's face was red from the cold, his nose was red, and his ears were red too. His lips were chapped and peeling, and he licked them with his tongue.

"Can you run all that way by yourself?"

"I can manage. I'm young and fast." Sun Deming smiled, revealing a row of neat teeth. "Besides, didn't you say that if one person can't finish the work, they should delegate it to someone else? You delegate the work to me, and you can do what others can't do."

Jiang Cheng paused for a moment, then nodded. He stood up, walked over to Sun Deming, and patted him on the shoulder. Sun Deming's shoulder was stiff; the bones felt hard against his skin.

Sun Deming set off that afternoon.

He carried a military-green canvas bag with frayed straps. Inside were a dozen or so stamped applications and several packets of calcium milk biscuits, wrapped in oil paper. He squeezed onto the train to Anshan, a slow train that stopped at every station, taking more than two hours to travel from Shenyang to Anshan.

Jiang Cheng saw him off at the platform. There weren't many people there, but the wind was strong, making people's hair fly wildly. As the train started moving, Sun Deming leaned out of the window and called out, "Brother Jiang, wait for my call," before pulling back inside. His voice drifted in the wind, drowned out by the sound of the train.

Jiang Cheng stood on the platform, watching the train disappear into the snow. The tracks stretched into the distance, covered by snow, with only two gleaming steel rails visible. The train grew farther and farther away, smaller and smaller, until it became a black dot and was blown away by the wind.

In the days that followed, he spent his days visiting the Economic Commission and his nights writing reports.

The Economic Commission was located in the city government building, on the fourth floor, a gray building with two large pillars at the entrance, each bearing a white sign with black lettering: "SY City Economic Commission." He went inside; the corridor was wide, terrazzo flooring so shiny it reflected his image. The corridor was quiet, the only sound his own footsteps. He went three times, each time having to wait in line. The service windows were rows of glass windows, with signs above them reading "Technical Section," "Enterprise Section," "Energy Section," and so on.

He stood in front of the "Technical Section" window and waited for the person in front of him to finish before going over.

The first time, the clerk was a young man in his early twenties with neatly combed hair. He glanced at the documents and said, "This is not our responsibility," and told him to go to another department.

The other department was on the second floor. He went up, knocked on the door, and went in. The clerk was a middle-aged woman with permed hair and wearing gold-rimmed glasses. She said, "I need a test report," and told him to go to the Institute of Metrology.

The second time, he went to the Institute of Metrology. It was in the south of the city, a forty-minute bike ride away. When he arrived, he was drenched in sweat, his shirt soaked through the back. The clerk, an old man wearing reading glasses, glanced at the documents and said, "The equipment isn't here, we can't test it," and told him to bring the equipment over. He asked if they could send someone to the site, but the old man shook his head, saying, "That's the rule."

The third time, he disassembled the equipment and transported it to the metrology institute on a tricycle. The equipment wasn't heavy, but it was bulky, taking up half the tricycle. He tied it securely with rope, worried it might break on the way. When he arrived at the institute, the rope came undone, and the equipment leaned to one side, so he tied it back up. The clerk was the same old man who glanced at the equipment and said, "Leave it here, come back in three days for the results."

He ran back and forth for two days without getting a single evaluation report. On the third day, he went to collect the results, and the old man handed him a piece of paper with the test data, stamped with the metrology institute's seal. He glanced at it; the data matched the actual performance of the equipment, and both were qualified.

He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.