Siheyuan (traditional courtyard house): Starting with the Korean War, returning home to take charge

The day the materials were distributed, Ma Yuejin paced around the room three times.

He flipped the stack of papers from beginning to end, then from end to beginning, until the edges were curled up and black marks appeared on the paper. Li Zhiming waited beside him, his eyes following his hands, wanting to crane his neck but not daring to.

"Dean, this..." Ma Yuejin looked up, his voice tense, "Where did you get this?"

He Yuzhu sat in the chair, his hand resting on the edge of the table, without saying a word. The light from the stove outside shone in through the window and danced across his face.

"Never mind where it came from." He stubbed out his cigarette on the table. "I'm just asking if you can do it."

Ma Yuejin nodded, then shook his head.

"I can understand the cylinder block structure. But the fuel injection system..." He frowned, "I'll have to figure that out."

Li Zhiming finally leaned closer, his chin almost touching Ma Yuejin's shoulder. He stared at the piston material formula for a long time, then took a breath.

"This formula... can be used in our high-speed steel base, but it needs to be adjusted. Without adding anything, it won't hold up."

He Yuzhu stood up and walked to the front of the blackboard. The blackboard was covered with numbers, which he had written down all by himself the night before.

"From now on, you two will be the team leader and deputy team leader of the internal combustion engine project. Ma Yuejin will be in charge of overall planning, and Li Zhiming will be in charge of materials. The rest of you can choose yourselves, no more than ten."

Ma Yuejin was stunned for a moment.

"Ten? There are so many of us—"

"Too many cooks spoil the broth." He Yuzhu looked at him, his voice not loud, but it hit the nail on the head. "Ten people are enough for the core task force. The others can provide support from the outside and assist."

Ma Yuejin nodded and remained silent.

Li Zhiming opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. After a while, he couldn't hold it in any longer.

"Dean, I heard that the progress in Harbin is faster than ours. They produced a prototype last month."

He Yuzhu didn't say anything, picked up the chalk, and wrote three words on the blackboard: 1,000 horsepower.

Ma Yuejin glanced at the three words, then at Li Zhiming.

"What's the use of being fast?" he said, his voice low but deliberate, "If the result is bad, speed is useless."

Li Zhiming fell silent.

The task force was established the following day.

Ma Yuejin selected six people, making a total of eight including himself and Li Zhiming. Sun Fulai handled the processing, Zhou Guoqiang handled the testing, Wang Erzhu assisted, and there were three new college graduates who had only been assigned to the materials group for a few months and whose eyes were still shining with enthusiasm.

He Yuzhu distributed the stack of documents, one copy to each person.

"These are the foundations. You need to understand them thoroughly, master them completely, and then add more layers on top of them."

He paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone's faces.

"One year, one thousand horsepower. Anyone with an idea, feel free to speak up."

The room was quiet for a few seconds. Then the fire in the stove crackled.

Ma Yuejin spoke first.

"Dean, we have a foundation in high-speed steel for cylinder block materials, but the materials used in internal combustion engines are different from those used in rolling mills, so we have to try them again. Temperature and pressure are not the same thing."

He Yuzhu nodded.

"Let me try it. I'll provide you with the materials."

Li Zhiming chimed in.

"The wear resistance of piston rings needs to be 20% higher than that of high-speed steel. Our current formula—" he shook his head, "is unlikely."

He Yuzhu looked at him without saying anything, then pulled a sheet from the stack of documents on the table and pushed it over.

"Go back and look at page 37, the chapter on piston materials."

Li Zhiming paused for a moment, then quickly flipped through the pages. He turned to page thirty-seven, which stated: Vanadium content of 0.5% to 1.2% can improve wear resistance by 20% to 30%.

He looked up, his expression changing. He glanced at the documents, then at He Yuzhu, as if he wanted to say something, but his lips moved without uttering a word.

He Yuzhu ignored him and turned to Ma Yuejin.

"You need to work on the fuel injection system. That's the bottleneck. If you can't get it right, the horsepower won't increase."

Ma Yuejin nodded.

"clear."

That evening, He Yuzhu sat in his office writing a letter.

The letter was addressed to the top leader. It wasn't very long, just two pages. The first page described the internal combustion engine project, and the second page stated what was lacking—steel, equipment, and time.

He stopped writing after finishing the last sentence.

"Within three years, this thing can be installed on our own tanks. But we need your support."

He folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and sealed it.

The next morning, I had someone deliver it to him.

Ten days later, the supplies arrived.

Three trucks drove into the mountains and unloaded a pile of wooden crates. He Yuzhu stood by, watching the workers carry the crates into the warehouse. Ma Yuejin followed behind, his eyes lighting up.

"Dean, what are all these?"

He Yuzhu opened a box. Inside were steel ingots, neatly stacked, gleaming with a dark gray light.

"It was imported from the Soviet Union. It was specially allocated for us."

Ma Yuejin squatted down, but didn't rush to touch it. He first rubbed his hands vigorously on his pants to clean them before touching them.

"Good stuff," he said, touching it for a while, then added, "better than what we make ourselves."

He Yuzhu looked down at him.

"Then use it to make something better than what the Soviet Union could make."

Ma Yuejin stood up and dusted off his hands.

"OK."

When the prototype was started, everyone was holding their breath.

Ma Yuejin and his team worked day and night without rest. They revised the blueprints again and again, and made set after set of parts. Sometimes when He Yuzhu went to the workshop in the middle of the night, he could still see them squatting by the furnace, staring blankly at the flames, no one saying a word, just staring.

A month later, the first cylinder block was produced.

Ma Yuejin lifted it onto the test bench, secured it, and began to apply pressure.

The needle on the pressure gauge slowly climbed upwards. Fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty.

When it reached 180, the cylinder suddenly made a muffled sound, like something breaking from the inside.

Ma Yuejin's face turned pale.

He turned off the machine and removed the cylinder block. A crack ran from the cylinder opening all the way to the bottom, like a black centipede lying there, crooked and twisted.

Li Zhiming leaned closer, glanced at it, and said nothing.

Ma Yuejin placed the cylinder on the ground, squatted there, stared at it, and didn't move for a long time.

He Yuzhu walked over and stood next to him.

"Is it ruined?"

Ma Yuejin nodded.

"It's ruined."

He Yuzhu didn't speak, but squatted down and looked at the crack. He ran his finger along the crack from one end to the other, then stood up.

"(Pointing to the crack) This stripe tells us where we can live, not where we are dead."

Ma Yuejin raised his head and looked at him.

"Dean, you're not angry?"

He Yuzhu looked at him.

"Does getting angry help?"

Ma Yuejin stood there, squatting motionless, looking up at He Yuzhu. After a long while, he hugged the broken cylinder to his chest, like hugging a child, before standing up and uttering a single word.

"……check."

He carried the broken cylinder away.

He Yuzhu stood by the experimental table, watching his back as he turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Li Zhiming stood to the side, rubbed his hands together, and whispered.

"Dean, we're short on time—"

He Yuzhu did not turn around.

"In such a hurry, why not just build some decent piece of junk and put it on your own grave?"

Li Zhiming stopped talking. After standing there for a while, he left.

The workshop fell silent. The fire in the furnace still burned, casting red rays that streaked the ground. He Yuzhu walked alone to the window, gazing at the now-quiet testing machine. The lights in the distance gradually went out, and the sounds of people faded away. Outside the window, the shadows of mountains loomed, layer upon layer.

It was completely dark.