Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 26 Entering the Electric Age
1981年8月14日，农历7月15日
-
The production team became busy early in the morning. Not only did people from our team get up early to visit the hydropower station, but people from other production teams also came.

Of course, we did not forget to invite the commune cadres to come and cut the ribbon and give speeches. Although they did not contribute much, if you don't think about the leaders when you achieve something, then don't let the leaders think about you when you get any benefits.

Wang Jiankun followed the crowd toward the hydropower station and saw a wooden electric pole standing every 20 meters on the roadside with two electric wires hanging on the insulators above. Two wires were led to each house at the door.

Wang Jiankun also found that there were already seven or eight families in the team building new houses, and those who started earlier had already built half of the walls.

I'm thinking about building a house. My father has to learn to drive and my mother has to manage a lighter factory. I don't know if my grandparents can handle it alone. I have to go home and ask my family how to build a house.

At almost 8 o'clock, the commune cadres came on bicycles. There were five people in total, including the commune secretary, the propaganda department, and a few others whose positions were unknown.

The team cadres were responsible for the reception. My grandfather shook hands and talked with the commune secretary. When the first firecracker sounded, the team cadres led the commune cadres to the temporary platform.

The commune secretary and propaganda cadre gave speeches respectively, praising the Wangjia production team and its cadres, and praising my grandfather as the team leader for not waiting or relying on others, but being self-reliant, etc.

Grandpa also spoke on behalf of the production team, thanking the Party and the government, thanking the commune for its support, etc.

Although the Wangjia Production Team is temporarily one step ahead, it will also drive the development of other communes and promote several factories in the team, such as the kiln factory, timber factory and rice mill.

After the speech, he announced that the power station had started operation.

I saw the sluice gate slowly rising under the operation of two young and strong men, the water flowed into the generator pipe through the water diversion channel, and the impeller rotated faster and faster due to the impact force of hydropower.

After all the gates were raised and the water flow stabilized, a trained young man pulled up the large gate knife and a light on the scene lit up.

The lamp also sparkled brightly under the sun, and everyone cheered and applauded. When the team members in the distance saw the light turn on, they ran home to try the light.

Leaving the young man in charge of the hydropower station to look after the site, the team cadres led the commune cadres to the team-run factories.

We didn’t get to visit the hydropower station just now, but when we go to the factories now, grandpa asked Wang Jiankun to go with him, and he will be responsible for explaining the situation.

At the kiln factory, the commune cadres felt that it was a little unreal when they saw the almost fully automatic machines for making bricks and the roar of two pot-carrying machines nearby that provided power.

When did Wangjia Production Team have such advanced equipment? Maybe even the equipment in the county brick and tile factory is not so advanced.

So Wang Jiankun was pushed out by the team cadres to explain. Although they already knew how to use it, they could not explain how to make it or what the principle was.

Wang Jiankun first boasted about his smart brain, and then thought about how to use the knowledge he had learned to change his hometown.

He talked about how he used the mechanical knowledge from the books he borrowed from Cheng Hongbing, how he went to Raozhou to inspect mechanical equipment, and how he used the equipment from the Fengshan blacksmith shop, etc.

Eventually, he successfully made a pot-carrying machine and a brick-making machine.

When the secretary heard him talking about borrowing Cheng Hongbing's book, he asked if that was his son. Wang Jiankun said yes.

The secretary said with emotion: "Jiankun, you really understand the meaning of 'learning and applying knowledge flexibly'. My son majored in this, but he doesn't have much self-thinking and hands-on skills. He should learn from you."

"Secretary Cheng, you praised me, but I dare not say that I have figured it out. I can only say that I happened to be interested in it and met a noble person, Cheng Hongbing is one of them. In addition, the country's reform and opening up allowed me to go to big cities to broaden my horizons. Otherwise, I would not be able to make these machines and equipment."

Then everyone went to the sawmill, rice mill and lighter assembly factory, all of which were explained by Wang Jiankun.

After the visit, the secretary had a very good impression of Wang Jiankun and told him that if he had any questions, he could go directly to the commune office or his home to find him.

Wang Jiankun nodded and expressed his gratitude to the secretary.

After visiting the factory, we returned to the team to rest for a while, and then went to the original team canteen.

The team's best chef had prepared two tables of sumptuous lunches, with eight bottles of Tsinghua Daqu on the menu.

Tsinghua Daqu is considered a high-end liquor here. It is packaged in glass bottles and brewed from pure grains. Normally, team leaders rarely drink it at home and only take it out when entertaining guests.

Wang Jiankun did not sit at the table. He was still young and did not know how to drink. He was also afraid of getting drunk and revealing the secret in his heart that was destined to remain untold for the rest of his life.

I ate in the canteen kitchen and then went home.

When I got home, I saw my sister riding a bicycle slowly by herself. She didn't dare sit on the seat, so she just left her upper body hanging in the air and only pedaled a quarter of a turn.

Seeing Wang Jiankun coming back, she excitedly shouted: "Brother, look, I can ride a bike by myself. I want to go to school by bike when school starts."

"Your school is so close, why do you ride there?"

"It's so fast to ride a bike. We'll be there in no time."

"Then don't you feel lonely riding a bike alone? Your classmates and friends all walk."

"Yeah, I'll ride it after school then."

"Grandpa wants to use your car to learn, you can teach him when the time comes."

"Okay, okay, I'll teach him when Grandpa comes back."

My sister was very excited about being able to teach grandpa how to ride a bike. Maybe that’s why children always like to imitate adults.

After taking a short break at noon, I found a blank exercise book and used my superpowers to copy the exercises into the book.

There haven’t been any new exercises for several days, so my sister needs to consolidate her knowledge.

At around 2 pm, Wang Jiankun arrived at the lighter factory to prepare to debug the stamping machine.

Two young men with only primary school education were already waiting here. When they saw Wang Jiankun coming, they greeted him quickly.

Wang Jiankun checked the wiring and found no problem. He then taught the two young men some basic knowledge about the equipment.

Then he began to demonstrate how to install and replace the molds. Because there are several sets of molds but only two stamping machines, you must know how to change the molds and debug the machines.

After learning all these, you can start stamping. First, take the gray iron plate out of the box, put it on the feed end, press the switch, the machine drives the iron plate to move, and the punch head stamps.

After starting the stamping, Wang Jiankun discovered that the stamping head was not running at the designed speed, but was too fast, resulting in a mismatch between the stamping and feeding rhythms.

Wang Jiankun had no choice but to stop the machine. He couldn't think of the reason for a moment. According to the rational design, there should be no mistakes.

Wang Jiankun explained the situation to Chieko in his mind. After some analysis, Chieko found that the frequency of the electricity emitted by the generator was not 50 Hz, but much faster than 50 Hz.

The solution is to add a speed regulator to control the frequency at 50 Hz.

After Zhizi explained the principle of the speed regulator, Wang Jiankun knew that he should manufacture a speed control device.

It is impossible to buy one now, so Wang Jiankun asked Zhizi to design one immediately, and Wang Jiankun used his superpowers to install it on the generator.

Now that we know the cause and the method, we can solve it immediately. Wang Jiankun stopped the machine and asked the two young men to help at the assembly station at the other end while he went to the power station to deal with it later.

After that, Wang Jiankun went home to get some iron and copper blocks, and made the speed regulator in a deserted place on the road. After arriving at the hydropower station, he asked the person on duty to lower the sluice gate. He had to install a device, otherwise the electrical appliances he bought in the future would not work.

The personnel on duty knew that the hydropower station was led by Wang Jiankun, so they lowered the sluice gates as requested by Wang Jiankun.

After the sluice gate was closed, Wang Jiankun went down into the canal with the speed regulator and several wrenches, screwdrivers, etc., came to the water wheel, and installed the speed regulator according to Chieko's instructions.

After installation, the speed regulator will increase or decrease the water inlet according to the speed, and finally stabilize the speed at the set value, as long as the frequency of power generation is controlled at 50 Hz.

After the installation, I asked the staff on duty to open the sluice gate and saw the speed regulator start working. After the water inlet changed several times, it stabilized in one place with slight changes. I used my superpowers to observe the rotation speed and found that it had stabilized and fluctuated around the set value.

After dealing with the frequency issue, Wang Jiankun went on to debug the stamping machine.

This time when the switch was pressed, the stamping rhythm was connected with the feeding. After a few minutes of trial operation, Wang Jiankun replaced the mold and continued testing. After all the molds were tested, they met the design requirements.

Wang Jiankun asked two young men to start formal production. They were responsible for stamping several types of parts respectively. The stamped parts were sent to inspectors, and those that passed the inspection were sent to the painting process.

In this way, all links in lighter production have been integrated, and we are just waiting for the proficiency to improve and the daily output to increase.

After finishing a day's work, the production team members have gone home one after another. Now there are more than 80 production team members working in various factories or providing services to the factories, accounting for 60% of the entire production team's labor force.

Today's dinner is intentionally later than usual. Now that we have electricity, we don't have to rush to eat before dark.

There was fish and meat in the evening. My father bought the meat in Fengshan.

At the dinner table, my mother said that we had assembled 4 parts today and all the gray iron parts were used up, so we would assemble the galvanized and brass parts tomorrow.

Wang Jiankun said that he would go to Tsinghua University to find a truck tomorrow, and transport the products made in the past two days to Raozhou to sell them the day after tomorrow, and also buy more gray iron plates.

Then she talked about the consumption of cotton and kerosene. My mother said that if she made 500 pieces a day, she would use about 1 kilogram of cotton every day, and she would not be able to buy so much at the supply and marketing cooperative.

We should try to buy from the supply and marketing cooperatives first, and then ask each family in the team to sell some.

Then we will ask people to go to other production teams to buy some, so that we can hold on until the cotton is on the market next year.

Wang Jiankun said that according to the plan, in a few months more than 3 lighters will be made every day, which means 10 lighters per month, so the demand for cotton will be 200 kilograms per month.

The team must buy it as early as possible, otherwise others will make it into quilts, cotton-padded jackets or something.

When his family heard him say that he had to make 10 pieces a month, the team's output value would be 5 yuan a month, or 6 yuan a year.

The team used to have only about 8 yuan in cash surplus every year.

There are more than 60 households in the team. Excluding the 2 yuan shared by the team, the remaining households only received about 100 yuan in cash on average.

Wang Jiankun explained why 10 yuan per month is not a lot.

The wholesale price of this gray cast iron lighter is 11 yuan, and the retail price should be between 15 and 20 yuan.

Nowadays, an average worker in the city can buy one with half a month's salary, and smokers spend about 5 cents on matches every month. If calculated based on 15 months, that's almost three years' worth of matches. Obviously, a lighter can be used for more than three years, but possibly five to ten years.

Moreover, it is prestigious to light a cigarette with a lighter. When everyone is smoking together, others are still struggling to strike matches, and it may take them several matches to light a cigarette, but you can light a cigarette with just one ding.

Every young person who sees this scene would want to buy one. And how many young people are smoking like this? There are tens of millions of them in the coastal provinces alone.

Therefore, 10 lighters per month is still a conservative sales volume. If cheaper materials can be found and the machines are more advanced in the future, the manufacturing cost will continue to decrease, down to 5 yuan or 1 yuan or even a few cents per lighter, and it will be possible to sell millions of lighters per month.

The whole family was shocked by the scene he described, and his grandfather and father also began to pay attention to this lighter factory.

Originally it was just a place to find jobs for surplus labor, but now it is not. Whether the production team can become prosperous in the future depends on this lighter factory.

Grandpa said that he would arrange for people to go to each production team to buy cotton and store it tomorrow, and also buy more kerosene and paint as soon as possible from Tsinghua University and the county town.

The site for the lighter factory will also be selected as soon as possible and the lighter factory will be built before the Chinese New Year this year.

For the lighter factory, Wang Jiankun suggested putting it on the side of the road so that it would be convenient to transport materials in and products out.

Wang Jiankun, the kiln factory in the team, suggested closing it down next year and selling the machinery and equipment to other production teams. This would free up a large piece of land on the roadside and reduce a lot of labor. The lighter factory would not need to hire too many people from other production teams when it expands.

Grandpa was also surprised by Wang Jiankun's increasingly bold ideas, but when he thought about it carefully, it made sense.

There are limited people in the team, and it is obviously not advisable to not do high-value work but do tiring and low-value work.

In fact, this is industrial upgrading. With the continuous development of productivity, people will naturally transform themselves towards industries with higher production efficiency and greater added value per unit time.

Low-end industries will not disappear suddenly, but will be transferred to places where labor and raw material costs are lower.

This transformation requires leaders to be bold and to be able to convince most people on the team to leave their comfort zones and learn more advanced labor skills and technologies.

Now Wang Jiankun is alone in conducting technical research and development and equipment supply, and more people will be needed to participate in the future.

Wang Jiankun felt that the communication in the evening was fruitful. At least his family members were mentally prepared. As for the entire production team, his grandfather had to convince them one by one, relying on the money-making effect of the lighter factory.

After discussing business, the next thing to talk about was building a house. My mother is now in charge of managing the lighter factory, my father has to learn to drive, and my grandfather also has things to do in the team. It is obvious that my grandmother cannot handle it all by herself.

After some discussion, my grandfather decided to invite my eldest aunt and her family over after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Let my aunt help grandma with cooking, and my uncle help build the house. My uncle is also a bricklayer and has good wall-building skills.

Bring the children here as well. They are not old enough to go to school anyway, so they can just live in a crowded place. This all-brick house should be built in three months as long as there are enough people.

It turned out that Wang Jiankun was planning to use concrete to cast the floor slab. The cement should be available from Tsinghua Cement Factory. If that doesn't work, he could also buy it from Dexing or Raozhou.

Wang Jiankun had already drawn the drawings, and he had just shown the renderings to his family, who were all very satisfied.

The entire house still looks like a Hui-style building, with white walls and black tiles. The interior has three rooms, a large living room in the middle, bedrooms and two small compartments on both sides, with bamboo beds in the summer and braziers in the winter.

There are two more rooms at the back, which are usually used to store sundries and can also be used to accommodate guests. There are also four rooms upstairs.

Behind the house is a large kitchen, a pigpen and a toilet. The pigpen can hold two or three pigs, although Wang Jiankun believes that raising pigs at home will not be cost-effective in the future and the family may not have the time to do so.

But grandma disagreed with removing the pigpen, saying that it was not unreasonable but if they didn't raise pigs there would be no place to digest the leftovers.

The entire house covers an area of ​​200 square meters, with 16 lights and 20 sockets. Although there is only one radio in the house, it still uses No. 5 batteries.

But Wang Jiankun believes that there will be more and more electrical appliances in the future, and it is better to reserve some in advance than to drill holes in the wall later.

The family chatted until late, full of longing for the days of the electrical age described by Wang Jiankun.

(End of this chapter)