The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 275: Dissatisfaction with the construction site

This time when she went to Shenzhen, although Shen Li's responsibility was to sign a letter of intent with the reclamation farm, she also brought a few people with her. Shen Li was the chairman's wife and was most responsible for the final signature.

The content and agreement of the contract are negotiated by the personnel of the Legal Department.

Jiang Cheng and Shen Li were in one car, and there were actually two cars behind them. Others went to China on business trips, and the company had to pay for business trips. Otherwise, going to places like that in China would be really boring for Hong Kong people.

The buildings are dilapidated, many people are rude, and there is no entertainment. It is normal that Hong Kong people do not have a good opinion of the country now.

This is not polite, not because people are not welcoming, but because they don't have the habit. Many people curse when they talk, using swear words as catchphrases, some like to call themselves "Laozi", and some like to greet other people's private parts when they talk.

In some places, when rural people start to talk dirty, let alone women, even Jiang Cheng, a time traveler who has watched countless movies, would blush.

Therefore, in the eyes of many Hong Kong people, it is an indisputable fact that people in China are impolite and uncivilized.

Although most of the people in Hong Kong came from the mainland, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry was transferred to the mainland in 1980. Smuggling is prohibited there, and people who go there will not be able to get an ID card as soon as they arrive there like they do now, but will be deported.

When we arrived at the port, we were quickly cleared by the immigration inspection in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, foreign exchange control was lifted on July 3, allowing people to take a large amount of foreign currency out of the country.

Besides, Jiang Cheng and his team didn't bring much foreign currency with them. They brought some shopping coupons, which are not even considered currency. The right to interpret the shopping coupons lies with Jiangdonglai. If Jiangdonglai says it can be used, it can be used. If it says it can't be used, let alone printing a 10,000 yuan note, even if it's 1 billion yuan, people still think it's not as good as ghost money.

But when we arrived in Shenzhen, we were still delayed for a while before being allowed to pass.

In fact, this shopping voucher is a bit similar to the tickets in some places in China, just like some local units issue tickets to everyone, and it says how many kilograms of coal vouchers a certain unit has, or how many kilograms of cabbage tickets a certain unit has issued.

The meaning is pretty much the same, these tickets can only be purchased with money at designated stores in designated places.

If we change this idea, shopping coupons are just something issued by a small organization. If we collect them in China, we can collect thousands of coupons found in various units.

Many units provide benefits to their employees, but sometimes they do not issue physical invoices. Even coal factories that produce coal can sometimes issue designated food coupons when they cooperate with other units.

Anyway, if you understand the nature of the shopping coupon, you will understand it at the domestic immigration. This thing cannot be considered as currency, but just a kind of welfare coupon in the company. There is really no regulation that prohibits bringing it into the country.

The key is that if no one explains it, many people don't know the purpose of the shopping coupons that Jiang Cheng and his friends brought. Domestic tickets are generally for a certain item, and for the Jiangdonglai shopping coupons, people will only think that they are for buying a certain item.

After arriving in Shenzhen, Jiang Cheng disguised himself as the chairman's wife's driver and went to the guesthouse to find Director Hou and his friends. The guesthouse had low fees and was easy to reimburse, and their status did not qualify them to stay in high-end hotels.

Jiang Cheng found the room where Director Hou lived in the guesthouse. Director Hou and his team really valued this cooperation. They were afraid that Jiang Cheng would not be able to find them when he came back, so they stayed in the guesthouse every day playing poker.

"Jiang Cheng, you finally showed up. How's the contract going?" Director Hou immediately handed Jiang Cheng a cigarette and asked when he saw him.

"I have been contacting people in Hong Kong these days. They have arrived in Shenzhen, and I just drove them to the hotel. The letter of intent and the invitation to inspect the project can be finalized today. How about going there now? I will drive you there." Jiang Cheng replied.

"Jiang Cheng, isn't it a bit too abrupt for us to go over there rashly? How about you help represent our farm and invite them to the restaurant so that we can treat them to a meal?" Director Hou said.

In China, whether in the south or the north, people like to discuss things at the dinner table. The practice of some local units eating and drinking lavishly and signing bills at restaurants was also very popular in the south in the 1980s and 1990s.

Jiang Cheng thought it would be a good idea to discuss this matter after dinner. He could go to the construction site during the day to see how the factory and supermarket were being built. If the construction was slow, he would have to speed it up.

"Okay, you go and make the arrangements. I'll bring people over around five o'clock." Jiang Cheng said.

"Is it okay? Why don't you go and ask first?" Director Hou said.

In Director Hou's opinion, Jiang Cheng is just a driver. Even though drivers are usually confidants of the leader, they cannot arrange matters for the leader.

If the leader of the other party has limited time and has no time to accompany them for dinner, they have to go directly to discuss cooperation. Inviting people from the other side to a restaurant is just to make the atmosphere in the restaurant more harmonious.

"Director Hou, don't worry. If I say it can be done, it can be done. Please treat us generously tonight. I guarantee you will have a surprise." Jiang Cheng said with a smile.

Jiang Cheng has worked with Director Hou for so many years, and he thinks he is a good person. He is also considered young, so he really wants to take good care of him. But he has to follow the arrangements of the "partner" in the future.

"Okay then, I'll go find the hotel to make arrangements right away. The leaders above are taking it very seriously this time, so we'll try to get the highest possible entertainment costs and standards." Director Hou was relieved to see Jiang Cheng make such a promise. They've been working together for many years, so he knows Jiang Cheng's personality and he basically does what he says, so he said happily.

Since the discussion of cooperation was postponed to the evening, Jiang Cheng continued to chat with Director Hou for the time it took to smoke a cigarette, and then left.

After leaving, Jiang Cheng did not return to the hotel, but drove to the factory and shopping mall he had chosen to take a look.

First, we went to the factory. There were workers everywhere at the construction site. It was already very hot in Shenzhen in April. The workers at the construction site were all wearing a vest while working. Some even wore nothing on their upper body, showing their dark muscles while working.

There are no construction vehicles to be seen on the construction site, let alone safety ropes and hard hats.

When Jiang Cheng drove over, the person in charge of the construction site didn't care who he was. When he saw the person driving the car, his first reaction was naturally that the leader was coming.

The person in charge was also a middle-aged man with dark skin and a square face. After seeing that Jiang Cheng was the only one getting off the car and there was no one in the car, he still handed him a cigarette.

"Hello, comrade. What are you doing here at the construction site?" asked the person in charge.

"This is my work permit. I'm here to check the progress on behalf of the investor from Hong Kong." Jiang Cheng took out his work permit and handed it to the other party. In this era in China, a work permit represents your identity and status.

The person in charge looked at Jiang Cheng's work ID, which was a little different from the work ID in China. But the address of the work unit written on it was in Hong Kong, and he was the driver of the chairman of Hong Kong.

People in China cannot understand what the position of chairman is. If you just look at the word "director" in front of it, you may find it funny. The literal meaning of chairman makes people think that this "sensible" director is more sensible than anyone else.

But it doesn't matter if the person in charge doesn't understand the identity. Anyone who can drive a car in China is a leader. Even if he is a leader's driver, he should be treated the same as the leader.

"Leader, don't worry. The construction site here is a key project of our unit. There will be no problem with the progress and quality assurance." The person in charge handed the work permit back to Jiang Cheng and said respectfully.

Jiang Cheng looked at the busy construction site. Although there were no construction vehicles and everything was built by manpower, there were really a lot of people working on the construction site, which showed that they really took it very seriously.

The factory building to be built here is a two-story red brick and concrete structure factory building. Jiang Cheng originally wanted to build a three-story factory building. But in order to occupy more space, it was changed to a two-story factory building. As a result, because of the need to lay the foundation, the cost of a factory building of the same area is much higher.

In addition to the factory building, there will also be office buildings and staff dormitories to be built next to the factory building.

The factory building here was listed as a key construction project because the domestic leaders were afraid that the idiot Jiang Donglai would react, so they were speeding up the construction.

In Hong Kong, many clothing factories and toy factories have moved to China. China is responsible for building the factories, recruiting workers, and helping investors in Hong Kong to directly complete orders.

This gives people the impression that Hong Kong investors just send the orders to domestic processing. In fact, this is not the case. In fact, they are sent to the factory, and the factory will be marked with the brand trademark of the Hong Kong investor.

Moreover, investors can also send people to supervise the quality of products and even serve as some senior executives. At the beginning, investors actually thought that these domestic processing factories were just scamming them.

But later, when the country was completely opened up and investors were allowed to operate and recruit workers themselves, these factories were given away for free to foreign investors.

Because they had no choice but to send it, the domestic leaders could not organize the workers to process it.

After Shenzhen became a special economic zone, foreign businessmen were allowed to set up factories in China, recruit workers, and even sell products to make money from domestic people.

The wages of workers in Shenzhen are not something that local staff can control. At that time, when the monthly wages in other places were still dozens of yuan, here it was hundreds, and even some technicians' salaries were over a thousand yuan.

With such a salary, how can the local personnel bureau recruit workers at the salary of state-owned factory workers? Even if it is a stable job, people will not give up ten times the salary to work in a local state-owned factory.

Nowadays, foreign-invested factories are actually built without spending a penny, with the help of domestic enterprises. The materials and labor for construction are all paid by the local government.

Because at this time, the local government thought that the factory was actually theirs. For foreign businessmen, they were just helping them process products and earn some hard-earned money.

As for Jiang Cheng’s factory, in the eyes of the local department leaders, the factory may belong to Jiang Donglai, but it is more theirs. Because the factory can be given to Jiang Donglai, but the workers in the factory have to be arranged by their local units.

The factory is full of workers and managers arranged by local units. It doesn't matter who owns the factory.

The construction costs of this factory were all paid by Jiangdonglai, so for local units, this was a factory they got for free. Moreover, Jiangdonglai used foreign exchange to build it.

Of course, Jiangdonglai only calculated the material costs for the factory construction, not the labor costs, and Shenzhen did not ask Jiangdonglai to pay for the labor costs of the construction.

Jiang Cheng looked around the construction site and found that the current construction equipment was backward and the small amount of equipment was used in key projects. Some cement was pushed up by carts from the bamboo ladder.

The outer supports are all bamboo frames, not steel supports. There are no cranes or elevators, and the construction is all done by manpower. Even if there are a thousand people on the construction site, they may not be able to match the work progress of hundreds of people in later generations.

Although the workers were strong, many of them were skin and bones. When they worked hard, the bones on their chests were exposed and their bellies were sunken.

These workers work on the construction site, but the site does not provide meals. They eat their own rations like ordinary workers in other units. At most, workers are given a ration of more than ten kilograms based on their heavy labor.

Jiang Cheng felt a little sad watching this scene. In those days, construction workers didn't have enough food to eat. They didn't have safety belts or helmets to work. If something happened, a family would be ruined.

"How many hours of construction are carried out here a day and how is it arranged?" Jiang Cheng asked the person in charge.

"Construction started at six in the morning and lasted until eleven. It started around two in the afternoon and lasted until five," the person in charge responded.

The weather in Shenzhen is hot, so construction workers start early in the morning, just like people in the countryside do in the summer. Working hours are also the standard for state-owned units, eight hours a day, no overtime.

"This won't do. You're treating this as work for your own company at home. You have to speed up. Starting tomorrow, you'll have to work until 11:30 in the morning. It's too early to finish work at 5 p.m., as it's already bright in the sky at 5 o'clock. We have to finish work at 5:30. Because the morning time is extended and the workers have to go home to prepare lunch, our company will cover the workers' meals at noon. Please inform your leaders here to come to XX Hotel tomorrow morning to negotiate on the food standards." Jiang Cheng said with a dissatisfied look on his face.

"Hey~~, leader, okay, I will definitely notify our leader to come over tomorrow morning."

When the person in charge heard that Jiang Cheng wanted to extend the construction time of the workers, he immediately scolded Jiang Cheng as a lackey of capital who would exploit the working people. Everyone worked eight hours a day at this construction site, which was very hard.

Originally, the person in charge wanted to get angry and say who do you think you are? He was giving you face by calling you leader, but if he didn’t give you face, he would directly kick you out of the construction site and affect their construction.

But when I heard that Jiang Cheng, on behalf of a foreign-funded enterprise, had paid for everyone's lunch just to get everyone to work an extra hour, I thought he was a living Buddha. We didn't have anything else, but we were not afraid of being tired when we were working.

Moreover, many construction sites in Shenzhen are managed by one department. Anyone who is unwilling to work an extra hour will be immediately transferred to another site. There are many people who work an extra hour just for a meal.

(End of this chapter)