My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 514 Rushing about with heavy burdens

As he was leaving, Wei Dong briefly informed everyone: "Tomorrow I'll be going back to Shangzhou to report to the leaders on the situation. I'll leave the work in Jiangzhou to you all to finish up, and hope for even greater success next year."

That's a good arrangement.

Surprisingly, everyone wanted to go to Shangzhou to take a look.

After all, Shangzhou is the birthplace of Weidong, providing labor, buffering and supporting various industries, and playing a crucial role in its interactions with Jiangzhou.

Apart from Qin Yuye, none of the people present had actually seen it.

Dong Xueqing, who had never returned to Shangzhou since that time she squeezed behind her brother-in-law to go back to school, is now a wife and pregnant and wants to go back to visit, especially for the New Year.

Shen Cuiyue even joined in the commotion.

Wei Dong asked Liu Taiyuan to bring a few photographers and Wu Shengyun along. Lao Geng was still arranging the progress of the projects in Pingjing, Shanghai, and Jiangzhou during the Spring Festival. Lao Hong was focused on considering the relocation and expansion of production capacity after the New Year. Lao Zhang, you should hurry up and finish decorating the business suite across the street.

They were all assigned tasks and turned them down one by one. Even Qin Yuye had to coordinate the business dealings of the Hong Kong business representatives during the Spring Festival, and also to organize the new clothing designs to prepare for sales after the start of spring. There was no time for him to play around.

Needless to say, Shen Laosan was obvious at first glance.

I don't know if you all noticed, but the entire factory area, including all the production lines that will more than double in size in the future, and the welfare control of the factory management personnel, are all in the hands of this 22-year-old woman from the Jianghu. She's incredibly powerful, so why doesn't she start showing off?

After taking the baby home, Wei Dong explained to Feng Chu: "My parents are in Shangzhou. Your sister was uncomfortable when she met them. There's no need to deal with them now. I think we should get the marriage certificate so it will be easier to have a baby."

At that time, having a child out of wedlock was a clear violation of the newly established national policy of family planning.

Without marriage, you cannot obtain a birth permit. Without a birth permit, you cannot register your child's birth at a hospital, let alone register their household registration.

Very troublesome.

Dong Xueqing hesitated: "I don't want to tie you down with children and marriage. I just want you to be free to do what you want."

This only strengthened Wei Dong's resolve: "Then when I get back, we'll still get the marriage certificate. I'll also pick up my household registration when I go back."

Fengchu sweetly whispered "okay," gently hugging her arm and resting her head against her.

Then she immediately felt a small, stubborn force trying to push her away.

No need for surprise or staring; I can just laugh and skip away my worries. My niece is like this now; how will she treat the baby in the future?

Going home now feels like it's not really a good place to live.

The surrounding environment is complex, making it easy for someone to target you.

Therefore, discussing what their future home will look like has become the most popular topic.

They all carefully avoided Dong Xueying.

The next morning, Wei Dong met up with Liu Taiyuan and the others and took a boat to Shangzhou.

Wu Shengyun was indeed quick-witted; he understood Wei Dong's instructions from yesterday with a single glance, and gathered a lot of information overnight, secretly reporting it to his boss:

“I’ve thought about my brother’s idea repeatedly. In fact, as long as we have a lot of assets that are cross-controlled, it will be difficult to be detected. For example, the shipping company can be registered in Shanghai, but the ship ownership can be held by a relative’s company in Shangzhou. The daily operations are separate, so it will be difficult to aggregate them. Other real estate can also use this method. Manager Dong, Supervisor Shen, and even the children in the family can share the responsibility.”

Wei Dong nodded slowly. He was actually used to the tax network project of later generations, where personal credit and personal asset databases would expose everything once they were pulled up.

However, at that time, all records were kept on paper, and the data on ships, real estate, automobiles, industrial equipment, etc., belonged to different departments, so it was impossible to summarize them together.

Unless you've already made a move to establish a special task force to investigate all of their business operations.

This clumsy method can indeed effectively reduce the chances of standing out.

Because there are just too many opportunities these days.

Wu Shengyun extracted clear information: "Currently, many shipping companies and vessel companies along the river are facing difficulties in restructuring. We currently have thirteen 150-ton barges, and what we lack most is power-driven vessels. We can only rent pushboats for transportation. If we can take this opportunity to acquire a few, we can ensure that our current transportation efficiency will be greatly improved."

In the 1970s, due to the shortage of equipment, it was indeed popular to build these non-powered barges. Then, a single powered barge could be tied to several barges for transportation, sometimes even as absurdly as seven or eight barges, which was just as outrageous as the bicycles used to transport bananas in the African Odyssey in the short video.

However, in the early 1980s, during the period when the reform and opening up had just begun and the economy was booming, many self-propelled cargo ships were built in various places.

The county can build ships of two or three hundred tons, so in the past two years, the tight money supply and the depletion of planned economy production capacity have also hampered many shipping companies.

Wu Shengyun is familiar with the advantages of the surrounding counties and cities, and can sort out more than a dozen power wheels of different sizes, with each unit priced between 100,000 and 200,000 yuan.

While the discounts weren't as significant as those for the original thirteen barges, they were still mostly secondhand vessels being sold at a discount in a rush to get rid of them. Fortunately, the company had its own docks from Jiangzhou and Shangzhou to Shanghai, allowing the fleet to remain quietly within its own system.

On ordinary days, they mostly float on the Yangtze River, making it difficult for people to notice changes in their size.

Wei Dong listened without comment.

His mindset at over sixty years old was unlike You Qili's, who would excitedly pounce on any business opportunity he saw: "I'll consider observing. I also have some people at Shangzhou Wharf who can help me. You can try communicating with them."

Wu Shengyun repeatedly agreed.

Liu Taiyuan then led a group of people to take photos of the still desolate and barren river views on both sides of the river.

The upper reaches of the Yangtze River are not wide in winter; they feel like a highway.

Upon arriving in Shangzhou, they were greeted by waves of people. Wu Shengyun and Liu Taiyuan could both see the prestige that Wei Dong had in Shangzhou, at least in the area around the docks.

There were laborers vying to help move several computers down, without mentioning labor costs. It seemed like they were honored and proud to have the old man do things for them.

Those who made a living on the docks came one by one to greet and exchange pleasantries.

Wei Dong introduced Wu Shengyun to them, then took the double-cab sedan that Ding Haifeng had driven after hearing the news. He told Liu Taiyuan to go with Lao Ding and the others to take photos and sightsee on West Second Street, while he drove off to meet his old leader first.

Perhaps because she had arrived in this familiar space, Xiaodie snuggled tightly into her father's arms.

In Shangzhou, Wei Dong simply drove with the baby on his back.

When we get to the compound in the city, we'll have to ask them to help us move the computers down: "Keep three, yes, one printer is enough."

Many people pitched in to help. By the time the computer was disassembled and reassembled in the old leader's secretary's office, it was almost full of people from all departments of the organization. Together with the old leader, who was wearing a military overcoat, they watched the young man carrying a child press the power switch: "The instruction manual is here. It's very simple. Just follow the instructions."

This is absolutely a bug in the history of China's electronic computer development. Previously, only a very small number of Apple II computers or very expensive IBM computers flowed in from the customs of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing.

It's mostly research institutions that are involved with these kinds of world-leading technological products.

They should have made a fortune in foreign exchange in the mid-to-late 1980s, forcing the mainland to import a large number of computers to try modern office practices.

Moreover, computer training was necessary in the late 1980s to promote the use of this equipment.

This would allow Wei Dong and his team to skip the exploratory phase of development in Europe and America, making the implementation of a graphical system incredibly simple.

Pinyin input is now available, and there's even a document printing mode. You can directly call up the template you need, use the five-star title format, change the document header, and then type the rest.

The once-popular official documents with red headers can now only be printed in black and white due to the characteristics of dot matrix printers.

The key is that once you get used to the storage logic of electronic documents, you can easily store, retrieve, and search them by time or category.

As for Solitaire and Minesweeper, these are high-risk games where skilled players from government agencies frequently emerge.

A smart person can learn it at a glance; it's much more interesting than learning any Wubi input method.

A group of district and county civil servants, still wearing bulky old military uniforms and whitewashed Zhongshan suits, immediately began to enthusiastically learn how to use computers.

Wei Dongcai stepped aside and went to the old leader's office inside: "The city can transfer a few people to Jiangzhou after the Spring Festival to study systematically, and then try to equip Shangzhou's primary and secondary school classrooms with fifty computers before April, so that children can be exposed to the most advanced technology from the very beginning."

The senior leader sensed something was amiss: "Is this equipment in short supply?"

Rang Weidong said, “The head office of the financial system has confirmed that they will use this equipment extensively for electronic financial management. We are mainly supplying it to primary and secondary schools. The Jiangzhou factory is just a temporary assembly workshop with a daily output of only a few dozen units. The Jinling factory we are cooperating with can produce three to four hundred units a day. We set up a computer demonstration point on the Bund in Shanghai, and thousands of people come to watch and touch it every day. I think this is very meaningful.”

Looking through the photos of the glass pyramid, there were even two pictures of Shanghai city leaders inspecting and testing it.

The old leader nodded slowly: "Last year, the housing reform was promoted. The municipal construction company also followed suit and built more than 20,000 square meters of collective housing in the city. It was all operating according to your experience. More than 4,000 units from all over the country came to visit. So, where is the focus this year?"

Wei Dong pointed to a photo of the shampoo: "It contains SOD. Regardless of whether it's actually good for hair, this gimmick makes it sell well. Currently, the SOD is still extracted from pig's blood. Next, we will gradually expand the scale of corn bioengineering construction, but it should be in the second half of the year. I also need to keep a tight rein on it. From Jiangzhou and Shangzhou to Pingjing and Shanghai, there are dozens or even hundreds of buildings in total. There are more than ten under construction. We must complete them steadily before we can eat our next bowl of rice."

Unexpectedly, the old leader shook his head: "We must speed things up now. Due to various reasons, the harvest this autumn and winter is not good. If we can promote the construction of this corn bioengineering as soon as possible, from the initial production investment to bring more jobs, to the fact that I have already asked several townships to expand corn planting on a pilot basis, it will help the rural population solve the urgent problem of food and clothing. Looking at the lives of those people who are still below the poverty line, I am extremely anxious."

Wei Dong looked up at the other person's once gray hair, which now seemed to have turned even whiter.

He somewhat understood how Liu Bei, with tens of thousands of ordinary people, seemed to have fled for their lives along this very area back then.

(End of this chapter)