Courtyard House: From Deputy Division Commander to Civilian, Progressing All the Way

Looking out, the world is a vast expanse of white.

There were no trees, no birds, only a few lonely military green tents, swaying precariously in the strong wind.

"Commander-in-Chief!"

An officer in charge of the preliminary exploration ran over, his lips turning purple from the cold, and loudly reported to the commander.

"The climate here is terrible! The temperature drops to minus thirty degrees Celsius at night, and even the water in the canteens freezes into solid blocks. The soldiers are suffering from severe altitude sickness, and many comrades can't even eat!"

Lin Yang's eyes were sharp as he looked at the desolate desert before him, filled with the aura of death.

He knew that here, he would not only have to fight against the harsh natural environment, but also against the blockade by Western countries and the urgency of time.

"Relay my orders!"

Lin Yang drew his sidearm from his waist and fired a shot into the air, the sound echoing across the vast Gobi Desert.

"All cadres must take the lead in living in tents! No special treatment is allowed!"

"If there's no road, we'll make one with our feet! If there's no water, we'll melt snow and ice to drink! If there's a lack of oxygen, we'll just have to gasp for air and get used to it!"

Lin Yang strode towards the first tent.

"From today onwards, the 211 Project Construction Headquarters is officially established!"

"I'm putting down roots on this Gobi Desert! If we don't successfully develop this 'powerful bomb,' none of us will leave Jin Yin Tan alive!"

With Lin Yang's iron-fisted military order issued.

More than 20,000 construction workers, researchers, and top technical workers drawn from all over the country embarked on an earth-shattering industrial spree in this forbidden zone of life.

The wind and sand eroded their faces, and the scorching sun of the plateau burned their skin.

But no one complained, and no one backed down.

The foundation of the factory was painstakingly carved out of the hard rock, and the precision machine tools were assembled in the simple shed.

Lin Yang took the lead, eating hard, dry rations and drinking bitter water mixed with sand, just like the ordinary workers. His lips were cracked and bleeding, and his hands were covered with frostbite, but his deep eyes were like a lighthouse in the desert, guiding everyone to move forward with determination.

Time seems to have lost its meaning in this isolated Gobi Desert.

……

The sun rises and sets, the stars shift and the constellations move.

As the wheels of history roared into 1958.

A sudden, nationwide frenzy swept across the entire land of China.

The Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune movement unfolded with unprecedented intensity across the country.

"Catch up with Britain and the US in fifteen years!"

"The bolder the people, the greater the harvest!"

These deafening slogans filled the front pages of every newspaper and resounded through the loudspeakers of every village and city.

A frenzy known as "exaggeration" has completely swept away people's rationality.

In order to achieve that seemingly impossible steel production target.

An absurd and insane "Great Leap Forward" steelmaking campaign has erupted!

No. 95, Nanluoguxiang, Beijing.

The courtyard house was no longer as tranquil as it used to be.

In the open space of the central courtyard, the once smooth bluestone slabs were smashed to pieces. A makeshift blast furnace, haphazardly constructed from firebricks and yellow mud, was billowing thick black smoke.

Liu Haizhong, shirtless and covered in soot, was wielding a large iron shovel, frantically stuffing coke into the blast furnace.

He's now the "Captain of the Great Leap Forward Steelmaking Assault Team" in the compound! This is a position he fought hard to get from the neighborhood office, and he's practically going crazy for this title.

"Quickly! Guangtian! Guangfu! Speed ​​up the bellows! It's not hot enough!"

Liu Haizhong roared at the top of his lungs, his eyes flashing with a morbid fanaticism.

"Old Yi! What are you standing there for! Quickly get your family's iron pot out and smash it! This is to support national construction! If we don't meet the quota, our institute will be considered backward!"

Yi Zhonghai stood aside, watching the billowing black smoke. Although he felt that this matter was unreliable, he dared not go against the tide in this atmosphere of social fervor.

He gritted his teeth, turned around and ran back into the house, where he smashed his family's large iron pot, which had been used for more than ten years, into pieces, and threw it into the earthen blast furnace.

It's not just iron pots.

The iron rings on the door, the iron latches on the windows, and even the tin toys that the children played with were all looted and thrown into the small earthen furnace whose temperature was far below the standard for steelmaking.

Yan Bugui, who lived in the front yard, was heartbroken, but he could only dismantle the iron frame of his broken bicycle and throw it into the fire with tears in his eyes.

"Refine! Refine it thoroughly! Our institute must refine a hundred catties of good steel today!" Liu Haizhong danced excitedly, as if he could already see his glorious future of being promoted to a cadre.

however.

After the fire goes out and the furnace cools down.

What was pulled out of the makeshift blast furnace was not good steel at all.

Instead, it's a pile of pore-filled, easily broken scrap metal! Commonly known as "cow dung lumps".

These things are so brittle they wouldn't even make a kitchen knife; they're complete industrial waste!

Even so, Liu Haizhong still shamelessly loaded these scrap metal lumps onto a cart and delivered them to the street office with great fanfare to report the good news.

This absurd scene is not limited to courtyard houses.

In vast rural areas, the situation is even more dire.

In order to produce steel, a large number of young and middle-aged laborers were forcibly conscripted to build earthen blast furnaces and cut down trees to burn charcoal.

Crops that should have been harvested in the fields rotted in large swaths, abandoned and forgotten. Golden waves of wheat were battered by wind and rain, turning into mud.

The trees on the mountain have been completely cut down, revealing bare rocks.

Agricultural production has been severely and devastatingly disrupted!

The trend of exaggeration is getting stronger and stronger.

Newspapers even reported yields of "30,000 jin per mu"

The absurd report that "a single cabbage weighs a hundred pounds" completely defies common sense about nature.

Inside the Hongxing Steel Rolling Mill.

Lin Fan sat at the factory manager's desk, looking at the mountain of scrap iron delivered by the "primitive steelmaking" process. He was so angry that he trembled and slammed his fist on the desk.

"Nonsense! Absolutely nonsense!"

Lin Fan's eyes were bloodshot as he pointed at the scrap metal and roared at the head of the logistics department.

"This kind of waste, with its dangerously high sulfur and phosphorus content, would completely ruin our high-quality molten steel if thrown into our open-hearth furnace! It's utterly unsuitable for making machinery, not even for agricultural implements!"

"Factory manager, but... but the targets from above are too heavy!"

The logistics director, sweating profusely, said helplessly, "Now every factory is exaggerating their production figures, reporting high output. If we don't bring in these substandard steel plants to make up the numbers, our factory won't meet its production targets, and then the municipal party committee will hold us accountable..."

"Hold them accountable my ass!"

Lin Fan suddenly stood up, a hint of the iron-fisted style that Lin Yang had displayed when he slammed his fist on the table in the conference room back then flashing in his eyes.

"Hongxing Steel Rolling Mill is a key national enterprise! Our steel is destined for the Northwest to build crucial national equipment! If this scrap iron is used and an accident occurs, who can bear the responsibility!"

"Pass on my direct order!"

Lin Fan pointed to the gate, his voice booming.

"Hongxing Steel Rolling Mill will never accept a single piece of scrap iron! We'd rather fail to meet those outrageous targets than gamble with the nation's industrial lifeline!"

"Anyone who dares to throw this garbage into the open-hearth furnace, I'll immediately fire them and hand them over to the security department for legal action!"

……