That night, Wang Ye slept soundly.
At seven o'clock the next morning, two vehicles rumbled out of the Red Star Machinery Factory. This time, they exited through the factory's back gate and traveled deep into the mountains along a difficult road.
The Red Star Machinery Factory was unlike its usual self that morning. Workers hurriedly made their way to work amidst wisps of cooking smoke, their faces filled with smiles, dispelling the previous gloom. The aging factory seemed to rejuvenate once more.
"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
Two vehicles traversed the bumpy dirt road. Leading the way was a Yanjing 212 jeep, followed by a Liberation brand large truck. Inside the military-green canvas-covered cargo bed of the truck were supplies for the visit, mainly consisting of abundant rice, flour, cooking oil, pungent dried fish, portions of pork, limited vegetables, as well as cigarettes and alcohol.
Wang Ye sat in the passenger seat of the large truck, driven by a young man who appeared to be barely in his twenties.
"Do you smoke? Want one?" Wang Ye pulled out a cigarette and offered it to the young man beside him, feeling a bit restless in the bumpy ride.
"Thank you, Director! I'll do it myself. Ah, ah, ah..."
Seeing Wang Ye about to light a cigarette with a match, the young man became flustered, but Wang Ye didn't mind. He lit a cigarette for himself, then lit one for the young man, saying, "We're all young people. Don't be so restrained. What's your name? How old are you?"
Although Wang Ye said so, having been told yesterday that he would be driving today and that Wang Ye would be sitting next to him, Li Baojun, conscientious as he was, drove carefully and respectfully while answering, "I'm Li Baojun, Director, just turned twenty this year."
Hearing this name, with its distinct characteristics of the era and being from a military factory family, Wang Ye couldn't help but smile faintly. Then he asked again, "Are you still studying, or are you working?"
Li Baojun quickly shook his head and said, "I stopped studying long ago, didn't make it to high school. I've been working with the big collective in our factory!"
Wang Ye wasn't too surprised by this result. Nowadays, with the restoration of the college entrance examination, after the end of junior high school, there was only one option: to take the high school entrance exam. After three years of high school, according to the scores in the college entrance examination, one would enter undergraduate, college, or technical school, somewhat similar to the classification into three types of universities after the turn of the century.
This also resulted in the extremely high difficulty of studying nowadays. Not to mention undergraduate or college, in a county every year, the number of people who could enter technical school (including secondary normal school) was extremely small, no more than a handful!
As a result, many young people finished their studies but couldn't find work, so they could only join large collective enterprises.
Therefore, two years later, in order to solve the problem of youth unemployment, the country shifted technical schools to after the junior high school entrance examination, meaning that one could take the entrance exam for technical school and normal school right after the junior high school entrance examination, and then the state would arrange for work, providing "commodity grain."
"Our factory doesn't have high school, right?"
Afterward, Wang Ye asked this question. If there was a high school in the machinery factory, it wouldn't be possible for someone not to pass the exam, because as an internal school of the factory, there was normally no need to take an exam.
As expected, Li Baojun nodded and said, "Right, if you want to go to high school, you have to go to the county town, and you have to board."
Hearing this, Wang Ye exhaled a puff of smoke, and the atmosphere fell silent for a moment. After a few seconds, Li Baojun tentatively asked, "Director, I heard that you're going to take over our big collective? Is it true?"
Wang Ye smiled, looked at Li Baojun driving beside him with a cigarette in his mouth, and said, "Yes, but whether it can be done or not, it's not certain yet! We have to wait for the leaders of the Industrial Bureau to have a meeting."
Speaking of this, without waiting for Li Baojun to say anything, he asked again, "About the matter of me taking over. What do you think? How do you all think?"
Clearly, Wang Ye hoped to get some information from Li Baojun. Upon hearing Wang Ye's words, Li Baojun instantly became excited, as if afraid of being a second late and fearing that Wang Ye might misunderstand, he hurriedly exclaimed, "Of course, everyone hopes that Director, you can take over! After all, if you can lead our machinery factory to make money, then you can definitely make money with the big collective!"
"Now our big collective, ah!"
He sighed heavily, then grumbled, "Director, you don't know."
"Take me for example. I should have a monthly wage of seventeen yuan, but in the end, I can only get a fraction, seven yuan!"
"Another five yuan goes to the family, and the rest isn't even enough for cigarettes."
"I'm not lazy, I want to work too, but where's the work for me to do?"
"The adults still complain that we wander around all day, don't do real work, just wander around all day, saying that we're all going to become bums."
"But, what else can we do if we don't wander around?"
From his voice, Wang Ye could hear a strong sense of grievance. He smiled and said, "Don't worry, no matter whether the matter of taking over goes through or not."
"I won't ignore our big collective."
"Soon, I promise everyone will be able to smoke Peonies!"
Nowadays, Peonies weren't cheap. Li Director smoked Peonies, also known as "Cadre Cigarettes." It was only after Wang Ye became director that he could afford to smoke Peonies. When he was studying, he smoked Red Plum cigarettes. Upon hearing Wang Ye's words, Li Baojun became excited:
"All right! When the time comes, Director, whatever you ask us to do, we'll do it!"
The reason Wang Ye said this was simple. Nowadays, time was the most precious. Even if the matter of taking over didn't go through, could he really not do anything?
Soon, in the midst of the conversation, it was half past eight. The two vehicles finally arrived at the Air Force Station.
Even a few kilometers away from the station, one could see the radar on the high mountain top, which was a white half-spherical structure.
"Soldier, help us inform! We're from the Red Star Machinery Factory, here to visit everyone!"
Under the cautious gaze of the rifle-wielding guards, the two vehicles drove directly to the gate of the station, and then the old factory director got out of the car and said. Upon seeing the person getting off the car was the one-armed old factory director, the guard was pleasantly surprised and said:
"Old Director? Why are you here?"
"Hurry, call the camp! "
The guard in the guardhouse quickly picked up the phone to report the news. After a while, the gate slowly opened. As the old factory director got back in the car, he waved and smiled at the guard, "Have a good meal at noon and change shifts quickly!"
Then the two vehicles rumbled into the Air Force Station and stopped in the open space in front of a small building after a while.