At the beginning of 1977, I made up my mind to leave Jilin, the northeastern part of China, where I had been staying for 8 years, to leave Huaide County, where I had lived for more than 6 years, and to leave Gongzhuling, where I decided to transfer to the Second Engineering Company of the Pipeline Bureau of the Ministry of Petroleum. Before me, four people from my unit had already been transferred there.
Because there is rice and noodles, there is tobacco, wine and fish. More importantly, because there the spatial distance from Home is reduced by more than half, that means Time saving, that is a certain sense of Life extension.
In April, with the radar car shipped from Gongzhuling Automobile Conversion Plant to Chengdu, I “wandered” from the northeast to Xi’an on a railroad flat car that was constantly grouped in stop-and-go, and then alone to Huashan, Luoyang and Wuhan, returning home from the waterway by the Yangtze River.
At my friend’s house, I met his father, an old playwright. The old man, pipe in hand, listening to my travel experience, heard that I was ready to transfer to the oil pipeline company, another friend on the side added that this is the field mobile unit, he leaned deep in his chair and looked at me: travel 10,000 miles, read 10,000 books, very good it!
At the end of September that year, I was in a small railway station in the south of Siping “Yangmulin” to the “Second Company of the Pipeline Bureau” to report to the large company site quiet, rows of bungalows with doors and windows closed, occasionally see a few people left behind. After completing various handover procedures, the head of the labor and capital section handed me a closed kraft envelope to report to Xuzhou. At that time, the second company had established a new base in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, thousands of miles away, to lay the oil pipeline from Shandong Shengli Oilfield to Yizheng, Jiangsu Province.
At the beginning of October, I arrived at the base of “Pipeline Company No. 2” in Xuzhou Zhai Mountain from Beijing, and the receptionist of the labor and capital section opened the envelope I took out: it turned out that my fate had already been decided in Yangmulin – I was assigned to the third squadron of the field engineering team. The third squadron is the closest to the base of the five field squadrons of the second company, the other squadrons are in Hebei Cangzhou, Shandong Zaozhuang, Linyi, Jiangsu Sihong, Yizheng …… three squadrons are in the outskirts of Xuzhou, near Jiawang.
(I)
The open land by the rock pile under the barren hillock circled the territory of the third squadron, and a high barbed wire fence was pulled up between one thick wooden pole. The simple shed can be disassembled and assembled around the quadrangle, that is the living area, the yard pulled wire, rope hanging workers’ flower pants red undershirt black cotton jacket.
A separate slinky look also young and sturdy shed, is the squadron leader, instructor (party branch secretary) office, next to the financial, broadcasting room. In front of the door erected a high trembling antenna is the “carrier room”, belongs to the base communication squadron, field squadrons rely on it and the base contact.
In addition to living quarters, team headquarters, logistics, next to the barbed wire fence, in the crawler gnawed, wheeled over after leaving a ditch bumpy teeth marks in the open space, parked on the huge, yellow ironclad machinery – crawler pipe hoist, bulldozer, trencher, and tractors, diesel generators, Jiefang Leapfrog trucks …….
Adjacent to the gate row by row is painted green yellow with angle iron steel plate welded into more than one person high “crawler”, like a huge urn, that is the work room, said to go, crane together on the big Mercedes trailer, which is the prototype of Chinese containers.
In the territory, the sun and rain has been blackened grass green tents scattered among them, what “industrial learning Daqing”, what “three old four strict”, what “a fear of hardship two fear of death”, what “Follow Chairman Hua” placards in red letters on tin attract attention.
(II)
The main types of work in the oil pipeline field squadron are welders and anti-corrosion workers. The anti-corrosion workers had to pre-pour the “720 oil pipeline” with steaming asphalt and chemical fiber cloth for several times to make anti-corrosion treatment for the pipeline, and the thick pipe was suspended by the “pipe hoist” to a ditch one or two meters deep, and the welders had to go down to the ditch to work.
Later I knew how to distinguish their types of work: in the cafeteria there are stools not sitting, squatting on the ground to eat, and after the meal also squatting on the ground to smoke and gossip, that 80% is the welders; body always from the bones of the sooty smell, cuffs and collars always have a trace of shiny white chemical fibers, that 80% is the antiseptic workers.
My file was filled out in the column of the type of work “turner” – although I was only a professional turner driving an automatic lathe in the factory in Gongzhuling – so I was assigned to the repair team, and electricians, pliers, auto mechanics a So I was assigned to the repair team, together with electricians, pliers and auto mechanics. Fortunately, the lathe was not yet transported to the squadron, but the “plow” for installing the lathe was already waiting for the “landlord”, so I worked together with the clampers.
The oil was exported from the source, and it had to be pressurized at one pumping station after another along the way. Because the domestic Crude Oil contained too much wax, it had to be heated in the pumping station through the “heating furnace” cycle (using the crude oil itself as fuel) in order to be transported. The “Jiawang pumping station”, whose infrastructure was completed long ago, was not too far from the squadron site, so we could go to the pumping station on foot every day (no need to wrap ourselves in black work jackets like welders and anti-corrosion workers, climb into trucks and drink the northwest wind to go to the site), and we installed huge oil pumps in the pump room and climbed up and down in the high heating furnace to drill in and out. The young captain of the oil pump padding with thick felt pads stranded down, made a pair of sub-shoe insoles, but also for the new me to get a pair, because the size is not enough, that heel side still has a round hole to wear screws.
Oil pipeline workers are from the northwest of Gansu Yumen oil field, Shaanxi Yanchang oil field of old workers; and from Sichuan oil field, Hubei Jianghan oil field, Daqing oil field, that is the backbone of the company; the younger generation is a large number of internal recruitment of workers relatives Family members, so the workers within those uncles ah nephew ah brother ah brother ah, who and who pulled up what relationship you can not make a scene.
The repair team of about ten people live in a simple shed, there are from Jilin, Shanghai, Shandong, Gansu, Sichuan, Anhui, anyway, is the north and south, also mixed with a hometown of Xuzhou Pei County. The villager was a civilian worker of the oil pipeline, who had a work-related accident and became a cripple with a broken foot. Because the request for pipeline recruitment failed, has lived for seven or eight months, not to go, anyway, with your three squadrons, free Food and free housing. We all learned his verbal language: “sun Hung”.
This old folks on a person is still good, and later I have seen a family of seven aunts and eight aunts rely on food and housing do not leave, either compensation, or family members together into the unit. This is a common thing in the field construction units, it is not strange to see.
(III)
Interesting is the fancy “industrial learning Daqing”.
Dormitory is absolutely to be neat and tidy, pay attention to “a line”: uniform iron bed placed, the bed has been rusted off the paint; uniform quilt position, all colors quilt to be folded into four sides; uniform towel hanging, even if the towel is not the original color. Only one pair of shoes can be placed at the fixed position at the bottom of the bed, only one piece of luggage can be placed at the side of the bed, and the basin and toothpaste also have a uniformly planned place.
One’s living space has been deployed and planned in a uniform way, each person is a child on the Go board, and the master arranges their respective positions. In the morning, the tannoy will tear your auditory nerves, and in the evening, the light-out time will force you to sleep habitually.
The northeasterners say: “The worker is a donkey, whoever gets to ride. This is true.
Interesting is the New Year “open door”.
At three or four o’clock in the morning of New Year’s Day, the sky was still dark, the tannoy sounded, and the site was immediately lit up, with each team, each team, each type of work, each employee assembled and named “go to the front line. The “inspirational” official words of the company’s political commissar came over the loudspeaker, and the statistics of the participants from each department were reported to the head, and finally the broadcaster excitedly announced the latest news: the Second Engineering Company of the Pipeline Bureau of the Ministry of Petroleum ushered in the New Year with excellent results! In Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu hundreds of kilometers on the front, 5 field squadrons plus engineering infrastructure team, communication and electrical team, car transportation brigade, pipeline anti-corrosion plant, mechanical repair plant, technical professional school, equipment warehouse, base kindergarten nursery, as well as the organ section logistics support, a total of thousands of hundreds of dozens of people, a total of hundreds of dozens of large machinery, and to the higher “Pipeline Bureau” report. Then came the “exciting” war report from the “Ministry of Petroleum Pipeline Bureau” in Langfang, Hebei Province: the three engineering companies of the Ministry of Petroleum Pipeline Bureau in Liaoning, Henan and Jiangsu, plus the power company, communication company, equipment company, transportation company and the bureau of Langfang base. The Department, a total of tens of thousands of thousands of hundreds of dozens of people in a fighting posture, across the country to fight the first battle of the New Year “open the door”, the battle was really beautiful!
The first battle of the New Year of the old cooking canteen is also to “open the door to the red”, after the high-tone speaker is finished and the climax is over, the guys go home from work and the sky is hazy and bright.
The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a new product.
(iv)
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. Only the embalmer Lao Hu, who always looked at me with a wry smile, found it incomprehensible that I had given up a stable environment to come to the field squadron.
“How are you willing to come to this ‘concentration camp’? Look around here, barbed wire and ‘tanks’, and from time to time there are old folks snooping and prying; look inside, tweeters and slogans, and from time to time there are leaders supervising and lecturing; look around, jerks and drunks and snitching ‘spies’. Do you think it’s like a ‘strategic village’ in South Vietnam?”
“Look at the people in the ‘village’, who do you dare to offend, you can’t afford to mess with any of them. Do you know who is fucking with who?”
“So many bachelors in the village, are tigers and wolves, ah, may one day accident, see the girl’s eyes are straight and red! So it’s good to be an alcoholic, so you don’t have to be a pervert.”
“Here, you can only live if your head is missing a tendon! Or you can be a ‘little spy’.”
“Eat well? It is to feed you well. Material enough material fine, livestock can work, not to give you free food!”
The embalmer Laohu, who said these words, was the person who gave the squadron instructor the most headache.
The body hazards of antiseptic work, Laohu is very clear, but it is difficult to escape, so out of work wearing a large mask, so many people are not used to see. Back to the squadron at the end of the day, take off the big mask, you always cover your nose with your hand, the nose is still a twitch, people will say: the nose is bad, tar smoked.
Old Hu wants to change jobs, the leadership is not allowed, so he went to the local Chinese Medicine doctor to find a prescription, and dare to talk about “a line” in the shed to light up the kerosene stove boiling medicine, the smell of medicine filled the shed, so the old Hu’s dormitory a little empty, escaped many workers. As for the cost of the medicine, of course, is also to fight for reimbursement.
That morning at seven or eight o’clock, the instructor happened to pass by the old Hu dormitory, somehow pushed the door into the house, a look at the old Hu still lying in bed with his head covered.
The instructor had a little fire: what happened today? Do not work it!
The old Hu wilted his head and replied: sick.
“What’s wrong with you? I think you’re still sick in your mind!”
The old Hu is also a man, “swish” lifted the quilt, revealing the bare legs shouted: “I ejaculate!”
The instructor froze for half a day, his fat face turned red, and did not come back to his senses.
Old Hu is to despise only drink and work of the confused insects, the most despised will only snitch and step on the shoulders of others small creep.
But, as Laohu sober, the most painful is not Laohu himself?
Old Hu was eventually cleaned up by the squadron and sent to the company’s five-seven farms in Suixian, Anhui Province, when I had been transferred to the company’s transport brigade repair squadron.
Old Hu via Xuzhou to see me, rubbing his nose bitter smile: “I am the dregs of the medicine after boiling, was poured by them ……”
(V)
Only on the way back to the station from work break, far away from the smell of the canteen wafting out of the tempting fairy gas, the appetite evoked is the happiest moment, and the instinctive desire to immediately become a reality, which is the best.
The big iron gate of rough steel welded, across the temporary cinder road, the opposite door of the premises is the staff canteen and boiler room. There are few tables and stools in the canteen, because it is useless! Play the meal back to the dormitory, a few buddies get together a heap of drinking la; stay in the canteen, just outside the door, the scarred enamel basin to the ground, squatting down to eat, slurping and tasty.
That canteen is also prepared for drinking dishes, what five spice beef, braised pork claws, white cut pork head, oil blanching peanuts, what dry-fried fish, mixed with shredded tripe, sauce pork liver.
Mobile units in the field, what else can be done without alcohol, said like a “strategic village”, but drinking is absolutely free, of course, the rules are night. So, trucks often pull boxes of good wine from the base: Suixi Daqu, Suixi buckle wine, Shuanggu Daqu, Yanghe Daqu, Gujing wine ……
Selling and distributing wine is one of the jobs of the leaders.
Love to drink, anti not easy to make a big deal (driver exception), this is the experience of the leaders.
I know my temperament, I can hardly accept the form of binding personality; I understand my own situation, the impostor “car worker” will always be revealed, the day will come. The news that the squadron will go to the front line in Xinjiang to build a new oil pipeline is also disturbing, I have to find a way to leave the field squadron, leave the third squadron.
My old colleagues who were transferred to the second company first were scattered in the base’s transport brigade and repair shops, and they were eager to help me scout, access, and find key people.
I began to calculate the list of gifts.
The transfer to Xuzhou base thing finally came to light.
Postscript.
Zhu Rongji, who was elected as the fifth Premier of the People’s Republic of China in 1998, was working as an engineer at the Ministry of Petroleum Pipeline Bureau Electricity Communication Engineering Company (Langfang, Hebei) in 1977, and was called “Zhu Gong” by the workers.
Premier Zhu must also be familiar with the life of those “strategic villages”, and may have participated in the feat of opening the doors on New Year’s Day.
According to Southern Weekend, March 7, 2003, Premier Zhu was reluctant to talk about that life experience.
There is always a reason.
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