Chapter 1694 - Summary
"Little Yun," Du Wen pushed the black-rimmed glasses up her nose, rose from behind the desk, and paced hurriedly across the office. "Your report is excellent! I've already spoken with the Truth Office. Morning Star will publish the full text—not those eight-legged essays in the Times."
As she spoke, Stalin's gaze from the plaster bust on her desk seemed to bore into Yun Suji. He felt slightly uncomfortable—not because of the Iron Man's stare, but because the address "Little Yun" truly spoiled his appetite.
"It's decent enough," Yun Suji masked his feelings. "Go down and look around more, and you'll have everything you need."
"The problem is that no one's willing to go down and look! Every last one of them dreams of being a bureaucrat, of being a lord!" Du Wen said bitterly. "I knew this bunch of petty bourgeoisie couldn't accomplish anything..."
Yun Suji didn't want to wade deeper into this discussion. He leaned forward slightly. "If there's nothing else..."
"No—I still have things to say." Du Wen sat back down. "This time, Senators going to the countryside has more symbolic significance than practical significance, in my opinion. But even so, it's enough to show Senators what the real countryside looks like. Keeps them from building carts behind closed doors all day."
"Right, right." Yun Suji nodded.
"What I worry about most now is that after Senators visit the countryside, every one of them will break out in 'Holy Mother Disease.'" Du Wen adopted a look of concern. "After a symposium or two, Senators' ears go soft. They return blathering about 'farmers are suffering too much, burdens are too heavy,' and try to constrain our industrial society's reasonable capital construction requirements. They start wanting pastoral poetry—letting nature take its course."
Yun Suji nodded again.
"If this continues, we'll just see a resurgence of old ways: the whole village idling, squatting at the village entrance after eating with big bowls for half a day, girls and young wives gathering to stitch shoe soles while chattering about 'the Zhang family's long and the Li family's short' until clouds of gossip rise, men gambling, fighting, beating their wives... I know rural life very clearly. Traditionally in our part of the country, with two crops a year, planting, harvesting, and field management together only add up to about two months of actual busy work—and ten months of idle rest. Giving them a bit more corvée labor is just right to leave them no time for wife-beating..."
Perhaps she noticed the trace of a smile at the corner of Yun Suji's mouth. Du Wen continued: "Comrade Little Yun, don't think I oppose wife-beating out of feminist thinking. Wife-beating is a shameful manifestation of patriarchal society. But its rampancy in rural areas fully proves that farmers are still far too idle! Look, worker families rarely have this problem. Didn't you mention that the villages you visited had many cases of wife-beating and adultery? Therefore, the corvée labor provided is still insufficient!"
Yun Suji said, "Personally, I believe the amount of corvée labor is open to question. The current total may not have reached the lower limit yet, but there are still considerable problems in labor distribution—abuse and unfair assignments occur. In addition, some labor arrangements lack scientific basis. Take the assigned production of military shoes by head count: I've communicated with the Joint Logistics Department. The quality of assigned military shoes is universally poor, with serious corner-cutting. Also, corvée labor should still be performed nearby. If locations are too distant, not only does travel consume time, but farmers must bring dry rations and luggage for the journey—increasing the burden on farm households."
"These are all details and can be fine-tuned," Du Wen said. "But the keynote of rural work cannot change! We must educate them to transform old concepts, customs, and backward lifestyles. Otherwise, once dilapidated habits and concepts resurface, sufferings like 'famine, death, displacement' will immediately reincarnate. The true meaning of life is 'one must work upon birth for days to be prosperous and guaranteed,' adding bricks and tiles to the faith guidance of 'the Senate saves and leads the whole world.' Some Senators are already saying that my running study classes and organizing movements is simple and crude—indeed, there are individual cases of going overboard, I admit. But the general direction is not wrong! For the Senate to realize the Technology Rapid Rise Second Five-Year Plan and territorial expansion, we must transform society. Efficiency must be prioritized in development!"
"Yes, yes—I feel the same," Yun Suji said, seeing Du Wen growing agitated and involuntarily shrinking back a bit.
"So our viewpoints align."
"On the issue of rural work, my view is the same as yours." Yun Suji nodded. This wasn't mere agreement; to realize the various grand ambitions conceived at the time of the crossing, they had to work more efficiently than competing systems—whether in the efficient extraction of surplus products, in constraining the alienation and expansion of bureaucratic corruption, in inhibiting the involutionary tendencies of grassroots control, or in climbing the technology tree and expanding industrialization, it was all the same.
"Our Secretary of State Ma has said: 'A large portion of the surplus products occupied by the upper society is still consumed by the upper society itself, and much wealth is even embezzled by officials and lower aristocrats during collection. But from the general trend, the surplus products collected are directly proportional to the stability and expansion capability of the upper society. Therefore, long-term competition between systems favors those that collect as many surplus products as possible.'" Du Wen's enthusiasm for discussion was running high. "How can we collect products as effectively as possible? How can we improve labor efficiency more effectively? These questions need serious discussion. In the end, there must be a combat-effective grassroots organization!"
Yun Suji expressed agreement with this.
"Unfortunately, the existing human resources won't do. They are too infected by the old society; their outlooks on life and values are difficult to reverse. Hope still has to be placed on the young."
"Indeed so." Yun Suji rarely found common ground with Du Wen. "Current village cadres, like Fan Twelve, are already considered rare talents. Old Huo's type is merely passable. Most can only be described as unusable. But for young people to shoulder major responsibilities, they still need sufficient education."
Du Wen nodded with satisfaction. "So we need a strong social group to unite, organize, and guide them!" Her enthusiasm was brimming, leaving Yun Suji somewhat puzzled.
"What do you think of the Senate Communist Youth League?" Du Wen asked suddenly.
"Very good. We definitely need such a youth organization." Yun Suji thought of the Senate Communist Youth League Cadre Training Class activity he had encountered in Qiongshan. He had a quite good impression of it: pragmatic.
"A good organization must also have good leadership. Otherwise, I'm afraid it will go astray."
Yun Suji suddenly understood: Du Wen wanted to extend her influence into the Senate Communist Youth League! That was why she had been reeling him in like this—she thought he shared her philosophy.
In truth, Yun Suji did approve of many of her ideas. At least in grassroots work, being grounded was her greatest advantage. In the entire Senate, only the few people in her Social Investigation Department had truly sunk their hearts into running around the grassroots and doing research over these past few years.
"Some people want to turn the Senate Communist Youth League into Boy Scouts. I cannot agree with this." Du Wen tapped the desk. "Holding bonfire parties, camping, hunting a few rabbits, learning several knots, enriching students' lives, exercising their bodies—none of this is wrong. But they have more important things to learn—first and foremost is political study!"
To avoid listening to a lengthy lecture, Yun Suji hastened to state his position: "On this issue, I absolutely support you."
A smile appeared on Du Wen's face. "Very good. Very good."
Yun Suji returned to the food factory office in a daze. Du Wen's words left him somewhat uneasy. It seemed that another struggle was inevitable—this time over the leadership and philosophy of the Senate Communist Youth League.
He pushed open the office window. His current office was now a small suite on the second floor. Outside the window lay the food factory's earliest production area, Workshop No. 1: the Cleaning Workshop. These workshops were no longer simple red brick pillars with bamboo-and-wood trusses under reed-mat sheds. The pillars remained brick, but the trusses had become wrought iron, and the roofs had been replaced with corrugated sheets hot-rolled from galvanized iron. Looking out, chimneys emitted smoke of black and white—the scene conjuring up images of old industrial zones from another timeline.
The air carried a sweet smell: the scent of paste being boiled to make relief rations in the instant food workshop. Besides dried sweet potato powder, a considerable proportion of bagasse powder was mixed in as filler—which also added some caloric value, since bagasse still retained quite a lot of sugar.
Relief ration production had already doubled in scale, while Kvass workshop output had been cut by half. On one hand, sweet potatoes—Lingao Kvass's main raw material—were needed for relief rations. On the other, the reduction freed up more workers. After all, the Mainland Campaign still depended on grain, not beverages.
Because of the Mainland Campaign, the food factory's production had entered full combat-readiness mode. Product lines had undergone comprehensive adjustment. Currently, apart from products with foreign trade demand whose capacity hadn't been compressed yet, all other products had made way for combat-readiness production.
"A new quota of five tons of fruit drops has been issued. Are we learning from the Japanese devils?" Yun Suji muttered, looking at the latest "military use order" delivered.
Besides fruit drops, the items listed in the "military use" catalog were extraordinarily varied. Yun Suji had originally planned to produce canned food for the army—after mass production of galvanized iron sheets, manufacturing all-metal cans still posed difficulties, but producing glass jar cans sealed with tinplate presented no obstacles. The food factory had already carried out small-batch production. However, the Joint Logistics Headquarters believed glass jars were too easily broken and losses too great, vetoing this proposal. Thus, the army's instant food mainly consisted of dry goods and pickled items.
He picked up the latest production progress schedule and plan sent by the dispatch room. He managed not merely a food factory, but a series of food processing enterprises within Lingao County: Heavenly Kitchen Sauce Garden, Marine Products Processing Factory, Grain Processing Factory, and more. There was also a batch of private workshops and trading firms inside and outside the county serving as cooperating units. It amounted to a food trust.
He quickly made a few tick marks with a pencil. Soybean arrivals from the Ming Dynasty were far below expectations, which would affect soy sauce production. Potato supply from Jeju Island had been completed on schedule, but beef and horse meat deliveries lagged significantly. Barring the unexpected, the delivery plan would fail for the third consecutive month. Salt delivery progress was normal...
(End of Chapter)