In the 80s of the last century, I worked as a military engineer in Guangxi 301 Factory for five years, and in retrospect, it was a "bitter and happy" life.
I still remember vividly that a very unpleasant thing happened on the day I reported to the factory. At that time, Li Hengfang, the chief of the administrative department, personally arranged for me to live in a room on the west side of the second floor of the single dormitory. There are two people living in this dormitory, one is Wang from Guanyang, and the other is Mo from Yongfu. This messy pile was piled up by Wang, and after he got off work, he couldn't help but make a big fire when he saw his belongings being moved and cleaned up, and even made violent threats to me. I was depressed for a long time on my first day in the factory, and I didn't think there could be such a wicked person in a dignified munitions factory, but soon after I moved to a dormitory at the top of the stairs in the same building, where a worker surnamed Gan lived, he was very friendly and did not reject my entry in the slightest.
Production plant
At that time, the wages of military enterprises were higher than those of ordinary enterprises, and I was 0.5 yuan more than my classmates.
At that time, the people of the whole country liked the military uniforms of the People's Liberation Army, but it was difficult to buy them in normal times, and I had a colleague whose family was in the Guilin District Administration Office, and he helped me buy one, and then I wore this dress back to my hometown, and the people in my hometown thought that the military factory was the establishment of the army, and actually asked me if I had a gun. At that time, the armed militia usually had guns, and I was a militia platoon commander, and I once carried that old-fashioned 79 rifle for a short time, so it is not surprising that people in my hometown have this kind of thought.
Wearing a military coat and liberation shoes next to the factory office
In the early eighties of the last century, although the location of the 301 factory is not deserted, but the traffic is not very convenient, only a Guida Road leading to the ancient town of Daxu passes by the living area, this hardened two-way four-lane road should belong to the high-grade road in Guilin at that time, it is said to be built to welcome the visit of Prince Sihanoukville. At that time, only No. 6 to Guilin Tire Factory and No. 9 to Overseas Chinese Farm buses passed, these buses departed at 6 o'clock in the morning and collected at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, all of which were more than half an hour apart before one trip, and they may not be able to squeeze in, only riding a bicycle is convenient. There is Guilin Grinding Wheel Factory on the opposite side of the living area, adjacent to the Petroleum Sixth Company, Guilin Candy Food Factory, Guilin Metrology Institute to the north, and there is a brick and tile factory under the ridge slope in the northwest in the distance, but there is about two kilometers of road section from Guilin Metrology Institute to Sanlidian in the urban area belongs to the barren area, the thorns on both sides of the road are overgrown, and the graves are towering.
The living area is not large, it is built under the slope on the east side of Guida Road, and a passage passes through the middle of the living area, leading directly to the factory area about two kilometers away, and you can walk to and from work. To the east of the living quarters, from north to south, are lined with six three-story family buildings, followed by small squares for public events, basketball courts and public toilets, as well as guest houses and kindergartens. From north to south, there are collective dormitories and auditoriums, staff canteens, bathhouses, boiler rooms, coal yards, fleets and auto repair plants. There are three dormitories, the one in the north has three floors, the two are two-storey, I live in the middle one, and the south one is for single women. There is no washroom or toilet in the dormitory for single workers, only three or four faucets are installed downstairs for washing, and it is easy to get a public toilet next to the basketball court 50 or 60 meters away. The living area seems to be surrounded by rural land, and there is a vegetable patch cultivated by the villagers of nearby Tianxin Village on the slope next to my dormitory. Except for Sundays, the rest of the days are spent commuting to and from work with the sound of the military horn, just like living in the barracks, but fortunately, I also live like this at school, and I am used to it.
The old dormitory was built in the early eighties of the last century
Most of the dormitories I live in belong to married half-side households, my roommate is half of the households, he is from the Yulin area, his wife and children are in his hometown, and he can only go home for reunion every year when he takes family leave. The term "half-sided household" appeared in the 80s and 90s of the last century, and refers to a couple in which one party is a rural resident and the other is an urban resident, that is, in a half-border household, the spouses have different institutional treatments, and the one who works in the unit is better treated with "imperial grain", while the peasant party is very hard to cultivate "responsibility fields" in the countryside, and their children are generally also in the countryside. There was a somewhat inferior perception of this title, and this peculiar phenomenon was a bitter tear at the time, and most of the workers in half the household were eager to change this dilemma. The warehouse keeper surnamed Li from my hometown supply department belongs to half of the household, and every year he has to take leave to go home from farming, and when he returns to the factory, he becomes swarthy and haggard, like a different person.
There is a Hunan worker who lives next door and is also a half-border household, and he once tried to accidentally break into a top-secret place during a casual conversation, and the state solved the problem of half of the household by taking his wife and children to live together in order not to leak the secret. This whimsical idea really opened my eyes.
My grandmother would come to visit me in the factory every year in the spring, in fact, it was a visit, but it was better to ask for money and grain, as long as I raised dozens of catties of food stamps and enough money to buy rice, she would leave home, because the family was waiting for the rice to be cooked. My two brothers also came during the summer vacation, and once the younger brother took a cold shower on the faucet downstairs and caught a cold, and at night I had a high fever and I didn't sleep well all night. My roommates were very understanding of me, and whenever my grandmother came, he would find another place to sleep and make room for my grandmother to live in.
Lively and happy young man
In the eighties of the last century, there was a lack of everything, life was monotonous and hard, single workers could only eat in the collective canteen, if they missed the meal time, they could only starve, so when they went out, it was estimated that they would have to call the workers to help them eat in advance if they missed the meal time when they went out. At that time, there was no entertainment after work, and having a radio was a luxury, so drinking and killing time was common. Often, three or five workers get together to put the dishes they call from the canteen in a big bowl, decant the soup and add a large bowl of boiling water, put some salt and monosodium glutamate to make a bowl of fresh soup, and then go to the factory commissary to play one or two catties of local wine to talk about the wine heroes, especially in the cold winter, a bowl of wine is warm all over the body. There are several times when I am happy to drink, the wine is still there, the food is gone, and the canteen has already closed after work, so I will plant the rice pepper planted on the windowsill as a landscape and the raw garlic I usually buy as a wine dish, take a bite of garlic and take a sip of wine, eat a pepper under half a bowl of wine, although the wine is spicy, garlic is spicy, and the pepper is more spicy, but I am actually happy in it, which is a memory of bitterness.
Young workers in Longsheng Hot Spring
I often get together with my colleagues in the same department, the district accountant, Lao Li, the warehouse keeper of the supply department, and Su, who enters the factory at the top job, and sometimes the workers in the same room will also participate, but once I drank and almost made a big incident. The drinking party was in the very cold winter, and a very strong charcoal fire was burned in a small clay stove, and everyone sat around the stove and drank after closing the doors and windows. Halfway through the wine, the district accountant said that he was very dizzy and didn't want to drink, we felt a little strange, usually his amount of alcohol was OK, today it seems that he didn't drink much, just when we laughed at him pretending to be drunk, I saw that his body was crooked and actually fell to the ground, which scared us, at this time the workers in the same room said that the doors and windows may be too closed and the gas poisoning, so they quickly opened the doors and windows to ventilate, and after a while, the feeling of dizziness of the district accountant disappeared. Luckily, we were all awake at the time.
The collective canteen is open after work, getting off work at half past five in the afternoon in winter, and extending it to six o'clock in summer. At that time, the outer ring road of Guilin had just formed a roadbed, and it was dusty on sunny days and muddy on rainy days, but we still enjoyed it until it was dark.
Of course, single workers can only take a bath in the collective bathhouse, and they can be washed at any time when it is warm in summer, for convenience, sometimes they are washed in front of the faucet downstairs, but in winter they have to use hot water, and the hot water of the year is supplied regularly, generally after work in the afternoon, and it is not supplied on holidays. One year, on New Year's Day, I worked hard and sweated, so I had to grit my teeth and take a cold shower in the cold water temperature.
What I still remember is that the housing of the staff is very tight, especially as the young workers get married one after another, the housing shortage is more prominent, so that the first floor of all the collective dormitories has been used as family rooms, in fact, the first floor of the collective dormitory where I live has been used as a family room except for a few rooms in the west as an infirmary, and the east side has long been used as family housing. After I got married, I also faced such a problem, from the application report in March to September of that year, there was no news of arranging a marriage room, until October, I took my wife to the Ministry of Ordnance Industry in Beijing to collect money and return to the factory and distribute the candy, which attracted the attention of the factory leaders, and allocated housing in the same month, this house that I had been looking forward to for more than half a year was the first floor of the girls' dormitory. It's really not a family that doesn't get together, soon, the marriage room of the worker surnamed Wang, who had made a violent threat to me, was actually arranged next to my house by the factory, once he passed by my door when he specially greeted me, I remembered that he had spoken badly to each other before and ignored it, he had to say that the incident has been a long time since then, don't hold a grudge anymore, he still remembers!
The 82 micro punch that was once produced
With the advent of the tide of reform, the military industrial enterprises of the small third line are facing the adjustment of military to civilian, but due to various reasons, the work of Guangxi 301 Factory in this historic reform and adjustment has not improved, and it has been in a state of shutdown for a long time, and most of the workers have nothing to do, and at that time, there was a large influx of workers in Guangxi Yonghong Machinery Factory in the big ravine, and the 301 factory at this time was really overcrowded. Since there was nothing to do, we sometimes ran to the barren grass next to the office building to bask in the sun during working hours, and watched the H-5 plane slowly fly over from the Lijiacun Airport on the skyline like a small mosquito, and gradually turn into a huge iron bird roaring overhead and leaving. In this situation, I should go, and I am eager to change my situation in a new environment.
In fact, I arrived at the factory a year later, graduated from Guilin Industrial Management School (the predecessor of Guilin Institute of Aerospace Industry) of the colleague commissioner's mother, who had already resigned and left, the cashier Li who graduated from Guilin Radio School (the predecessor of Guilin University of Electronic Science and Technology) was also transferred back to Nanjing, so our husband and wife also submitted a report to Guangxi Normal University (the predecessor of Guangxi Normal University), but what I didn't expect was that the secretary surnamed Zeng who was transferred from Guangxi Yonghong Machinery Factory in charge of personnel work refused to sign for a long time, although I went to his home to plead, he refused to sign on the grounds of work needs。 However, as his wife became pregnant, the secretary, surnamed Zeng, signed and allowed us to leave within three months, after which we were no longer responsible. When my wife went to the political work department of Guangxi Normal University with a big belly, the person in charge never mentioned the matter of receiving, which made our husband and wife desperate.
Ironically, the secretary surnamed Zeng who used to make a hard card to me later also left the 301 factory, I don't know if he remembered what he did when he left, maybe this factory really doesn't need him anymore, so he has to go.