Text | Zhu Shengxiang Wang Xinghua
One day in the autumn of 1974, a few dusty city people came to the Hongguang Brigade Headquarters in Honghe Commune. The team leaders warmly received them, and after some greetings, the leader made it clear what he meant. It turned out that they were cadres of the Jiaxing Woolen Mill, and in order to respond to the call of the Party Central Committee to "go to the countryside with knowledge", they were ready to arrange for the children of some cadres and workers in the factory to come to the Hongguang Brigade to "cut the queue and settle down". This time I came to discuss with the brigade department the establishment of a settled youth point.
After discussion, the Party Branch Committee of the Brigade believed that this was a major event in response to the call of the Party Central Committee, and the Hongguang Brigade naturally welcomed it and agreed to accept the children of cadres and workers of the woolen mill to settle in the team. At the same time, it was decided to build a few houses in Dujiaqiao, southwest of the team headquarters, and set up a point for educated youths in order to receive these educated youths from the countryside.
In the summer of the following year, the Educated Youth Point was completed, welcoming the first batch of about 30 people from the woolen mill to the countryside. The originally silent Dujiaqiao had a vibrant atmosphere and began to be lively.
Life in the countryside is very hard, you have to work in the fields during the day, and there is no entertainment at night. The busy work and boredom of life soon offset the freshness of these young people when they first came to the countryside, but fortunately, everyone has the enthusiasm and consciousness to build the countryside, and they are gradually adapting to production and life.
This group of educated youths in the countryside has a certain cultural foundation, is intelligent, hardworking, able to endure hardships, and has the passion to change the appearance of the countryside and create a better life. Of course, the hard work in the countryside is also unexpected by them, and they always want to change something. Fate always shows hope in the arduous tempering, and a flame that is about to affect the development of the Red Light Brigade and even the entire Honghe and the surrounding areas is sprouting in this small educated youth.
They put forward a bold idea: to set up a knitting workshop in the educated youth point to produce knitwear, which can not only solve the requirements of the educated youth to participate in production, but also increase some income for the brigade collective. After several communications, their idea was agreed by the brigade headquarters, and the woolen mill was willing to support it strongly, and things went very smoothly.
After some intensive preparations, in October of that year, four flat knitting machines and a batch of production raw materials provided by the woolen mill were sent to Zhiqing Point. The brigade headquarters temporarily separated one room in the room for educated youth, as a production workshop, and temporarily named "Red Light Knitting Workshop". At the same time, a group of backbone educated youths were sent to the woolen mill and Haining Kip Stone Underwear Knitting and Weaving Society to learn from each other and carry out production training.
The sound of the hand-cranked flat knitting machine finally sounded in this small workshop in Dujiaqiao. Perhaps none of these young people would have thought that these only four hand-cranked flattening machines would sow the seeds of Honghe's woolen sweater industry, and gradually grow into Honghe's pillar industry after a few years, and thus develop into an influential large-scale professional market in the country, changing the fate of hundreds of thousands of people in Honghe and its surroundings.
Production in the humble bungalows was a faltering start, and the initial processing and production was only scarves, puffed shirts, and puffed pants. The raw material is cheap bulky wool yarn, not real wool, but it was still loved by people at that time, and in the winter of those years, there was a puffed scarf and a set of puffed clothes and pants, which could really resist the cold and wet in the south of the Yangtze River. The finished products produced in the workshop are regularly sold to Shanghai and other surrounding cities through the woolen mill, and the production and sales are smooth.
With their fiery energy, the young intellectuals are improving their production day by day and the scale is expanding. A year later, the number of knitting flat knitting machines quickly increased to 20, which was still a production workshop in name, but in fact it was already a small-scale factory.
Dujia Bridge, a point of educated youth, was originally a wasteland, with only an ordinary dirt road that was not wide, and there was no road to the outside world. The transport of raw materials and finished products in the knitting workshop can only be carried out by water, the only river.
Starting from Dujiaqiao Port all the way around the Jiuli Port of the National Boundary Bridge, it is connected to the Changshui Pond in a tortuous and roundabout way, and then goes north for more than ten miles to enter the city river, if the boat is cranked by hand, it will take a day to come and go, which is very time-consuming. For this reason, Master Jiang Quanshen from the carpentry factory of the brigade was later invited to lead a group of workers to renovate a motorized steamer for the educated youth, which solved the transportation problem. Since then, people have been able to see the motorized steamer under the Dujia Bridge every once in a while, coming and leaving with a full load. The "sudden" sound of the engine and the long ripples left on the surface of the river became a scenery in the eyes of people in that era.
Under the influence of the knitting workshop of Dujiaqiao, Honghe Commune set up the first socially run sweater enterprise - Honghe Knitting Factory, and three years later set up the second knitting factory of Honghe. At the same time, some family workshops producing woolen sweaters have also begun to appear, and the dawn of Honghe sweater production has appeared.
In 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee was successfully convened, the wave of reform began to surge, and the vast rural areas also ushered in good opportunities for development. This year, the young intellectuals who went to the mountains and went to the countryside began to return to the city one after another in accordance with the policy. The educated youths of Dujiaqiao have also left this hot land where countless struggles and sweat have been sprinkled and the dreams of youth have been weaved.
At this time, the red light knitting workshop has become a certain scale, and the development momentum is very good. After the educated youth returned to the city, the Hongguang Brigade naturally took over the management of the knitting workshop. In view of the fact that the scale of production has long exceeded the scope of the workshop, with the strong support of the leaders of the commune, it was officially renamed "Jiaxing Honghe Hongguang Knitting Factory" and set up the first team-run enterprise in the commune.
As a result, Hongguang Knitting Factory has entered a rapid development channel. The young people in the team came ashore from the fields and turned into workers in the factory. The girls were trained to become knitters, and the clever guys became mechanics in the factory. At that time, production was in three shifts, and the flat knitting machine did not stop 24 hours a day. From morning to night, the rhythmic sound of the hand-pulled flat knitting machine resounded through the field, breaking the morning and dusk of Dujia Bridge.
Production developed, and the original motor steamer was overwhelmed. The leaders of the Commune also saw this problem and thought that the best way to do it was to build a road. However, the commune and the brigade did not have the financial resources to build a road, even a gravel road that could pass ordinary trucks. Therefore, the leadership of the commune decided to build a simple road, mobilized the majority of members, and relied on simple machinery and equipment to build a 3-kilometer-long Hongkip Highway to connect Dujiaqiao and Hangfeng Highway, thus solving the transportation problem of Hongguang Knitting Factory.
With the rapid development of Hongguang Knitting Factory and the establishment of the second knitting factory in Honghe Commune, the prototype of Honghe woolen sweater industry gradually emerged. In 1986, after the commune and brigade were restored to townships and villages, the Hongguang Brigade was renamed Taishiqiao Village, and the Hongguang Knitting Factory was also renamed "Jiaxing Taishi Woolen Sweater Factory", and a printing and dyeing workshop was set up at the same time.
The factory has grown from dozens of people to more than 400 people, and has achieved the goal of 300,000 yuan in annual wages and 300,000 yuan in profits and taxes for all employees. The village used the profits from the woolen sweater factory to build a cement road and built the first village-run waterworks in the township, so that the villagers could drink clear tap water from then on, creating a precedent for Honghe village to have tap water.
In 1987, there were 8 township-run woolen sweater factories and village-run woolen sweater factories in Honghe Township (now Honghe Township). The products produced by township and village-run enterprises have gradually been recognized by the market because of their low price and good quality, and the products are sold all over the country. Family workshops are also on the rise, mushrooming like mushrooms. The government seized the opportunity to take advantage of the situation and set up a humble woolen sweater trading market, which then developed rapidly with the momentum of a prairie fire.
The first four flat knitting machines in the wilderness of Dujiaqiao finally ignited a raging fire, holding up a large professional market of sweater industry with great influence in the country a few years later, and today, knitted sweaters have become a veritable pillar industry of Honghe.
The big waves wash the sand, showing the true colors of the times, and these educated youths who settled in the queue in Dujiaqiao are almost ancient. In the autumn of 2021, some of the surviving representatives of the educated youth returned to Taishiqiao Village to visit their hometown.
Half a century of reincarnation, there is no trace of the educated youth who once lived, only Dujiaqiao is still lying quietly on the familiar river. Everyone touched the scene, full of emotion, no one expected that the four small flat knitting machines that were unwilling to be lonely turned out of Honghe's beautiful life today.
【From Xiuzhou CPPCC】
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