Before there was no Binhai New Area, or even before the Tianjin Development Zone, the area where my family lived was called Tanggu, and the pillar industries that had been several pillars were salt, chemical, shipbuilding and petroleum, and each industry had a large state-owned enterprise, and being able to enter these large enterprises was the most enviable job of the year, such as my mother, who had taught in the subordinate schools of the factory system, and the protagonist of today's story, my uncle, had worked as a fitter in the Xinhe Shipyard in Tanggu for eight years.
Xinhe Shipyard is a century-old factory, built in the late Qing Dynasty during the Western Affairs Movement, was established by Li Hongzhang to repair the ships of the Beiyang Marine Division, then called "Dagu Dockyard". In addition to building ships, Dagu Dockyard was also an important ordnance factory in northern China in modern times, and after being nationalized in 1949, it was renamed "Xinhe Shipyard".
In the 1970s, Xinhe Shipyard was one of the two largest shipyards in China that focused on engineering ship construction. The repair cycle of an engineering ship is about three or four months, and the engineering ship generally enters the factory between the ice on the river surface in winter, arranges the position, and waits for the river surface to freeze, the position of the boat is also fixed, the repair season officially begins, and when the river water is civilized in the next year, the boat will sail away.
When he entered the New River Shipyard as a fitter, Uncle Dae was only 16 years old. Born in 1954, he caught up with the Cultural Revolution before graduating from primary school, "suddenly one day the teacher became a cow ghost snake god, was put on a chair to criticize the fight, from the primary school instilled in those who want to be scientists, the People's Liberation Army ideals, in an instant shattered, and then the society was chaotic, the school was also closed", the unknown children spent two years in a state of sheep herding without learning.
"Later, when classes resumed and there was a revolution, I entered middle school, but I was pulled to the countryside to learn farming after two days of class, and after I came back, I didn't take two days of classes and went to a chemical factory to learn to work, and I stayed in middle school for less than two years. When the 'old three terms' all went to the mountains and went to the countryside, the enterprises in the city began to lack people, and our fate was relatively good this time, we did not go to the countryside, and were assigned to the factory as workers. ”
Workers are also divided into three, six, nine and so on, and fitters are of a very high status. "The fitter is one of the five technical jobs in the shipyard (lathe, fitter, rivet, electrician, welder), and I am a turbine fitter, that is, a fitter in the main production workshop, not a security fitter responsible for the normal operation of the production equipment in the factory." In the three years of apprenticeship, uncle's salary rose from 17 yuan per month in the first year to 21 yuan per month in the third year, and after he became a teacher, he began to take a fixed salary of 41 yuan and 3 cents per month, until 1978, when the college entrance examination changed his fate.
When Uncle Dabo heard the news of his acceptance to the university, he was repairing the ship in the engine room, and in the middle of the summer of August 1978, the hot sun burned the board of the ship, and he thought that his colleague who reported the letter was playing a prank on him, and he was very angry. A few days ago, his college entrance examination transcript had been sent to the factory, and the leader told him that he had only scored more than 200 points, and he would definitely not have a chance with the university.
In the winter of 1977, Uncle Da took the first exam after the resumption of the college entrance examination, which was a local independent proposition, because mathematics was zero points, and he fell behind. In the summer of 1978, when the first national examination was held, he retreated, on the one hand, in his view at the time, the fitters in the shipyard were a good job, on the other hand, he was afraid of falling off the list again after graduating from primary school, losing face, and under the persuasion of his family and friends, he reluctantly signed up.
His dream was to enter Dalian Institute of Technology (now Dalian University of Technology), which was the best school in China to learn shipbuilding at that time, followed by Wuhan Institute of Water Transport (now Wuhan University of Technology), but because mathematics was not good, he had to give up his major at that time and choose the only foreign language college that did not look at mathematical results, so when he took the college entrance examination for the second time, he was successfully admitted to the Japanese Department of Tianjin Foreign Language College.
When it comes to his chosen Japanese major, there is also a relationship. In 1976, the shipyard took over the maintenance of a Japanese ship, and all the mechanical instructions were in Japanese, but there was not a single technician in the shipyard who knew Japanese. "Of course, we can rely on past experience to repair, no problem, but I think the manual can not be read, many technologies can not be learned, others can not understand, if I can understand, I am better than them." 」 With this young man's competitive spirit, Uncle Dabo spent more than a year in Japanese at the night of the staff, until he could turn over the dictionary and understand the instructions. Unexpectedly, when the college entrance examination was taken, this Japanese foundation came in handy.
In the early days of reform and opening up, China's foreign language talents were very scarce, and in the eyes of people at that time, the way out for the graduates of the foreign academy was excellent, "one-third stayed in the university, one-third entered the government, one-third went to the foreign affairs system, and the university completely changed my life, as if I boarded the last train before leaving." After graduation, Uncle Dabo stayed in the school as a teacher for four years, and then because of a chance, he entered the Foreign Affairs Office of the Tianjin Municipal Government and began a career within the system.
In his second year at the Foreign Affairs Office, he was sent to Kobe, a city with a sister city to Tianjin, to work in the International Office of the Kobe City Government. This trip abroad subverted his education from childhood to adulthood, "I first began to understand the political system, social structure and international relations, and for the first time I came into contact with the outside world." When asked what Japan was like at that time, Uncle Dai said, "It is exactly the same as now, the price has not changed, at that time a bowl of noodles was three or four hundred yen, and now it is about the same price."
In the following year after returning from Japan, he was sent to Lhasa as a cadre aiding Tibet, experiencing a gap of day and place. "No one in the organs is willing to go to Tibet, and those of us who have gone are honest people who are embarrassed to refuse after the leaders put it forward." He remembers very clearly that the day on the Tibetan Plateau was October 29, 1988, his 34th birthday, "Lhasa is a valley that runs through the east and west, and every October the wind that passes through the valley comes, and the oxygen content in the air drops at once, and when I first went up, I was very serious with altitude sickness."
For more than two years, life in Tibet has been extremely difficult, they often live in places where there are power outages, they can't take a bath, and the supply of vegetables is almost entirely by air, resulting in high prices of vegetables, in addition to eating in the canteen, they can only eat instant noodles and canned lunch meat.
Due to his upright personality and poor interpersonal communication, Uncle Da's career started very well but was not smooth, and for more than a decade, "can't be mentioned" was often a topic of conversation at family gatherings, but leaving the system was still a risky decision for people at that time. In 2000, the famous Japanese semiconductor group ROHM Co., Ltd. wanted to invest in the construction of a factory in the Tianjin Development Zone, and Dabo participated in the reception work as a foreign affairs officer, and when he learned that ROHM Group was looking for the head of the institution in Tianjin, he saw the opportunity. As a result, he became the first employee of Roma China, "starting from the site selection and construction of the factory, Bought the first table, the first chair, the first car, and just like that, little by little..."
Leaving the system also means leaving the urban area, and he returns to the boundaries of Tanggu, but at that time, the glory of the old state-owned enterprises has long gone, and it has become a development zone lined with foreign enterprises. A few years later, it was incorporated into the then high-profile Binhai New Area.
In the past two years, the voice of Tianjin's economy has been continuous, and the decline of Binhai New Area has borne the brunt of it. The uncle of the foreign enterprises in Binhai New Area who has worked for more than ten years also has his own views, "On the one hand, our enterprises have not done a good job, on the other hand, Binhai New Area has not adjusted the industrial structure." When foreign capital comes in, the focus is on China's low labor costs, but in recent years, labor costs have grown too fast, especially after the promulgation of the Labor Law, domestic enterprises can not strictly implement, but foreign companies will definitely implement. Coupled with the different corporate culture and concepts, foreign companies attach importance to corporate social responsibility, and there is also a lot of investment in the environment and public welfare, which leads to the operating costs of enterprises suddenly being much higher. ”
According to Uncle Da's observation, most of the foreign companies that have left the Binhai New Area are labor-intensive, and their next stop is Southeast Asia, but for enterprises such as Roma, Southeast Asia is not a better choice, because the quality of southeast Asian labor is not as good as China, coupled with the fact that infrastructure such as roads, logistics, water supply and power supply cannot meet the requirements of high-tech manufacturing, these enterprises still hold a wait-and-see attitude towards staying while reducing investment in China.