Chapter 402 - Xun Suji Takes Office

"I wouldn't dare say there's an export market, but domestic demand for rice vermicelli is definitely substantial—I think you should go ahead and produce it," Huang Dashan said to Xun Suji. "The Executive Committee will start the Tiandu Development Plan in autumn. Thousands of people will gather on the beach. Having rice vermicelli makes cooking easy—just add water and seasoning and boil. It's even easier than noodles, which need alkaline water removal."

"Fine, I'll produce rice vermicelli then. Making rice vermicelli is easy and doesn't require much equipment..."

"Hehe, you think you're still making rice vermicelli in the cafeteria by yourself? At most, you made a few dozen jin. Now you need to aim for thousands, even tens of thousands of jin. There's a big difference between industrial manufacturing and manual production. Ask the machinery plant people to modify some food processing machines for you."

"Put that way..." Mo Xiao'an felt a bit dispirited. "MSG probably won't pass either—even if sweet potatoes aren't worth much, they're still grain."

"Deep-processed sweet potato products like MSG might be approved for export—as long as the added value is high enough. If one ton of sweet potatoes can fetch one ton of rice or a few hundred kilograms of pig iron, Ma Qianzhu will definitely agree."

Mo Xiao'an couldn't guarantee that MSG made from a ton of sweet potatoes would yield such high returns.

"I can't guarantee that. But when the Japanese sold MSG to China in the 1920s, they made a fortune. Even if the Ming Dynasty is decadent, it can't be worse than the 1920s. And we aren't necessarily worse than the Japanese."

"Zhang Xin will be back in Lingao to report on his work in a few days. Talk to him," Huang Dashan told Mo Xiao'an. "He's in Guangzhou, so his understanding of the market will be more accurate than our wild guesses."

Huang Dashan explained that making MSG wasn't actually difficult. As long as there were bacterial strains and fermentation conditions were controlled, starch or even simpler dried sweet potato powder could be fermented. They could make as much as they wanted—as long as there was starch or starchy materials.

"Fermentation is a mysterious thing," Huang Dashan said, beaming as he spoke of his specialty. "Bacteria are truly very cute..."

Mo Xiao'an and Xun Suji involuntarily stepped back, avoiding contamination by his "cute bacteria."

"This is the fermentation workshop," Huang Dashan said, pointing to a row of frame-structured, high-stilt factory buildings at the other end of the courtyard. Inside were sealed pots heated by steam or coal gas.

Though called a fermentation workshop, it was actually divided into separate sections. Huang Dashan was fermenting several different things inside.

Every workshop entrance had a disinfectant pool filled with lime water. Anyone entering or leaving had to walk through it as a basic disinfection measure.

"This is to avoid contamination by miscellaneous bacteria," Huang Dashan explained. "Some fermentation products don't have high environmental requirements, but others are quite troublesome."

Currently, several products in the fermentation workshop used starch or direct sweet potato utilization: besides the MSG Mo Xiao'an hoped to market in the Ming Dynasty, there was kvass, currently hot-selling in the cafeteria; vinegar fermented directly from sweet potatoes; and finally, citric acid, an important additive for both chemical and food industries. Production of the latter was relatively complex and occupied a large separate factory building.

"There's nothing much to see inside—mainly pots, fermentation tanks, and pipes of various sizes," Huang Dashan said. "I'll be coming over more often to look after this fermentation section in the future."

MSG was currently produced in small batches, each output only twenty or thirty kilograms, mainly supplying the various cafeterias. Huang Dashan said that if export channels could be opened, large-scale production would not be a problem.

"The food factory's equipment is very primitive, and the scale isn't large either." After touring the whole factory, Mo Xiao'an spoke to Xun Suji in the factory director's office. "Aside from the sweet potato workshop, there's just the fermentation workshop. You need to think of ways to expand production of new varieties. Besides export, we need them for ourselves too."

This directive made Xun Suji feel heavy pressure. After holding it in for a long time, he managed: "I'll think of something."

"Alright, use your brain more," Mo Xiao'an said. "You should know: the food factory belongs to the Lingao Grain, Oil, and Food General Corporation. Theoretically, it's under the dual management of the Agricultural Committee and the Light Industry Department. I'm the General Manager, and Wu Nanhai is the Deputy General Manager. In reality, neither of us has managed it properly—there are simply too many things to do. So until now, this so-called General Corporation is still just a shell. I discussed this with Wu Nanhai a few days ago. I plan to resign from the General Manager position. Wu Nanhai will become the General Manager, and you will be the Executive Deputy General Manager. From now on, it will center around you. Use the food factory as the core and gradually build up the entire General Corporation."

Xun Suji was truly shocked. Initially, he was just the food factory director, and before his seat was even warm, he was now the Vice President of the Grain and Oil Corporation—a promotion of three levels at once.

"This—" he stammered somewhat incoherently, "the responsibility is too great..."

"It's fine. Whose responsibility isn't great? People who used to be company commanders are now acting as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Someone with nothing but a bachelor's degree in law is acting as the Chief Justice of the Court—and by the looks of it, he's going to be the Minister of Justice. You, a former chef, becoming manager of a grain and oil corporation is actually a professional match."

Mo Xiao'an briefly introduced the situation of the Grain and Oil Corporation. Generally speaking, the corporation's assets consisted of four main parts.

First was the earliest industry of the transmigrator group: the water-powered mill on the Wenlan River. After several expansions, this mill had become Lingao's largest grain processing plant. In addition to water turbines, a steam engine had been installed to work when water volume was insufficient. Recently, the Industry and Energy Committee had installed a set of spiral cold-pressing oil equipment in this workshop, specifically for processing dried coconut transported from Yulin.

"The Grain and Oil Processing Plant is currently directly managed by the Agricultural Committee, so don't interfere with the specific production management details there."

"Good—I don't know how to mill rice or press oil anyway."

Secondly, there was the Agricultural Committee's earliest food processing factory in Bopu—the Bopu Seafood Processing Plant. Xun Suji was very familiar with this plant—the vast majority of ingredients in the cafeteria were supplied by it. It could process salted fish, roasted dried fish, fish cakes, fish sauce, fish oil, dried seaweed, and fish meal. Operations were very good.

Then there was the slaughterhouse at Nanhai Farm. The original plan was to upgrade it into a meat processing plant. In addition to slaughtering to provide fresh meat, they had planned to manufacture salted meat, sausages, and ham. However, meat itself was scarce at this stage. Whenever there was a good day for slaughtering pigs or sheep, the entire animal was pretty much eaten clean—bones, skin, and all. The so-called meat processing industry had so far only produced a few kilograms of dried meat to supply personnel working far afield.

Finally, there was the newly built food factory.

Mo Xiao'an explained that according to discussions between him and Wu Nanhai, the Agricultural Committee would oversee the Grain and Oil Plant and the Seafood Processing Plant, while the Light Industry Department would oversee the Meat Processing Plant and the Food Factory. Administrative affairs of the Grain and Oil General Corporation would be handled by Executive Deputy General Manager Xun Suji.

"That's the situation. Any questions?"

"None for now." Xun Suji was clueless at the moment and didn't dare express any opinions.

"It's fine! Wu Nanhai is very cooperative." Seeing his bewildered look, Mo Xiao'an comforted him. "If there are problems, communicate more with him. He will definitely help. After all, he is the General Manager!"

He turned to survey the office again. The room smelled of lime water, raw lacquer, and new wood. The four walls were whitewashed. Paired with the newly made desk and filing cabinet and a few rattan chairs, it looked very much like a state-owned enterprise office from the 1970s or 80s.

"Are you satisfied with this place?"

"It's quite good." Xun Suji nodded repeatedly.

"There is one drawback: there's no power supply here yet," Mo Xiao'an said with slight regret. Due to the need to conserve electrical wires and distribution equipment, many newly built non-critical facilities currently lacked power. The food factory had no electric motors, and not even wires had been run over. So if production ran into the night, they could only use gas lamps for lighting.

"Isn't my electricity quota wasted then!" This was what Xun Suji couldn't let go of.

"You'll just have to persevere for now. There will be bread eventually," Mo Xiao'an said nonchalantly.

Mo Xiao'an slipped away after handing over all procedures and relevant documents. He still had matters at the garment factory to deal with. Also, regarding the bold claim he'd made in front of Director Wen—"small merchants coming here won't be able to take silver away"—he had to develop several new products that could keep the merchants' money here.

Xun Suji sat alone in the office, looking at the whitewashed walls, the standard desk and filing cabinet, and a box of documents and account books for the food factory and Grain and Oil Corporation, calculating what he should do first.

Reasonably speaking, a new official should try to achieve some results quickly. But Xun Suji's mind was on his large box of personal contraband. The common feature of these items was that they couldn't be used without electricity. Since the food factory had no electricity, he figured it would be better to go back to the dormitory area to sleep—at least there was electricity there.

Originally, he planned to ask Xiao Zishan whether he could be assigned a single dormitory room so that using his quota wouldn't disturb his roommates. This wasn't difficult to arrange now: many people slept at night in their work departments, and there were plenty of four-person dormitories occupied by only one person. Xiao Zishan would definitely agree.

Xiao Zishan said that arranging a single room was possible, but if it was in the dormitory area, his extra electricity quota would be invalid. To avoid disturbing others in the collective dormitory, power was cut and lights went out for the whole dormitory area once bedtime arrived. Regardless of whether you had extra electricity quota, you had to sleep. If you wanted to read or use the computer, you had to go to the common recreation room, but even there it only stayed open until midnight.

"Wait—don't I have a secretary now?" Xun Suji's eyes lit up. With free labor, things would be much easier.

He hurriedly called Xiao Zishan, saying he didn't want a separate dormitory anymore and would just live in the food factory office. However, he needed to be assigned a secretary.

"Naturally, a female, to help me wash clothes and such. But she needs to be strong, not frail—capable of heavy work."

"No requirements for appearance?"

"No, this is purely for work. As long as she doesn't look scary and appears reasonably clean."

The administrative trainee who arrived was a girl, both dark and thin. Her appearance was unremarkable. She introduced herself in unfamiliar but basically understandable Mandarin as Jin Xishan. She was eighteen or nineteen years old, an escaped bondservant from Fujian, an orphan. As for why she fled—during the political review, everyone expected her to say it was because of abuse by her master or attempted rape, but the real reason was that her master didn't allow the maids in the house to marry.

Local wealthy people in Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, and other places during the Ming and Qing dynasties practiced a custom called "confined bondservants" (gubbi). Maids in the house were never married off after adulthood and were kept in the house for servitude until old age and death. This highly inhumane practice was to prevent property loss. After all, maids were mostly raised from childhood. No matter how much bride price could be collected from marrying them off, it couldn't offset the value of an adult woman's labor over a lifetime.

Jin Xishan had run confusedly to Guangdong, nearly falling into the hands of human traffickers, and was almost "snatched for marriage" by peasants without wives in the countryside. After a period of displacement, she was rescued by people from Qivei and arrived in Lingao.

Jin Xishan? Xun Suji couldn't connect the person in front of him with that artificial beauty no matter how hard he tried—this was too "natural." He wondered which Korean pop fan had given her that name.

Fortunately, Xun Suji hadn't expected her to be beautiful anyway. But could such a girl really be counted as "strong"?

Unexpectedly, when packing things at the dormitory, he immediately witnessed the hardships and endurance of ancient working women. He had brought a lot of equipment: a box full of microfilm technical data and related reading equipment, an astronomical telescope, a hand-crank generator, vehicle supercapacitors, various tools, a computer, and a large box full of digital products, plus a set of incredibly heavy copper-plate encyclopedias. These things had mostly remained unopened since D-Day. There had been no space to spread them out in the dormitory, nor electricity to use them.

Xun Suji unfolded his folding bicycle, strapping basic repair tools and spare parts to it. As for the other things, he asked Jin Xishan to find Xiao Zishan and request two laborers to help move them.

Jin Xishan, however, only borrowed a "Purple Lightning" wheelbarrow. She proceeded to strap all this miscellaneous equipment onto the cart. Then, with a fierce exertion of force, she managed to push up this wheelbarrow carrying a load of nearly two hundred kilograms. Xun Suji stared in dumbfounded amazement.

"Hey, hey—it's too heavy. Better hire two people."

"Chief Xiao said we'd have to wait an hour for people. We could be there by then. Let's go—there's another load," Jin Xishan said, pushing the cart toward the farm without a care. She walked and talked simultaneously, her expression unchanged, not even panting.

Throughout the journey, Jin Xishan not only didn't rest but also chatted with Xun Suji the whole way. Pushing and talking, face unchanged, breath steady.

Arriving at the office, she unloaded the items without resting, immediately returned to the dormitory area, and in one trip transported all the remaining items. The unloaded goods piled up into a huge heap—Xun Suji himself hadn't realized he'd brought so much stuff. Jin Xishan took the broom, wooden basin, rag, and soap locusts she had just collected from the Planning Committee warehouse off the cart. Cleaning, moving furniture, hanging curtains... she was busy as a bee. Xun Suji just stood aside blankly, unable to lend a hand—except showing a bit of usefulness when she asked him where to put which piece of luggage.

Xun Suji went into his bedroom and saw that the table had been wiped clean, fine bamboo blinds hung on the windows, a kerosene lamp was placed on the plain wood desk, and various things were arranged neatly.

"Chief, are you satisfied?"

"Very good." Xun Suji nodded with satisfaction. A secretary was indeed a wonderful thing. No wonder everyone had been longing for the Executive Committee to assign one.

Jin Xishan then opened her own luggage roll to unpack. Her bedroom was in a small room next door. Although Xun Suji hadn't had any particular thoughts initially, seeing his secretary living right next door, he couldn't help thinking it would be better if Jin Xishan were prettier...

He unpacked the hand-crank generator himself. This thing hadn't been out of the box since D-Day. He connected it to his UPS, battery pack, and vehicle supercapacitor one by one, and finally took out a power strip. As if to compensate for the frustration of not playing with them for nearly a year, Xun Suji plugged in his PSP, digital camera, and laptop all at once.

"Alright, Xiao Jin—you come and crank this handle every afternoon until this light turns green, understand?" Xun Suji said seriously. "This is a very important task and must be completed on time!"

"Yes, Chief."

With this human-powered charger, he could fully enjoy his wonderful otaku evenings. Although the 3D character in front of him wasn't very moe, the 2D world was still perfect.

After fully arranging his little life, Xun Suji began to think about what he should do to ensure this treatment could be maintained for the long term.

Mo Xiao'an wanted him to produce results. Where would these results come from? Export commodities and such were too complicated—better leave that headache to Mo Xiao'an. It was more realistic for him to start by expanding the variety of supplies.

He studied the food factory workshop production chart on the wall several times and checked the supply records and the list of raw materials available from the farm. After studying for a while, he picked up the phone, found Wu De's office number in the "Administrative Personnel Directory" he had just received, and dialed it.

That afternoon, Yang He at the quarantine camp received notification to gather all the soy sauce shop assistants, tofu makers, distillery workers, former cooks, restaurant waiters, and butchers from among the immigrants waiting for assignment after passing quarantine, and send them all to the food factory. Wu De also selected a few individuals with expertise in these areas from among the commune members who hadn't been assigned yet.

Xun Suji's first step was to separate the workshop functions from the cafeteria. After communicating with Wu Nanhai and Xiao Zishan, the indigenous staff and equipment originally responsible for making tofu in the cafeteria were all transferred to the food factory, establishing a bean product workshop specifically to produce tofu, dried tofu, and tofu skin. They also sprouted soybean sprouts and mung bean sprouts. Xun Suji had originally planned to use fermented tofu to make fermented bean curd, but he soon encountered a difficult problem—there weren't enough soybeans. Like soybean production in all Chinese rural areas at the time, soybean planting in Lingao was small-scale miscellaneous grain planting. Aside from supplying a few tofu workshops in the county, there was no surplus.

(Chapter End)