Chapter 39: Summary

“Little Yun,” Du Wen said, pushing up the black-framed glasses on her nose. She stood up from behind her desk and paced around the room. “Your report is excellent! I’ve already spoken with the Office of Truth. The Enlightenment will publish the full text of your report—not the eight-legged essay version from the Times.”

As she spoke, Stalin’s gaze from the plaster bust on her desk was fixed on Yun Suji. Yun Suji felt a little uncomfortable, not because of the Iron Man’s gaze, but because the address “Little Yun” was truly nauseating.

“It’s alright,” Yun Suji said, hiding his feelings. “Go down to the grassroots more often, and you’ll find everything.”

“The problem is that no one is willing to go down and see! They all want to be bureaucrats and masters!” Du Wen said resentfully. “I knew this bunch of petty bourgeoisie would never amount to anything…”

Yun Suji didn’t want to delve deeper into this issue. He shifted in his seat. “If there’s nothing else…”

“No, I have more to say.” Du Wen sat down again in her chair. “This trip to the countryside by the Yuanlao, in my opinion, is more symbolic than practical. But even so, it’s enough to let the Yuanlao know what the real countryside is like, so they don’t just build cars behind closed doors all day.”

“Exactly, exactly,” Yun Suji nodded.

“What I’m most worried about now is that after the Yuanlao go to the countryside, they’ll all have a bout of ‘St. Mary’s disease’,” Du Wen said with a worried expression. “After a few discussions, the Yuanlao’s ears will soften, and they’ll come back spouting nonsense like ‘the peasants are too hardworking, their burden is too heavy,’ and they’ll restrain the reasonable infrastructure requirements of our industrial society, letting nature take its course in a pastoral idyll.”

Yun Suji nodded.

“If this goes on, we’ll just end up back where we started: the whole village will be idle, they’ll hold a big bowl for a meal and squat at the village entrance for half a day, the young women and girls will gather to sew shoe soles and gossip about ‘who’s doing what with whom,’ and the men will gamble, fight, and beat their wives… I know rural life very well. Where I’m from, the countryside traditionally had two harvests a year. The busy farming season, including planting, harvesting, and field management, totaled only two months. They were idle for ten months. Now, a little extra labor duty is just what they need to keep them from having time to beat their wives…”

Perhaps she noticed the slight smile on Yun Suji’s lips. Du Wen continued, “Comrade Little Yun, don’t think my opposition to wife-beating is a feminist way of thinking. Wife-beating is a shameful expression of a patriarchal society. But its prevalence in the countryside fully proves that the peasants are still very idle! You see, it rarely happens in workers’ families. Didn’t you say that the villages you visited had a lot of wife-beating and adultery? So, the labor duty is still not enough!”

Yun Suji said, “I personally think the amount of labor duty is debatable. The total amount of labor now may not have reached the lower limit, but there are still many problems with the distribution of labor, including abuse and unfair allocation. In addition, some labor arrangements are unscientific, like assigning military shoes per person. I have communicated with the logistics department, and the quality of the military shoes assigned is generally not high, with serious corner-cutting. Also, labor duty should be done locally. Sending them too far away not only takes up travel time but also requires the peasants to bring their own dry rations and luggage, increasing the burden on the households.”

“These are all details that can be fine-tuned,” Du Wen said. “But the basic tone of rural work cannot be changed! We must educate them to change their old concepts, customs, and backward lifestyles. Otherwise, once the backward and old habits and concepts return, the suffering of ‘famine, death, and displacement’ will immediately cycle back. The true meaning of life is ‘you have to work from the day you are born, only then can your life be prosperous and secure,’ adding bricks and tiles to the faith of ‘the Senate saving and leading the whole world.’ Some Yuanlao are already saying that my study classes and campaigns are simple and crude—I admit that there have been some individual excesses. But the general direction is correct! For the Senate to achieve the second five-year plan of rapid technological advancement and territorial expansion, it must transform society and prioritize efficiency!”

“Yes, yes, I think so too.” Seeing the agitated Du Wen, Yun Suji couldn’t help but shrink back a little.

“So our views are the same.”

“On the issue of rural work, my views are the same as yours,” Yun Suji nodded. This was not just agreement for the sake of it. To realize the various grand ambitions from the beginning of the transmigration, they had to be more efficient than other systems: whether it was the efficient extraction of surplus products, restraining the alienation and expansion of the bureaucracy, suppressing the tendency of involution in grassroots control, or climbing the technology tree and expanding industrialization.

“Our State Secretary Ma said: ‘A large part of the surplus products possessed by the upper class is consumed by the upper class itself. Much wealth is even embezzled by officials and lower nobility during the collection process. But from the overall trend, the amount of surplus products collected is directly proportional to the stability and expansion capacity of the upper class. Therefore, the long-term competition between systems favors the system that collects as many surplus products as possible.’ How can we collect products as effectively as possible? How can we improve labor efficiency more effectively? This needs to be discussed thoroughly,” Du Wen said with great enthusiasm. “In the final analysis, we need a grassroots organization with combat effectiveness!”

Yun Suji expressed his agreement.

“Unfortunately, the existing human resources are not up to the task. They have been too influenced by the old society, and their outlook on life and values are difficult to change. We still have to place our hopes on the young people.”

“That is indeed the case,” Yun Suji rarely found himself in agreement with Du Wen. “As for the current village cadres, someone like Fan Shier is already a rare talent. Old Huo is so-so. Most of them can only be said to be unusable. But for young people to take on heavy responsibilities, they still need sufficient education.”

Du Wen nodded with satisfaction. “So we need a strong social group to unite, organize, and guide them!” Du Wen’s enthusiasm left Yun Suji a little confused.

“What do you think of the Yuanlao Youth League?” Du Wen suddenly asked.

“Very good. We do indeed need such a youth organization,” Yun Suji said, thinking of the Yuanlao Youth League cadre training class he had encountered in Qiongshan. He had a very good impression of it: pragmatic.

“A good organization also needs good leadership. Otherwise, I’m afraid it will go astray.”

Yun Suji suddenly understood. So Du Wen also wanted to get her hands on the Yuanlao Youth League! That’s why she was trying so hard to win him over, thinking he agreed with her philosophy.

Speaking of which, Yun Suji did agree with many of her ideas, at least on the grassroots work. Her biggest advantage was being down-to-earth. In the entire Senate, only she and her Social Investigation Department had been able to calm down and do grassroots research in the past few years.

“Some people want to turn the Yuanlao Youth League into a Boy Scout troop. I can’t agree with that. Holding a campfire party, camping, hunting a few rabbits, learning a few knots, enriching the students’ lives, and strengthening their bodies, that’s not wrong. But they have more important things to learn—first and foremost is political study!”

To avoid listening to her long-winded speech, Yun Suji quickly stated 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 his office at the food factory in a daze. His conversation with Du Wen had left him a little uneasy. It seemed there would be another struggle over the leadership and philosophy of the Yuanlao Youth League.

Yun Suji pushed open the window of his office. His current office was already a small suite on the second floor. Outside the window was the food factory’s earliest workshop, Number One: the “Cleaning Workshop.” These workshops were no longer simple red brick pillars, bamboo and wood trusses, and reed mat sheds. Except for the brick pillars, the trusses had been replaced with wrought iron, and the roofs had been replaced with corrugated sheets hot-rolled from galvanized iron. Looking out the window, chimneys spewed black and white smoke, and for a moment, he felt as if he had returned to the old industrial districts of his former world.

A sweet smell permeated the air. It was the smell of the gruel being boiled in the instant food workshop to make relief rations. In addition to dried sweet potato powder, a considerable proportion of sugarcane bagasse powder was added as a filler, which, of course, also added some calories. After all, there was still a lot of sugar left in the sugarcane bagasse.

The production scale of relief rations had doubled, while the production scale of the kvass workshop had been halved. On the one hand, the main raw material for Lingao kvass, sweet potatoes, had to be used to make relief rations. On the other hand, it also freed up more workers. After all, the mainland campaign still relied on grain, not beverages.

Because of the mainland campaign, the food factory’s production had entered a full state of war readiness. The product line had been completely adjusted. Now, except for products with foreign trade demand whose production capacity had not yet been compressed, all other products had made way for war readiness production.

“A new quota of 5 tons of fruit candy has been issued. Are we trying to learn from the Japanese devils?” Yun Suji muttered, looking at the latest “military supply order.”

In addition to fruit candy, there were all sorts of things on the “military supply” list. Yun Suji had originally planned to produce canned food for the army. After the mass production of galvanized iron sheets, it was still difficult to produce all-metal cans, but it was not difficult to produce glass jar cans sealed with tinplate. The food factory had already started small-scale batch production. But the logistics headquarters believed that glass jars were fragile and had high losses, so they rejected the proposal. Thus, the army’s instant food was mainly composed of dried goods and preserved foods.

He picked up the latest production progress report and plan from the dispatch room on his desk. He managed not only a food factory but also a series of food processing enterprises in Lingao County, including the Tianchu Soy Sauce Garden, the seafood processing plant, and the grain processing plant. There was also a batch of private workshops and trading houses inside and outside the county that were cooperative units. It was equivalent to a food trust.

He quickly drew a few lines on it with a pencil. The arrival of soybeans from the Ming Dynasty was far below his expectations, which would affect the production of soy sauce. The supply of potatoes from Jeju Island was completed on schedule, but the delivery of beef and horse meat was significantly behind schedule. If nothing unexpected happened, it would be the third consecutive month that the delivery plan could not be completed. The delivery progress of salt was normal…