Chapter 1310: Jin Ling City

At the end of October, Song Yunhui and Cheng Kaiyan got married.

They held a banquet in Jin Ling, attended only by relatives and close friends.

In the past, with the Song family wearing a political label, relatives and friends avoided them and kept their distance; from this perspective, Song Yunping's second aunt, who had introduced Wang Yan to her, was actually quite good.

Ever since Song Yunping married Wang Yan, the situation had changed completely, and the Song family had leaped directly to the very top of Jin Ling; as the saying goes, "When poor in a bustling market, no one asks; when rich in deep mountains, distant relatives appear," so various relatives and friends of the Song family emerged, often coming to visit.

It was not that they came to borrow money, for the people of Jin Ling lacked no small sums though they had no great wealth, and in areas requiring large sums—housing, marriage, medical care, elderly support, and education—everything was provided for, guaranteed by the entire operational system of Jin Ling.

They all came to curry favor, build connections, and show their presence; only a few shameless individuals wanted promotions and asked Wang Yan to arrange something for them, so Wang Yan sent them to the construction sites, where they worked honestly for three months, after which all other relatives and friends of the Song family also behaved themselves.

After holding one banquet in Jin Ling, they held another in Jinzhou, attended by Song Yunhui's friends and the Cheng family's relatives and friends.

Wang Yan and the others naturally went as well, so everyone could meet and get acquainted.

For this wedding, Wang Yan also contributed a portion of the expenses, gifting a full set of furniture produced by the Jin Ling Furniture Factory; as for the rest of the money, Father Song and Mother Song, who rarely spent anything in their daily lives, had saved a great deal, and since Song Yunping was the deputy director of the Electronics Factory earning nearly two hundred yuan a month with few household expenses, Song Yunhui's wedding was conducted very decently, while the Cheng family demanded no bride price and even provided a dowry.

The conditions in Jin Ling improved year by year, and coupled with the nation's continuous development and money printing, the people's wages naturally rose accordingly.

In Jin Ling, everyone's income was subject to inspection, with the salaries of all leading cadres from the county level down to the factories, as well as worker representatives, being publicly posted, and the ceiling for wages in Jin Ling was set at the level of the main leaders in the county and factories.

Starting from the initial development stage of several dozen yuan, rising to over one hundred, and now breaking through two hundred yuan, they were advancing toward three hundred.

However, those capable of earning such high incomes were absolutely not limited to these leading cadres.

Just like the various salesmen in the factories, the group with good performance earned only a few yuan less than Wang Yan and the others, which was the cap.

There were also R&D personnel for various projects who, after achieving results, received salary increases and bonuses, likewise reaching the capped level.

Excellent workers received raises, worker representatives received raises, those with good ideological study who published articles received raises, those who discovered problems in their work received raises, and those good at thinking and summarizing who solved minor production issues also received raises.

But excellent people were always a minority; among the current population of one million across the three counties, only over three thousand people could reach the ceiling, meaning basically that these three thousand-plus individuals played the key roles, leading the people of Jin Ling to forge ahead courageously.

If Jin Ling were compared to a large ship sailing on the sea, then these three thousand-plus people were active at various joints on the ship, carrying out repairs, renovations, and improvements, gradually transforming a broken wooden boat that departed from the port into an aircraft carrier, while the remaining people of Jin Ling were the sailors, rowing hard and working diligently to make this carrier named Jin Ling travel farther and faster.

And Wang Yan, as the captain, guided the direction, balanced the internal situation of the ship, and guaranteed the interests of the vast majority of sailors, putting the sailors first.

This was precisely why this group of leaders served as the red line for wages; judging by contribution and dedication, the leaders in Jin Ling County and its factories were people who truly got things done, working from dawn till dusk every day.

Wang Yan had single-handedly brought Jin Ling to its current state, allowing the people to live good lives; no one had greater merit than him, yet he did not take more or occupy more, nor did he embezzle collective property, receiving the same wages and benefits as everyone else, so those three thousand-plus people had no complaints, their thinking became correct, and they were able to restrain their desires.

After all, salesmen were not limited to earning just over two hundred yuan; if the commission standards were implemented without limit, a large number could earn ten thousand yuan a month; the patents and results developed by R&D personnel earned so much money for Jin Ling that earning one hundred thousand yuan a month was achievable; even a single procedure improved by some workers could enhance factory efficiency and generate more profit, warranting a monthly income of tens of thousands.

In fact, Wang Yan was suppressing Jin Ling's elite and exploiting their value to subsidize the broader population of Jin Ling.

However, Jin Ling was not thin to these people either, as their treatment was already very generous; they had status if they wanted status, reputation if they wanted reputation, and treatment if they wanted treatment, with overall balance maintained.

In Jin Ling, people must be pure; as long as this point was achieved, Jin Ling would treat every person of Jin Ling kindly, and all would be bathed in the light of the collective...

Jin Ling continued to develop at high speed, with roads extending farther and buildings rising higher.

Because Jin Ling did not wait for elevator prices to drop, it began manufacturing its own elevators; whereas buildings used to be six stories high, they were now nine stories, with the same area and layout but three additional floors, allowing each building to accommodate half again as many people.

The benefit of building high was exactly this: taller buildings accommodated more people, housing allocation sped up, and the people worked with greater happiness, daily reading the Jin Ling Newspaper to check the progress of worker housing and calculating when it would be their turn.

Of course, those doing the calculating were all people from the two newly merged counties, as the original people of Jin Ling had already all moved into apartment buildings; the newcomers were distributed to Jin Ling proper, the industrial zone, or various agricultural, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery workstations, all of which required manpower.

Actually, apart from being slightly farther away, there was nothing bad about the workstations; the factories built buildings there too, equipped with chefs to cook large-pot meals, and all necessary living supplies and shops were complete, since each managed a large area with populations ranging from several hundred to over a thousand living together, complete with wives and children, schools, and police stations, lacking nothing and falling short in nothing.

It was just not as bustling as the city, but the workstation warehouses were full of agricultural machinery, and when idle, one could drive a tractor into the city for fun, which was quite carefree.

Of course, these people did not feel that way so much at present; having just escaped the life of facing the yellow earth and looking up at the sky, even though they had switched to large-scale mechanized farming, they did not find the land particularly beautiful.

However, after another twenty years of development, Wang Yan believed that jobs in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery would become highly sought-after by Jin Ling's youth, because they would begin to need to feel the beauty of life; occasionally applying for a transfer to plant crops, pick fruits, or raise fish would become an enjoyable matter.

Jin Ling had more and more profitable businesses and higher productivity; even with a population of one million, after excluding the old, weak, sick, and disabled, the total labor force amounted to only seven hundred thousand.

Yet Jin Ling had numerous industries, with all factory scales expanding, including textiles, home appliances, steel, meat products, semiconductors, textile machinery, agricultural machinery, motorcycles, automobiles, beverages, food, papermaking, chemicals, school supplies, arts and culture, as well as industries along the chain of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery, plus massive infrastructure and public construction within the county, power, water conservancy, hospitals, education, and more.

One must also account for government civil servants and the large numbers of police and militia needed for stability maintenance, as well as fire protection and forest troops for security.

With seven hundred thousand laborers distributed across all these areas, as productivity was unleashed, manpower was simply insufficient...

Starting in 1983, the merger work of the three counties began, and by the end of 1986, over three years, Jin Ling achieved agricultural mechanization and streamlined its agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery work; simultaneously, rural population urbanization was initially realized, and although most people still lived in prefabricated houses, labor was indeed released into factories, significantly boosting production capacity.

By 1985, Jin Ling had discovered the fact of insufficient labor, because there was simply too much to build in Jin Ling, and basic and public construction alone occupied a massive amount of manpower.

Undoubtedly, compared to having people engage in construction, it was more cost-effective to have the people engage in production.

So, just like the previous time, Jin Ling requested personnel from the province, the province allocated quotas to various counties, and intra-provincial migrant worker flow began; by the end of 1987, the original hundred-thousand-plus Jin Ling people in the Jin Ling engineering teams were all dispersed into various factories, leaving only a few thousand Jin Ling people in the Jin Ling engineering teams to lead outside migrant workers, supervise operations, and ensure construction tasks were completed with quality and quantity guaranteed.

By this time, the number of workers engaged in construction in Jin Ling had reached nearly four hundred thousand.

This time, Jin Ling truly changed every day; internal roads were built to every agricultural, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery workstation, and even the roads between fields for convenient transport were paved asphalt roads.

Jin Ling's own urban construction became increasingly perfect and clean; there were more schools, hospitals were expanded to be larger, many parks of various sizes were built, the downtown area construction was completed, and outward radiation construction and development continued to advance.

The industrial zone was completed, operating smoothly with orderly production.

The construction of worker housing was also finished, solving the housing needs of the million-person population, and the city was basically constructed, or rather, the most basic construction was completed; infrastructure and public facilities such as roads, parks, public toilets, water systems, and power grids achieved city-wide supply, and what remained to be done was maintenance, upgrades, and expansion as the city grew.

Because of reform and opening up, Jin Ling had moved to the forefront, and having now achieved phased accomplishments, its influence naturally became even more significant; people came to film documentaries, various leaders conducted inspections, outside leaders visited to examine construction achievements, various news media interviewed and photographed everywhere on the streets, and foreigners came to Jin Ling to see the achievements China had made, creating a very significant impact on a global scale.

After such continuous publicity, domestic and international tourism enthusiasm surged; regardless of whether domestic or foreign, those with money and time all wanted to come to Jin Ling to see exactly how it had developed...

The boom in tourism naturally drove explosive growth in Jin Ling's service industry; Jin Ling's persistent adherence to protecting local historical and cultural architecture and sorting out local history was reflected at this time, at least providing visiting tourists with places to play while also conducting a certain amount of cultural propaganda work with considerable positive influence.

At least at this time, not everywhere valued these things; Jin Ling's demonstrative role was displayed, and various places invested certain resources in related aspects.

Additionally, this simultaneously boosted sales of various Jin Ling products; with popularity exploding, Jin Ling's products once again sold out, all kinds of livelihood-related items were sold out, people rushed to buy, enthusiasm ran high, and Jin Ling earned a fortune.

However, by this time the population was no longer one million; with deaths, births, state-assigned jobs, and self-hired college graduates, after adding and subtracting, another two hundred thousand people were added.

Therefore, housing construction continued, after all, marriage and childbirth required housing allocation and exchanges; unless one day Jin Ling's population began negative growth, only then would Jin Ling stop building apartment buildings.

However, it was also at this time that the newly built worker housing in Jin Ling finally ceased to be the same general style as before.

The reason for maintaining a single style for so long was to ensure fairness and justice, first uniformly solving the problem of "having" something, and then uniformly solving the problem of it being "good"; now that the people's need for moving from the ground to buildings was basically solved, it was natural to begin satisfying the people's demand for better living quality.

The buildings constructed previously were called the first generation of worker housing in Jin Ling, solving the problem of "having"; the second generation of worker housing now under construction was solving the problem of "good."

This time, the allocation method was based on marriage; newly married couples would be allocated better houses, and families needing to change houses due to newborn children would also be allocated into the new worker housing, transferring step by step in this manner.

As for objections from those who had married earlier, the county and factories issued dual regulations: except for retired cadres, no one was allowed to change houses and must remain in their original residences until all people had moved into larger and better houses, only then could leading cadres and civil servants change houses again; leading by example, no one should act up, and no one should make a scene.

It was no wonder people felt this way, because the second-generation worker housing was better; no longer following the previous layouts of fifty-five or seventy square meters, it now started directly at eighty square meters, followed by three area types: ninety-five and one hundred ten square meters.

Simultaneously, in terms of layout, the eighty-square-meter unit was a small three-bedroom, the ninety-five-square-meter unit was a large three-bedroom with two bathrooms, and the one hundred ten-square-meter unit was a large four-bedroom with two bathrooms.

The building still had nine stories, and the first floor still came with a courtyard. However, it was no longer the previous layout of three households per unit; instead, it had been changed to two elevators serving two households, with unit types interwoven and arranged in a staggered external configuration, pursuing aesthetics, comfort, and high quality.

It was estimated that a fifteen-year transition period would be required to complete this transformation, fundamentally altering the living standards of Jin Ling's people.

Achieving such accomplishments was, of course, due to Jin Ling's wealth; in recent years, its earnings had grown year by year as its industries exerted full force. From production to daily life, and further to the needs of a quality lifestyle, Jin Ling had goods to sell for everything. In just the past few years, it had even produced automobiles, computers, and more.

At the same time, Jin Ling was actively expanding into foreign markets. The foreigner, Lawrence, had already opened direct-operated stores for fast-moving consumer goods like shoes and clothing across the United States, and several years earlier had even penetrated the European market, bringing back an immense amount of foreign exchange.

It is worth noting that from 1985 to 1988, a span of four years, China's foreign exchange reserves were particularly scarce, totaling only two to three billion US dollars. Of course, that was the original historical timeline; in the current reality of these past few years, Jin Ling's annual foreign trade revenue alone had already exceeded one billion US dollars.

Beyond the European and American markets, Jin Ling had begun conquering Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, while also making inroads into the Middle East and Africa; overall, its foreign trade performance was strong, with revenue showing consistent growth...

However, markets were never truly free. Since China had not yet joined the World Trade Organization and lacked various preferential policies, Jin Ling's increasing profits over the past two years had begun to draw targeted opposition. Yet the problem was not severe; Jin Ling had also developed its shipping fleet and cultivated agents in multiple countries, employing every possible method to deliver goods abroad at the lowest possible cost.

Of course, these measures applied to items like shoes, clothing, and beverages—fast-moving consumer goods. In other sectors, Jin Ling possessed technological advantages and did not need to beg to sell its products abroad...

Thus, time flew by, reaching the middle of 1988.

Song Yunhui and Cheng Kaiyan returned to Jin Ling, bringing their daughter with them.

In the four years since Song Yunhui's marriage, he had not returned to Jin Ling. Shortly after the wedding, Cheng Kaiyan became pregnant, making long-distance travel inconvenient; after giving birth, caring for the child consumed over two years, during which he devoted himself entirely to his work.

Last year, he had originally planned to return to Jin Ling for a visit, but the establishment of the Donghai Project intervened. He voluntarily joined the project planning team, remaining busy until matters finally settled and the construction of the Donghai Chemical Plant began.

Song Yunhui had finally carved out some free time and intended to return to his long-missed hometown for a visit.

"Whoa!"

As soon as the train entered the vicinity of Jin Ling, Song Yunhui, along with the other passengers in the carriage, let out a chorus of exclamations.

"Jin Ling truly lives up to its reputation; it's incredibly wealthy and bold. Even the fields have asphalt roads! Our city still has plenty of dirt roads; what extravagance!"

"Look at that machine in the fields; good heavens, it's huge! One pass from this end to that, and it directly plows over a hundred mu of land! Everyone talks about mechanization, but today we've truly seen it with our own eyes."

"Look at how beautifully they've built these apartment blocks. Is this called the Hui style? Not only do they build houses, but they also incorporate what's called... art! Yes, exactly, art. Just looking at it makes one feel comfortable."

"This must be a national highway; good grief, it's full of vehicles, all hauling cargo. With all this traffic coming and going, it's all money; no wonder their development is so successful."