Chapter 5

Now a Suzuki 100 costs over six thousand yuan—enough to buy two color TVs—and aside from bosses and those who need it for work, young people like Zhang Ao buy them mostly to show off and impress girls; that’s the main reason young people buy them.

No. 1 Wireless Factory is in Xicheng, Pingyang City, while the fertilizer plant is on the east side; currently, most urban populations across the country are still small: Pingyang City has a total population of over 3.4 million, but only four to five hundred thousand live in the urban area, with the rest mostly residing in towns and rural villages.

Urban planning wasn’t a concern back then; whether light industries like electronics, textiles, and clothing, or heavy industries like fertilizer and steel plants, all were located within the city, and these state-owned factories essentially provided most of Pingyang’s jobs.

Li Dongling left Xicheng’s No. 1 Wireless Factory and entered the city’s main road, where the municipal office stood; behind this road was another street, the busiest in Pingyang’s urban area, home to the Pingyang Department Store, the post office, the TV tower, and more.

The buildings along this street—whether supply and marketing cooperatives, Pingyang’s best guesthouse for cadres, or the Pingyang Grand Hotel—were all low-rise and bore distinct stylistic marks of their era.

After entering the eastern part of the city, the area felt noticeably rougher, with far more dust on the ground; before heading to the steel plant, Li Dongling bought some tobacco, alcohol, and meat.

“Looking for Li Dongshan!”

At the steel plant’s gate, Li Dongling lit a cigarette, then tossed the remaining half-pack over; the guard glanced at the pack, said nothing, and slipped it into his pocket before walking inside.

“Dongling, what are you doing here?!”

Li Dongling sat beside his bicycle, waiting a moment, when a deep voice called out; Li Dongshan’s tall figure appeared before him, eyes full of joy—and a touch more.

“Big brother!”

Seeing Li Dongshan, Li Dongling stood up, gazing at his brother’s still-tall, unbent frame, his eyes growing damp.

Whether due to genetics or not, the Li family all had tall statures: Li Dongling stood nearly 1.8 meters, Li Dongshan was half a head taller, and their younger sister Li Dongyue was close to 1.7 meters.

“You came back and didn’t even tell me ahead of time—I would’ve come to pick you up!”

The simple, thickset Li Dongshan wiped his calloused hands on his dusty pants, “Have you eaten? Come on, I’ll take you out to eat!”

Li Dongling looked at Li Dongshan—he and their younger sister Li Dongyue had relied on his wages as a temporary worker at this steel plant to fund their university expenses; but because he’d worked there so long, he eventually developed lung disease, his back bent, and he coughed through entire nights until he was reduced to skin and bones.

Li Dongshan pulled at him, noticing Li Dongling hadn’t moved, and glanced at him in confusion, “Dongling, is something wrong?”

Hearing Li Dongling had returned to Pingyang, Li Dongshan squatted by the roadside, smoking his hand-rolled cigarette deeply; after a while, he muttered, “Dad wants you to go to the provincial capital—to big cities like Yanjing!”

“You can go to places like that in the future!” Li Dongling smiled.

“It’s not the same!”

Li Dongshan remained quiet, then sighed, “Fine, come back if you must—just don’t expect to make things right with Dad.”

“How are things with your wife?!” Li Dongling knew that at this time, Li Dongshan had set his sights on a girl, but had delayed marriage, giving all his earnings to him and Li Dongyue, and ended up wasting his own chance; the woman he eventually married, their life was miserable, filled with constant arguments.

At the mention of her, the big, simple man lowered his head between his knees; after a while, he said, “She left—her relatives helped her get transferred to a neighboring city.”

“When the time comes, bring her back,” Li Dongling said after a moment of silence.

Li Dongshan shook his head, lost in thought; the two men talked for a while by the roadside, but in the end, Li Dongshan refused the tobacco, alcohol, and meat Li Dongling had brought, then returned to work at the steel plant.

Only after Li Dongshan’s figure vanished from sight did Li Dongling ride his bicycle back to No. 1 Wireless Factory in Xicheng.

Early the next morning, all of the Technical Section arrived promptly; Li Dongling looked at the sixty or seventy people in the office—everyone was unusually quiet, clearly having heard rumors.

Xu Yiqiao gathered all of Technical Section into a large conference room, called roll, and when he confirmed everyone was present, his grim expression eased slightly.

“The factory leadership is deeply dissatisfied with our Technical Section. Sales of the Feiyen radio and Feiyen TV have plummeted—last month, we sold fewer than six hundred radios, and even fewer TVs; our warehouse is nearly full!”

“If this continues, we won’t even be able to pay our raw material suppliers, let alone your wages. The Sales Section claims our products are outdated and no one wants them—it’s all our fault as Technical Section!”

At Xu Yiqiao’s words, the room erupted.

“Which son of a bitch in Sales said that? I’ll tear out his tongue—if they cut even one cent from next month’s salary or bonus, I’ll fight them to the death!”

“Why blame Technical Section? The factory didn’t invest in a color TV production line—can we just hand-craft one?”

“If it doesn’t sell, it’s Sales Section’s incompetence—they blame the road for being bumpy when they can’t even walk! Can’t have kids? Blame the wife—why don’t they look in the mirror?”

The room filled with curses; Xu Yiqiao’s head throbbed, especially as the women, hearing their pay might be cut, grew furious and threatened to storm Sales Section.

Xu Yiqiao struggled for a long time to quiet them down: “The leadership isn’t blaming us entirely for the poor sales—but…”

“The factory has decided to upgrade its products. As Technical Section, we’re being asked for our input—what should our next new product be?”

Hearing this, the Technical Section members sighed in relief, then immediately burst into heated debate.

“It’s definitely color TVs—right now, they’re selling like crazy! If we’d invested in a color TV production line two years ago, we might not be behind Changhong, Haier, Hisense, Huanghe, Jinxing, or Mudan now!”

“I say refrigerators and air conditioners—those are real hard currency. Once produced, they sell out instantly. You know Chunlan—they made over five billion last year, and now they’re even moving into motorcycles!”

“Can you compete with Chunlan on air conditioners? Changling is just two streets away!”

The man who suggested refrigerators and air conditioners was left speechless; not just No. 1 Wireless Factory in Xicheng, but even wireless electronics factories in the provincial capital tended to avoid Changling, the local giant, and steer clear of the air conditioner and refrigerator markets.

“Wenyang, what’s your opinion?!”

At this critical moment, Xu Yiqiao still turned to Zhou Wenyang—daily perks and benefits never included Zhou, and Xu had always “overlooked” the grueling work Zhou did—but at key moments, he knew who the real asset of Technical Section was.

“I also believe we should focus on color TVs. We have TV production experience; jumping into other products would be too risky—we’d have to start from scratch.”

“Lately, I’ve been researching the color TV field, studying production line data from Japan, Italy, and Germany. From both technical and cost perspectives, I believe we should…”

“Enough, enough,” Xu Yiqiao cut him off. “The leadership is asking for our opinion out of respect—not for you to decide what production line to buy or where to buy it from. That’s the leadership’s decision, not yours. Your opinion—I’ll pass it along.”

Zhou Wenyang fell silent, his face flushed with embarrassment; seeing him reprimanded, many in Technical Section smirked—they all knew Zhou had long sought to stand out.

Seeing that most of Technical Section favored buying a color TV production line, Xu Yiqiao had already made up his mind—but then he remembered Li Dongling, who had just joined Technical Section, and added, “Li Dongling, what do you think? You graduated from Hanxi Jiaotong University—you’re one of our top talents. What should our new product be?”

Xu Yiqiao asked casually, expecting no real answer—but Li Dongling’s reply stunned him.

“I think we should keep making radios—shift from home radios to portable personal radios, and…”

Before Li Dongling could finish, the conference room erupted in stifled laughter; Li Dongling didn’t get angry, merely swallowed the rest of his sentence—the car radio part—back down his throat.

Li Dongling hadn’t finished speaking when stifled laughter erupted in the conference room; he wasn’t angry, merely swallowing back the words “car radio” he’d been about to say.