Chapter 597: Rejecting the Iron Rice Bowl

February 1992, China, Shanghai.

In the courtyard of Takahashi Textile Factory on Pingliang Road, Yangpu District, a notice written in black characters on red paper was posted—next month, the new Saionji industrial park located in Waigaoqiao, Pudong, would officially go into production, and the factory management was preparing to transfer the first batch of technical backbones from the old workshop to cross the river and guide the newly recruited apprentices.

As soon as the bell for the end of the early shift rang, the publicity board was crowded with chattering young female workers.

“Group Leader Shen, I heard that your name is at the very front of the first batch list!”

A young girl who had just entered the factory half a year ago linked arms with Shen Xiaoyun, her eyes full of envy.

“Those who entered the factory early are truly blessed. How did you have such foresight back then to step right into this Japanese factory of ours?”

“Foresight?”

Twenty-four-year-old Shen Xiaoyun looked at her name on the red paper and couldn’t help freezing for a moment, a subtle smile appearing at the corner of her mouth.

Nowadays, every young person was racking their brains to squeeze into foreign-funded enterprises.

But few people still remembered what this name looked like when it first landed in this city—in fact, there were neither ten-thousand-ton berths nor rows of modern factory buildings.

Turning the clock back five years, it was nothing more than a garment factory hidden at the street corner of an old industrial area in Puxi, with a signboard that even looked somewhat inconspicuous.

…

January 10, 1987, the eleventh day of the twelfth lunar month, Shanghai.

Just past six o’clock in the evening, the winter sky had already turned pitch black.

In an old-style shikumen alley on Pingliang Road, Yangpu District, the fishy aroma of cutlass fish hitting hot oil and the smoke from coal-ball stoves drifted from the shared kitchens of every household.

Nineteen-year-old Shen Xiaoyun pushed her family’s Forever brand women’s bicycle, which had been ridden for a dozen years, through the narrow corridor draped with wet cotton long-johns, and parked the bike in the corner of the patio.

She didn’t rush into the house. Instead, she first stood under the dim hallway light, and through the pocket of her thick cotton-padded jacket, she pressed hard on the bulging kraft paper envelope inside.

Confirming that the corner of the envelope was stiffly pressing against her palm, she took a deep breath and pushed open the wooden door of the ground-floor living room.

In the fourteen-square-meter room, a somewhat dim fluorescent light bulb hung in mid-air.

Her father, Shen Guorong, was sitting by the eight-immortals table, drinking yellow wine with a small dish of peanuts; her mother, Zhou Guifen, walked in from the kitchen holding a steaming bowl of salted vegetable and shredded pork soup. Seeing her daughter enter, she casually placed her chopsticks on the table.

“Why are you back so late today? Does the neighborhood sewing cooperative have to work overtime at the end of the year?”

Zhou Guifen muttered while untying her apron.

“Right on time, Old Chen from the labor and wage section of your father’s factory just sent word over, saying that the recruitment quota for the state-run No. 3 Cotton Textile Factory in early spring has already been reported to the bureau.”

“Go for a medical examination after the Lantern Festival, and you can officially enter a large state-run factory to hold an iron rice bowl! Tomorrow, go to the neighborhood committee and quit that temporary job.”

Shen Guorong listened from the side, took a sip of wine, and let out a sigh of satisfaction.

“This trip finally wasn’t a waste of effort. Xiaoyun, for this quota of yours, Dad ran back and forth to the old leader’s house four or five times, and even took the two bottles of Luzhou Laojiao that had been hidden in the wardrobe for several years.”

In his eyes, for a young girl to be able to enter a state-run large factory with two thousand people, even if the first three years as an apprentice paid only thirty-eight yuan and fifty cents a month, it was still a proper way out with guaranteed income regardless of drought or flood, and the state would cover everything from birth to death.

Shen Xiaoyun stood by the table, not taking the rice bowl handed over by her mother.

“Mom, I’m not going to No. 3 Cotton for the medical exam.”

The room suddenly fell silent.

The soup spoon in Zhou Guifen’s hand paused in mid-air: “What nonsense are you talking about? For this quota, your dad’s old face has almost been worn out…”

“I haven’t been working at the neighborhood sewing cooperative.”

Shen Xiaoyun bit her lip, pulled the kraft paper envelope out from the inner pocket of her cotton-padded jacket, and placed it with both hands on the oilcloth tabletop of the eight-immortals table.

“I stopped going to the neighborhood in October. Together with my classmate, I took the exam for that Japanese factory at the west end of Pingliang Road—Takahashi Textile. I’ve already passed the two-month probation period and just became a regular worker today. This is the salary I received this month.”

“A Japanese factory?!”

The wine cup in Shen Guorong’s hand slammed onto the table with a snap, and his complexion sank visibly to the naked eye.

“Say that again?! The family has been scrambling to pull strings for you to get the iron rice bowl of a state-run large factory, and you—your guts have grown fat, daring to hide it from your mother and me and run off to work for the foreign devils?!”

“What proper guarantees can a factory run by those Eastern Ocean people have? Bringing back an envelope like this, do you think you can shut my mouth?!”

Seeing that her husband had lost his temper for real, Zhou Guifen also panicked and hurriedly pressed down on her husband’s table-pounding hand to smooth things over: “Old Shen, don’t rush to get angry yet. I want to see how much money this Japanese factory can give her, making her willing to give up even a state-run large factory…”

With that, she grabbed the envelope on the table and suspiciously poured it hard onto the tabletop.

A stack of banknotes slid onto the green-grid plastic tablecloth. At the very top were eleven neatly arranged ten-yuan Great Unity banknotes, underneath which were pressed one five-yuan, two two-yuan, and several fractional notes, plus a wage slip stamped with a blue seal.

The couple stared at the thick stack of banknotes on the table, completely stunned.

Shen Guorong was forty-eight years old this year, a sixth-grade veteran lathe operator in the factory. With his seniority subsidy, night shift allowance, and non-staple food price subsidy, at most he only earned eighty-six yuan a month.

Yet the yellow-haired girl in front of them, who was only nineteen and had gone out to work for two months, brought back money that was actually more than thirty yuan higher than what her father earned in a lifetime!

After a brief dead silence, the room did not ring with a shred of joyful sound.

“One hundred and nineteen yuan and sixty cents…”

Zhou Guifen counted twice, her fingers trembling slightly. When she looked up at her daughter, instead of joy, her eyes were filled with panic.

“Xiaoyun, tell Mom honestly, this money… did the finance department of their factory make a mistake on the abacus and give you someone else’s two months’ wages?!”

“It wasn’t a mistake!”

Shen Xiaoyun hurriedly pushed the wage slip printed with a table forward.

“Look closely, the basic salary is forty-five yuan, the full-attendance bonus is ten yuan, and the remaining sixty-four yuan and sixty cents are all piece-rate bonuses for Grade A products I pedaled out this month!”

“What Grade A products, Grade B products! There’s no reason for a young girl who has just entered the factory for two months to get one hundred and twenty yuan!”

Shen Guorong slammed the table fiercely and stood up.

This old worker, who was usually honest and submissive in the alley, was now so anxious that the veins on his forehead were twitching, and pointing at the banknotes on the table, he shouted:

“What do you know! Foreigners run to our ground to open a factory, why would they pay you a wage higher than a state-run factory director? Where in the world is there such a good thing as a pie falling from the sky! Either the accountant calculated the account wrong, and when they check the inventory at the end of the month, they’ll charge you with embezzlement!”

“Or those foreign capitalists have bad intentions, using a few stinky coins to coax you guys to risk your lives. Once they make a big score, they’ll pack up in the middle of the night and take a boat back to Japan, and by then you won’t even find a temple door to cry at!”

“Dad, they came here after properly signing a contract. Three hundred sewing machines in the workshop are running every day, how could they run away in the middle of the night…”

“Shut up!”

Shen Guorong couldn’t listen at all. He grabbed the banknotes on the table, stuffed them back into the envelope, and slammed them stiffly in front of his daughter.

“Early tomorrow morning, I will accompany you to that so-called Takahashi Textile, return the extra money to their finance department, and quit the job by the way! Stay honestly at home, and go report to No. 3 Cotton after the New Year!”

In the past, as long as her father slammed the table, Shen Xiaoyun would have been scared into lowering her head and admitting her mistake.

But looking at the envelope on the table today, she thought of the past two weeks in the workshop—in order to practice well the requirement demanded by the Japanese factory director that the error of “every inch of stitch spacing must not exceed half a millimeter,” she would gnaw on cold steamed buns every noon and lie in front of the sewing machine practicing stitching with waste cloth scraps. Her thumb pads had been pricked by the machine needle twice, and a layer of hard yellow calluses had worn onto her index finger.

That sixty-four yuan and sixty cents bonus was pedaled out piece by piece of clothing by her; why should she return it just because they said so?

“I won’t return it! Nor will I quit!”

Shen Xiaoyun’s eyes turned red. She grabbed the envelope and tightly protected it against her chest, turning and rushing into the small loft, latching the wooden door bolt with a click.

“Rebellious! She has truly turned rebellious!”

Shen Guorong stamped his feet downstairs in anger.

That night, the sighs and tossing and turning in the living room dragged on until the second half of the night.

The next day was Saturday. Before dawn, Shen Xiaoyun tucked two big flatbreads into her pocket and sneaked out of the door.

She originally thought that hiding in the factory could give her peace and quiet for a day, but unexpectedly, just as she finished the early shift at 4:30 in the afternoon and walked out of the workshop with several young sisters, she caught sight of a familiar figure standing outside the iron fence at the factory gate, pushing a dilapidated 28-inch bicycle and wearing a dark blue denim cotton-padded jacket.

“Dad?!”

Shen Xiaoyun was startled and hurriedly trotted over.

Beside the guard room, Shen Guorong was standing with his hands behind his back, looking up and staring at the blackboard bulletin board at least three meters wide on the inner side of the factory gate.

Today at noon, the more he thought about it at the factory, the more unsettled he felt, always feeling that his daughter had been cheated by some fly-by-night company. He simply asked for two hours of leave and rode his bicycle all the way inquiring until he found the place. (Note: The term “fly-by-night company” was already very popular in the mid-1980s, and the state specially issued a document to rectify such shell companies in 1985.)

Before coming, he had thought of several scenarios in his mind—either a dark and gloomy black workshop from the old society where the contractor held a whip and cursed people, or a flashy, improper foreign establishment.

But he squatted at the main gate for a full hour, and what he saw was completely different.

This courtyard, transformed from rented old factory buildings, couldn’t be considered very large, but the concrete floor was swept so clean that not even a single scrap of cloth could be seen.

On the public notice board inside the main gate, “Takahashi Textile No. 1 Workshop December Piece-Rate Accounting and Grading Standards” was neatly copied in white chalk: the unit price for Grade A products, the deduction for Grade B products, the full-attendance subsidy, and even the passing rate of the female workers at each machine station last month were all listed in the table.

Shen Guorong searched along machine station number forty-two, and sure enough, he saw a line of text on it: “Shen Xiaoyun, Grade A product rate 98.4%, actual payout 119.60 yuan.”

Not only was there no mistake in payment, but her craftsmanship actually ranked in the top three of the entire workshop.

“Old comrade, you must be Xiaoyun’s dad, right?”

An old master in his sixties walked out of the guard room, holding an enamel teacup and smilingly handing over a Great Front Gate cigarette. Seeing the old Zhongshan suit on the other person, Shen Guorong knew he was also an old employee who had retired from a state-run factory, and his guard instantly relaxed by a notch.

“Old brother, let me ask you about something.”

Shen Guorong didn’t take the cigarette, lowered his voice, and pointed into the courtyard.

“Is the foundation of this Japanese company reliable or not? Paying a young girl so much wages, won’t it go bust after doing it for a year or a half?”

“Go bust? The Japanese boss just shipped three hundred brand-new fully automatic electric lockstitch sewing machines from Nagoya by sea, and next week they are going to replace that batch of old Flying Man brand ones inside. Buying the machines and paying customs duty alone cost hundreds of thousands in foreign exchange; how could there be any reason for it to go bust before making back its capital?”

Guard Old Wang laughed heartily and pointed to the entrance of the No. 1 workshop not far away.

Through the bright and spacious large glass windows of the No. 1 workshop, one could just see the bustling scene in front of rows of sewing machines inside.

A Japanese old man with graying hair and reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose was slowly patrolling the aisle with his hands behind his back.

Pinching half a piece of red chalk in his hand, he walked up to the inspection table, picked up a freshly off-line white T-shirt, and felt it once. His brow immediately furrowed, and without saying a word, he drew an eye-catching red cross on the neckline. However, when he encountered clothes with flat and even stitches, a trace of approval would appear on the old man’s tight face, and he would nod gently and put them into the qualified box.

Not far away in front of the steps of the office building, a Japanese middle-aged man in his thirties wearing a crisp dark suit, holding a black briefcase under his arm, was walking quickly down the steps with a young translator, politely yet firmly sending away two people looking like cadres with sheepish faces.

“Did you see that? That old man holding the red chalk inside the workshop is called Matsumoto. He’s an old tailor specially invited from Kyoto, Japan, and everyone in the factory calls him the Gatekeeper Yama. If your stitches are even slightly crooked, he’ll draw a red cross for you!”

Guard Old Wang pointed into the courtyard to introduce to Shen Guorong, and then jerked his chin toward the office building side:

“The young one wearing a suit on the steps is our Factory Director Takahashi.”

“These Japanese people are extremely stubborn. The cadres from our district’s Light Industry Bureau wanted to cram two relatives into the office just now. Look, they were stubbornly rebuffed on the spot by Factory Director Takahashi. Even if the Jade Emperor himself wrote a note, it wouldn’t be of any use!”

“But as long as you have real skills under your hands and can pass Old Master Matsumoto’s test, they really don’t hesitate when it comes to handing out money—not only are wages and bonuses doubled, but the cafeteria also treats everyone to a large piece of braised pork every noon! Your Xiaoyun is meticulous and steady-handed, and just two days ago during a meeting, Factory Director Takahashi even had the translator name her for praise!”

Shen Guorong stood outside the fence, gazing dazedly at the capable young Japanese factory director in the distance, then glanced through the glass window at the Japanese old technician holding the red chalk in the workshop, and finally turned his head to look at his somewhat uneasy daughter beside him.

On his daughter’s head was a clean white work cap, her cheeks slightly flushed by the heat in the workshop. In those eyes that had always timidly hidden behind him since childhood, though there was a bit of tension at the moment, there also shone a kind of brightness rarely seen on the faces of young people in state-run factories.

Shen Guorong opened his mouth, but the reprimands that had originally filled his stomach somehow could no longer be uttered when they reached his lips.

On the way home, neither father nor daughter uttered a sound.

Shen Guorong pedaled the 28-inch bicycle ahead in silence, while Shen Xiaoyun rode her small bike behind him, their wheels crushing the fallen leaves on Pingliang Road and making a rustling sound.

Until entering the house, Zhou Guifen came up to ask nervously: “How is it? Did you return the money to them? Was the resignation settled?”

Shen Guorong tossed the bike keys onto the eight-immortals table, took off his cotton-padded jacket and hung it behind the door, and said in a muffled voice: “Return what money? That is the proper wage our family’s Xiaoyun earned stitch by stitch with her craftsmanship!”

Zhou Guifen was stunned: “Then… what about that quota for the state-run No. 3 Cotton?”

“Tomorrow I’ll go tell Old Chen to let his niece have it.”

Shen Guorong sat back down by the table, glanced at his daughter who was standing in a daze at the doorway, and although his tone was still stiff, his gaze had softened:

“Take out the envelope. Give your mother thirty yuan for meal money, and as for the remaining ninety yuan, go to the savings bank yourself tomorrow on Sunday to open a current passbook under your own name. Since you’re going to work in those foreigners’ factory, learn your skills solidly for me, and don’t disgrace our old Shen family!”

Shen Xiaoyun looked at her father somewhat unexpectedly, her nose aching, and she nodded heavily.

“Hey!”

That night, lying on the wooden bed in the small loft, she looked over the brand-new wage slip back and forth several times.

For the very first time, she truly felt that as for how to walk the road ahead, she could finally make her own decisions.