On Tuesday, I went through the motions at the factory. On Wednesday, I attended a large meeting at the Cultural Bureau. On Thursday, Director Zhao organized a small meeting with a few artists from Suicheng, several investment executives from the city, and Xue Jing.
Aside from meeting several leaders in the new energy sector on the first day, the most frequent topic that Xue Jing heard for the next two days was the upcoming construction of a former residence of a scholar and a cultural town in Suicheng.
So when Director Zhao called Xue Jing again on Friday, asking him to go to Lincheng to attend a literary lecture and to plan a five-day literary creation exchange activity, Xue Jing declined.
He said he was afraid that a single day would not be enough to get a full picture of the local wind power companies' operations, so he planned to go up the mountain again that day, preferably staying in the employees' dormitory, to investigate and visit the employees in detail.
This is not a complete excuse.
In the year since graduating with a master's degree, Xue Jing has taken on no fewer than five reportage assignments through the Jicheng Writers Association. Reportage is somewhere between news and literature; it is not entirely factual, nor is it entirely fictional. Although it contains elements of artistic embellishment, it must be based on on-site investigation and research.
This time, the report he is to produce mainly focuses on the new energy industry in Suicheng. It is a short article of 12,000 words, priced at less than 10,000 yuan, and he also has to pay for his own travel.
This kind of "job" isn't considered a lucrative position within the industry. The reason I agreed to it was to repay a favor.
Therefore, he did not intend to stay in Suicheng for too long.
As for the cultural attractions that Suicheng is preparing to build, although several investors are interested in using his personal IP for promotion, Xue Jing has seen too many unfinished buildings in various places that attempt to revitalize the local economy through tourism, and he is not very interested.
He was not optimistic about the city's development, whether in terms of economy or culture.
Director Zhao intended to do his part to help his junior build connections and earn some extra money, but Xue Jing didn't appreciate it.
On Thursday afternoon, Director Zhao was rebuffed, so on Saturday, he didn't even get a car from the Cultural Bureau to use, and directly handed this unruly junior over to General Manager Huang at the reception meeting on Monday.
At the dinner on Monday, General Manager Huang didn't get any news about government subsidies. He frowned when he received the task and handed it over to Factory Manager Zhang. Factory Manager Zhang was holding a safety meeting with his subordinates. He glanced at the leader's arrangements in the WeChat group and forwarded Xue Jing's contact information to the maintenance team leader.
In this way, Xue Jing's contact information was passed around like a football between four or five people, and finally ended up in the hands of Engineer Lou, who was the least popular person in the company.
Around 11 a.m., Lou Zhiyun had already shown Xue Jing around the office building, dormitory, and canteen of China Power Suicheng Wind Power Generation Co., Ltd. He briefly mentioned the professional knowledge that Xue Jing wanted to know, but he taught Xue Jing everything he knew about things that Xue Jing didn't want to know.
At first, Xue Jing even had a voice recorder and would occasionally mark important points on his phone's memo app.
When Lou Zhiyun began to treat the interview as a biography and began to talk at length about how he got into wind power generation, Xue Jing not only put away his phone but also quietly turned off the power switch on the recorder.
After recounting how he disregarded his family's objections to take out a loan to pursue graduate studies in Jiangcheng and later went to Suicheng for management training and rotation, Lou Zhiyun was filled with pride and didn't notice Xue Jing's lack of enthusiasm at all, as if he was about to blow his own horn.
Even a polite nod from Xue Jing could be taken as encouragement for his life's achievements.
Wind power generation can't function without Lou Zhiyun, and Suicheng can't function without Lou Zhiyun.
In short, he seemed to represent all the young people who supported the construction of new energy sources, and he wanted to use all his knowledge to save all living beings.
Xue Jing no longer has the habit of making judgments about people upon first meeting them. As a result of experience, he now usually sets a reasonable timeframe for appreciating strangers.
Lou Zhiyun's messy hairstyle might be due to his busy work schedule, and his snobbish manner might be due to his severe nearsightedness. These minor details are tolerable and do not define his overall character. However, Lou Zhiyun's rhetoric of individual heroism is truly appalling to Xue Jing.
He couldn't understand how a young man who was not even thirty years old could have contracted father disease so early.
Tang Sanzang's chanting of scriptures was nothing special; it wasn't even the true scripture he was chanting.
No wonder he complained that he couldn't find anyone to talk to here. Xue Jing didn't sympathize with his predicament of being surrounded by enemies. If he could, Xue Jing would also want to selectively shut down his ears when faced with someone of the same sex.
And so, when Lou Zhiyun's saliva sprayed onto Xue Jing's hand again like a pressure kettle, he couldn't remain amiable. He turned around and rushed to the bathroom a hundred miles away, where he not only washed his hands with hand soap in front of the mirror, but also rinsed his face with cold water.
After wiping the back of her hands and cheeks, Xue Jing felt uncomfortable all over. With her eyelashes still wet, she crumpled up the tissue in her hand and threw it into the trash can.
He'd had enough. This wretched place, Suicheng, didn't love him, and he didn't like this place either.
He couldn't stay here for even a day longer. He had seriously underestimated his social tolerance in the near future; everyone here seemed to lack a sense of boundaries.
He couldn't catch his flight on Sunday, so he had to leave for Jicheng tonight.
He desperately needed to return to his empty room, close the door, draw the curtains, put on earplugs, and keep his ears and eyes completely quiet.
Even if I don't write this report, it's not the first time I've gone into hiding and delayed writing.
If someone is shameless enough, no one can do anything about it.
Just as Xue Jing had made up his mind, the walkie-talkie that Lou Zhiyun had clipped to his work uniform belt rang not far away.
Wind turbine No. 17 has malfunctioned and requires urgent repair.
Over the walkie-talkie, staff in the control room informed Lou Zhiyun that the monitor for wind turbine No. 17 was showing a fault in wind speed and direction, with a wind error of 12 reported as malfunctioning.
Xue Jing would never miss an opportunity to experience a wind power plant employee actually repairing a generator. The tone of the reportage had already been set, and this repair was enough to form the flesh and blood of the article. So, he immediately abandoned the idea of going down the mountain and followed Lou Zhiyun into the factory's old pickup truck.
Windmill No. 17 is about 15 kilometers away from the office area. The straight-line distance is not far, but after Lou Zhiyun and two other fixed-point maintenance personnel met in the warehouse, collected labor protection supplies and maintenance tools together, signed a series of maintenance log documents and set off, the car had traveled a third of the way on the winding mountain road, and Xue Jing's watch time had already pointed to 12:20.
On the way, the driver and the mechanic in the front passenger seat were complaining about the bad timing of the blower breaking down. Lou Zhiyun rolled his eyes and ignored him. Xue Jing pretended not to notice the awkward atmosphere in the car, turned the recorder back on, and broke the ice with a compliment about his hard work, joining the conversation between the two in the front.
During a casual conversation on the road, Xue Jing learned the answer.
The wind turbines on the mountain are scattered. When the weather permits high-altitude operations, it takes maintenance personnel several hours to complete the work after arriving at the turbine location. It is difficult to travel back and forth to the canteen during mealtimes. Therefore, the maintenance team usually consists of three people: two are responsible for inspection and maintenance, and the third person can provide support on the ground and bring meals to the high-altitude maintenance personnel.
The three of them could have eaten before setting off today, but Lou Zhiyun was adamant, so the two of them had no choice but to obey on an empty stomach.
"Now we know why he's in such a hurry, isn't it because you're here?"
The older mechanic driving the car had a dark complexion. He glanced at the recorder in Xue Jing's hand in the rearview mirror in his dialect. The chubby boy in the passenger seat immediately understood and turned around to ask Xue Jing with some surprise, "Are you a reporter? I thought all reporters wore glasses."
Xue Jing, having spent seven years in the ivory tower studying languages, had a basic understanding of dialect systems. He nodded gently, and the chubby boy immediately chuckled, turning back to scoff, "No wonder. Pretending to be enthusiastic."
“You speak Mandarin! What’s the point of speaking dialect all the time? Doesn’t the factory have job training every week? When we’re on a maintenance assignment, we should use the language that’s easiest to communicate with.”
Lou Zhiyun yelled at the top of his lungs, and the two people in the front seat immediately exchanged a glance and stopped talking.
The rest of the drive was quiet, with only the howling wind on the mountain. Visually, the scene outside the car window resembled an old movie: the factory buildings grew smaller and smaller, and the road ahead stretched out into open fields. Apart from the slowly rotating leaves high in the sky, tumbleweeds occasionally raced past the car on the ground.
Upon arrival at their destination, Lou Zhiyun was the first to run out of the car. He quickly ran up the stairs, opened the small door at the base of the generator, and beckoned Xue Jing to enter the generator.
After introducing the converter and main control cabinet, he began to put on his safety equipment and proudly told Xue Jing: Usually, before maintenance work, a drone is needed to take off and check the external condition of the wind turbine, but he is familiar with this machine. He can clearly draw conclusions just from the data detected on the computer. The maintenance location this time must be outside the nacelle on the tower.
Xue Jing didn't have a high-altitude work permit, so naturally he couldn't climb into the cabin with him; this was a matter for professionals to handle.
But he can record this repair work with a recorder and then apply for permission to have it reviewed and learned from later.
After Lou Zhiyun finished speaking, he began to instruct two repairmen to take out the battery of the crawl-free device.
The older maintenance worker snorted twice upon seeing this, then walked to the ladder outside the tower base door, sat down, and started smoking. The chubby young man also pursed his lips and said to Lou Zhiyun in Mandarin, "Engineer Lou, didn't you say you were afraid of heights? You usually don't leave the engine room to work, so why did you volunteer to go out and check the anemometer this time?"
Lou Zhiyun rarely leaves the cabin. He is a senior engineer, mainly responsible for drive equipment. Whenever maintenance occurs, he is responsible for staying in the cabin to debug the equipment.
But with Xue Jing watching coldly from the sidelines today, he couldn't swallow his anger. He immediately waved his hand and hung the fall arrestor on the elevator, gritting his teeth and saying, "Who said that? I'm an expert! What's there to be afraid of when I go out of the cabin? I'll go first, and you two will follow."
As they were talking, Lou Zhiyun had already pressed the switch for the stair climber. The electric device rose at a steady speed, and the chubby boy walked out of the cabin, slowly returned to the car, took out his plastic water cup, and started drinking sugared tea.
Xue Jing stood inside the tower base for a while, looking up. Seeing that the two people outside weren't in a hurry to go up the tower, he followed them out, found a place to sit down, and asked with a docile expression, "Aren't you two going up?"
The old repairman stubbed out his cigarette, smiled at him, and said, "No rush, let's wait for him a moment. He'll be in a hurry once he goes up. Going out of the cabin alone? He wouldn't dare even if you gave him two lives. He'll probably have to take the elevator down."
"Experts aren't just there to do the work."
Xue Jing nodded, naturally understanding that this was the two men's way of expressing their dissatisfaction to their superiors.
Conflicts between people are common in daily life. He enjoys observing and experiencing them, and his professional ethics dictate that he does not intervene in any situations.
Before leaving home in the morning, Xue Jing was prepared for the possibility of such an unexpected situation on the mountain, so he bought some easy-to-carry food at the supermarket downstairs. Now, he took out a few compressed biscuits and beef jerky from his backpack and shared them with the two of them. The three of them ate lunch together, and the topic shifted from serious work to personal life.
The chubby boy tore off a piece of beef jerky with his fangs and winked at Xue Jing, revealing some inside information.
"Didn't our engineer Lou tell you about the girl he's been pursuing lately? I bet he's too embarrassed to say. He thinks he's got such a great salary of 200,000 yuan a year in this poor place, and he's always bragging about how he went to graduate school. But look what, the girl won't even add him on WeChat. She's not interested in him."
Xue Jing unscrewed a bottle of energy drink and handed it to him, responding casually, "Is the lady he likes also a power plant employee?"
According to his observations, the majority of employees at the wind farm are men, with very few women, who are mostly doing logistical support work. He speculated that this is due to the gender difference, as carrying a maintenance kit and climbing a 35-story-high wind turbine all day is not a physical advantage for women.
Of course, raising pigs shouldn't be the answer, but the image of Ha Yue riding his electric bike with two piglets lingered in his mind these past few nights. The moment he closed his eyes, he was back on that tricycle, his whole body swaying precariously in the cold wind.
Even when I fall asleep, I wake up four or five times, resulting in extremely poor sleep quality, which is practically nonexistent.
"There aren't any young girls in the factory, only older women who cook. He likes a female college student from the county town who owns a shop. She's from here."
"The female owner of the convenience store, we've all bought things there, food, drinks, soap, towels, toothbrushes, etc. What's her last name again? She's quite a rare sight."
As he spoke, the chubby guy tore open another bag of beef jerky, turned to his smoking colleague, and asked, "Hey bro, what's that girl's last name?"
"My surname is Ha, third tone, I'm not sure, am I from a minority group?"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
