At ten o'clock in the morning on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, the sun shone warmly on the earth. A command post was set up in the middle of Zhenxing Road in the Kunhe work area of Honghua Township. Two bamboo roots were placed horizontally on the two pillars, and a ten-meter-long red cloth was hung on the bamboo poles with the words: Honghua Township Zhenxing Road Construction Command Post.
There were three somewhat old desks in front. The legs of two adjacent desks were tied together with wire to support the two desks. The front was covered with red velvet, which looked very festive. Behind the desks were wooden benches, on which Secretary Li, Township Head Zhao, Deputy Secretaries Shang and Li, and Sun Zongyu sat.
Sun Zongyuan orchestrated the entire activity. He first convened a meeting with all the work areas and their assigned technical and supervisory personnel. He distributed task lists and location markers to each village, then explained the technical requirements and acceptance criteria, and finally the subsidy standards and timeframe. He emphasized that the ten-day deadline was from the sixth day of the Lunar New Year to the fifteenth. The work would be distributed to the villages today, and based on the project volume, the villages would have to distribute it to the households by 4:00 PM tomorrow.
Township head Zhao Yuncheng briefly emphasized issues such as quality, safety, and subsidies. Li Jianguo emphasized that the construction time announced by the township is from the sixth to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, and the masses can only start work in advance and not delay it. As for starting work in advance, it does not belong to the township and village organizations, but is a spontaneous behavior of the masses. The township and village cadres must do a good job of persuasion. If the masses do not listen and insist on construction, the village cadres must do a good job of safety and technical guidance to allow the masses to have a peaceful and happy Spring Festival.
The cadres at both the village and township levels all dispersed at once, began to claim work tasks, and then determined the quantity to be allocated to the masses.
Secretary Li Jianguo said to the four people on the rostrum:
"A few of us are spending the New Year here. The township government's Party and Government Office has arranged a duty roster, and we'll also arrange one here. I'm on the first day, so have the secretary arrange it according to his opinion. We also need to contact the work area. Lao Zhao and I will each have one, Shang Heping and Li Yushan will each have two, and Sun Zongyuan will be responsible for quality control. We'll work with you! If there are any problems at work, we can meet here at 9:30 every morning to discuss them."
It was originally planned that each village would distribute the tasks to each household tomorrow afternoon, but unexpectedly, all 43 villages in the township had distributed the tasks in the middle of the morning and the afternoon. This was due to the meticulous preliminary work of the Construction Office. Each village had a readable paper list of the project quantities, and each village had technicians, so the tasks were distributed very easily. During the distribution process, people who heard the news rushed to the construction site with their families no matter how far away they were. Many people also brought shovels, hoes, hammers and other tools. After the distribution was completed in the front, the households in the back began to move stones around. From a distance, a person was seen walking slowly in front, and behind him was a long line of people moving stones.
Stones are not available everywhere. Some places have more, some have fewer, some are close, some are far, some are big, and some are small. People do whatever is easiest for them. At 6:30 in the evening, no one can be seen clearly, so someone pulled up a pile of weeds, lit it, and worked by the light of the fire.
Some people had their families deliver food and bedding. Women carried a shoulder pole, with a thermos or aluminum pot of rice tied to one end and bedding and coats on the other. After eating and drinking a cup of hot water, they spread out their mats, covered them with hay, and lay down, covering themselves with the blankets. They then covered themselves with plastic sheeting to block the wind and heat, ensuring that the stones their families had painstakingly searched for all night were not stolen.
Early in the morning of the 29th, more than 10,000 people from the township rushed to the Zhenxing Road construction site. On average, there were nearly two people per meter, and a family of four had a little more than one meter of road. There was often one person on the south side of the road and one on the north side. Those who were close to each other, relatives and friends, all leaned together to help each other. Women leveled the road, while men went to find stones and carried them over. Stones that were too big had to be broken with sledgehammers.
Even relatives who were not from Honghua's family were invited by the people here to help and were served with good wine and meat.
The unmarried daughter-in-law and the new son-in-law also came. Before the New Year, the old lady or the mother-in-law's family showed off their figures. Those who didn't have the energy to cook and deliver meals, while those who had the energy used sledgehammers and dug the ground. The construction site was bustling!
Sun Zongyuan felt uneasy when he saw so many people working on the road:
"If God knew that it was me who wanted the people to have a bad New Year, he would definitely strike me with thunder."
I casually walked over to a house that was working. The strong laborer, a man in his mid-thirties, was smashing rocks with a sledgehammer, while his wife and a boy of twelve or thirteen were repairing the road.
"Brother, don't you want to take a break?"
"I'm not tired. I'll finish my work early and go home early!"
"According to your estimate, how many days will it take you to finish it?"
"My whole family is only a little over one meter tall, and with my parents included, we're only about 1.75 meters tall. The technician just said that if the road surface is only 20 centimeters higher, it will meet the standard. Tomorrow, they will finish the road surface, and I can also prepare the stones. The day after tomorrow, we can lay the stones. In half a day, we will come back and ask the technician to check if it is qualified. If it is not, we can spend a little more effort to straighten it out. I think it will be about the same."
"Tomorrow is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and the day after tomorrow is the second day. The township plans to start work on the sixth day, right?"
"What's the big deal? I haven't been active since the twelfth lunar month. This job is just the right thing to do. The government also pays me over 100 yuan. I've never had such a good thing before. Look, my whole family earned over 100 yuan in just three days. How could it be so good? It's just enough to pay for my two children's tuition. I have to thank the government for this. You work for the government, right? If there are more good things like this, they will force us to work more!"
"And the child?"
"That's the girl. She's at home feeding the two Landrace pigs. She'll cook a meal for us soon."
"I'm in charge of logistics. How are those two Landrace pigs being raised?"
"I'm afraid it'll be cold, so I drive it inside at night. There's a kang inside so it's warm. I put it in the pen during the day and feed it grain temporarily. I heard you can get cheap feed in a month or two, but I don't know where to buy it now."
"It's almost there, almost there. I estimate we'll be able to buy cheap feed in about a month. Feeding pigs cheaply makes them grow faster!"
Sun Zongyu didn't expect that this family cared so much about feeding pigs. They need to speed up the construction of the feed factory!
I don’t know which village first put up red flags on the construction site, but the other villages quickly followed suit and planted their own red flags all over the construction site. Suddenly, the Zhenxing Road construction site was covered in colorful flags, and the sound of battle songs echoed from the loudspeakers far and wide!
After reporting to Secretary Li Jianguo, it was suggested that all residents return home to celebrate the New Year at 5:30 p.m. in the next few days. The work area organized six militia companies to conduct night patrols to resolutely prevent anyone from destroying or stealing road construction and stone materials. The township also organized joint patrols by militia and police stations to take timely action if any problems arose.
Li Jianguo agreed very much with Sun Zongyuan's opinion and immediately arranged for the leading cadres in charge to implement it!
Trading tents were set up in each work area, and ginger soup was provided to the public free of charge to prevent them from catching colds.
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