If you cheat, money will follow

The two walked through the small door and entered the factory. After walking a few steps, they looked back and saw that the old man was gone.

Zheng Peng said with a smile: "Did you see it? This was the trend at that time. How could this factory not fail?"

Chang Le said: "This cannot be regarded as the main reason. The main reason is that production cannot keep up with the market trend."

Zheng Peng said: "Those are all macro reasons. From a micro perspective, why we can't keep up with the market situation is mainly because the people in the factory are not good at thinking, management, and technology. Only technical people who are capable and unwilling to be buried can leave. After leaving, all that’s left are people eating and drinking.”

"A few years before the shutdown, many employees and a family secretly took production tools from the factory and sold them as scrap products, ranging from screwdrivers to steel raw materials and even drill presses."

Chang Le asked: "No one cares?"

Zheng Peng said: "I managed it, but I couldn't control it. I caught a few typical cases, called the police and sentenced them, but then stopped for a while. More and more people came to do this, and I couldn't control it anymore."

The entrance to the factory is very dilapidated, and the inside of the factory is even more depressed.

A straight and wide main road extends to the end of sight, with grass and plane trees on both sides of the road.

It is late summer and early autumn, and the leaves of the sycamore tree are falling one after another, and the dry branches are slowly swaying in the autumn wind.

On one side of the sycamore tree is a row of neat gray and red houses.

The production slogan on the red house has been blurred, and brown creepers are growing wantonly under the wall.

On the other side of the plane tree is a large square. There is a workers' club next to the square. However, the three characters "work", "club" and "bu" are missing from the plaque, and the two characters "人" and "乐" are also staggered.

"When I was young, this place was very lively. Various basketball games, cultural evenings, and outdoor movies were often held here. So we would go here if we had nothing to do at that time," Zheng Peng said.

Continue walking along the main road and at the end is the comprehensive office building that used to be the factory.

The office building is a typical Soviet building.

The main building is towering, and the left and right auxiliary buildings are symmetrical about the central axis and have a regular plane.

It has gray eaves, beige walls, and a huge five-pointed star inlaid in the middle.

"In the early years, there were rumors that this building was haunted, and the rumors were also miraculous." Zheng Peng said

"Is it really noisy?"

"What a fart. It's just the idle disciples who stayed up late at night and ran around in the building, spreading the word."

As soon as Zheng Peng finished speaking, a group of teenagers rushed out of the building.

The teenagers were armed with sticks or wooden slingshots, divided into two groups, and chased each other.

"F*ck, don't run, stop for me. Run NMLGB, I'll catch you and stab you to death with a stick, CNMLGB, you're a bastard." The teenagers chasing after him breathed sweet scents.

"Screen NMLGB, you can wait until you catch me. Your mother stole people, and no one in the factory knows about it. I even wonder if you are your father's son. No matter what you pretend to be, you are a wild beast." The teenagers who ran away in front clapped their hands and applauded.

"It's your mother who stole someone, and you're even more of a wild beast. Your whole family is a wild beast."

"Why are you here arguing with me? Go back and ask your mother."

"I'm CNIMLGB."

After the group of teenagers ran away, Zheng Peng said, "Did you see how pleasant these teenagers were communicating with each other?"

Chang Le: "..."

Chang Le asked: "How big is this land?"

"There should be more than 500 acres of land. There is a residential area next to it, and the area is probably dozens of acres. The mountain behind is also the factory."

"Let's go and have a look."

"Let's see if you can, but I really don't recommend you buy it. It's much more cost-effective to buy a new piece of land and build on it. What's the big deal about qualifications? I'll help you run it, and I'll definitely run it down."

"Let's not talk about this for now. Let's take a look and then talk about it."

Zheng Peng took Chang Le to take a shortcut and passed through a small gate to a residential area.

The residential area is composed of a large area of ​​tube buildings full of period characteristics, which are neatly arranged in order and quite regular.

Tongzi Tower, as the name suggests, is a tower like a tube.

There is a long corridor that runs through to the end, with households facing each other on both sides. The inside of the house is narrow and the outside is long and narrow. The corridor is naturally filled with clutter and waste from daily life.

In most homes, the kitchen is also located in a long and narrow corridor.

Fire hazards are very prominent, but they are insignificant compared to survival.

As for the private bathroom, it doesn't exist.

There is a shared bathroom and water room on the first floor, which is similar to a dormitory for 16 people in a university, except that the environment and conditions are worse.

When Zheng Peng and Chang Le arrived at the residential area, the sun was setting and the sky was filled with sunset. The Tongzi Tower under the afterglow of the setting sun was like a silhouette of time, full of feelings and melancholy.

Incandescent lamps were lit early on in the Tongzi Tower and on the ground floor of the Tongzi Tower.

Men, shirtless or wearing vests, sit under incandescent lights playing cards, chess, bragging and spanking.

The women gathered under the public faucet, taking turns to collect water for washing clothes and dishes, chatting about trivial matters about their parents and their family affairs.

For example, in which family the men have the ability to make a lot of money, in which family the women are unruly, and in which family the children are studying to be successful... The language is active, the expression is vivid, the movements are agile, and the listeners remain motionless.

As for the children, according to their gender, they gather together in twos and threes, either skipping rope or playing football.

After a while, cries and laughter came from the group of children, and curses and scoldings followed one after another, intertwined with each other, and formed a thick smoke.

Chang Le sighed with emotion: "I lived in a building like this when I was a child."

Zheng Peng continued: "I have lived there for at least 10 years, and I am really impressed."

"I still remember, probably when I was in elementary school, there was a period of time when I was sleeping at night and I could always hear strange noises coming from the next room..."

"I didn't understand at that time, so I specifically asked my dad what the aunt next door was doing. She was always crying when she didn't sleep at night."

Chang Le said: "Hey, how did your dad explain it?"

Zheng Peng said: "If you say shit, just open your hand and slap me. Tell me not to talk too much. Later, when I grew up, I realized what the sound was."

"Have you just listened to it for a while?"

"Yeah, I just listened to it for a while. I remember that the woman from that family got pregnant a few months later, and her belly was very big."

"So fast?"

"There are even faster ones. The couple divorced a few years later. The woman left Tongzilou with her children and never came back. The man stayed for a few years and then went to sea."

"Oh, are you wearing a hat?"

"How can anyone give birth to a child less than half a year after getting married?"

Although the Tongzi Tower is full of memories and feelings, the two people who had already jumped out of the Tongzi Tower had lived in a comfortable environment for a long time, and the environment in the Tongzi Tower was really unbearable.

The two left the Tongzi Tower and came to the side of the road.

Across the road is a large stretch of food stalls.

Zheng Peng said: "In the early years, this place was a slope, where factory workers threw garbage."

“When the previous mayor of Chengbei District was reorganizing the city’s appearance, he realized that the workers’ lives in this factory were really difficult, so he arranged for people to bulldoze this slope...”

"Pave cement, harden the road surface, paint grids, and put up awnings to encourage workers to run food stall businesses and improve their lives."

"Some employees run a food stall business here, and the conditions have improved to some extent; but some employees can't let go. They always feel that they are employees of a state-owned enterprise and are unwilling to do such hard and tiring work."

“When the food stall first started, the business was not very good, and it was relatively deserted. After careful publicity and guidance, it gradually improved. In the past two years, the business in this area has been pretty good, and many people from the city will drive here to have late-night snacks. "

Chang Le asked: "This leader is very down-to-earth. How is he doing now?"

"It's quite down-to-earth, and it has indeed done a lot of things that benefit people's livelihood. But, you know." Zheng Peng stretched out his hands and made a gesture of restraining his hands.

Chang Le understood the ending as soon as he saw this action, shook his head and said, "Human, it's really complicated."

"Yes. When I was a child, I had a clear distinction between love and hate, and the boundaries between right and wrong were very clearly drawn. As I grow older, I have seen many different kinds of characters, and I deeply understand that human nature is difficult to distinguish between good and bad."

"This is not what you, an official, would say."

"Come on, I never think of myself as a yameni. I just feel it after seeing it too much. Let's go, let's go have a barbecue. I'm hungry."