Rebirth: My 80s

Chapter 389
The sun is shining and spring is getting stronger.

Yesterday, Li Yunshang and Wang Shanhe returned to Beijing together after getting comfortable in their hometown. They arrived in the middle of the night. At this time, they were both sleeping soundly in the courtyard of the Empress Temple.

Li Jiankun originally planned to go to Longpai Knife Factory, but after thinking about it, he simply waited for the two guys to get up and have a face-to-face meeting.

We were tired last night and didn't talk much.

He moved a mat and sat in the small courtyard under the morning sun. He held a roll of warm newspapers that the postman had just thrown in, spread them out, and browsed the content of interest.

"Speculation is gone, the tertiary industry, suspension of employment without pay..."

Li Jiankun sighed. Today's headlines in newspapers are almost inseparable from these three contents.

The economic situation is very serious.

Private business is not easy to do.The factory cannot support too many workers. The three-industry movement treats the symptoms but not the root cause. It avoids the core problem of the factory's inefficiency and seeks solutions from outside. How many workers can be accommodated?

Suspension of pay is an extension of this problem. We have no choice but to encourage employees who have the means to go overseas, so as to solve the redundancy of factory employees and relieve economic pressure.

The current situation has truly reached a difficult period in which the whole country has to tighten its belts to get by.

The headlines in the newspaper were all such clichés. Li Jiankun didn't take a closer look. He had nothing to do and casually flipped through other contents.

In the supplement of Beijing Daily, a piece of news caught his attention.

Recently, several serial gangster incidents have occurred in Haidian area.

The guy who is playing hooligan has a great background. According to the investigation clues of the big-brimmed hat uncles, this person is most likely a legendary figure in the capital - the old gangster of Shuangqiao.

"The idiot actually came here..."

Li Jiankun had to be careful.The old gangsters from Shuangqiao used to mainly operate in the Second Ring Road.

You know, his wife and sister are all in Haidian now, and they are all top-notch beauties.

"Da da……"

Hearing the sound of footsteps, Li Jiankun turned his head and saw the second sister stretching across the threshold.

"Sister, come here for a moment, I just want to tell you something."

"what?"

Li Jiankun stood up and handed over the newspaper. After Li Yunshang read it, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, "Tsk! I'll go back and tell Hongyi and the other girls that they should be more careful when they go back at night."

Li Jiankun said seriously: "Same for you!"

Li Yunshang smiled knowingly, "I'm better. I'm only a few steps back from the tavern?"

When Li Jiankun was about to say something, someone called the door outside the hospital. Xiao Huang ran over and sniffed, but there was no response. He was obviously an acquaintance.

Lin Jingmin carried a brown leather briefcase and strode into the courtyard with excitement.

Seeing his expression and momentum, Li Jiankun smiled and asked, "Did you do it?"

"Ok!"

Jie Youming came out of quarantine the day before yesterday. The first thing he did was to experiment with knife casting. He changed a lot of the process. It was more complicated, but he patted his chest and assured that the quality would be improved by more than one level.

This coincides with Li Jiankun's expectations.

No matter how complicated it is, isn’t it still manual?

With today's industrial base, no domestic tool factory can implement assembly line operations.

It just so happens that labor is the least valuable right now.

As long as the best knives can be made and the production efficiency is half that of Heping Knife Factory, Li Jiankun can accept it.

Recruiting more people can also provide employment opportunities.

The two came to the main hall in the north, and Li Yunshang also came to join in the fun.

Lin Jingmin carefully took out a newspaper roll from his brown briefcase.

Good guy!
Li Jiankun stared at it, how many layers was it covered with?
"careful!"

Just as he reached out to grab it, Lao Lin suddenly shouted loudly, but he was still slow.

As if he had caught a hot potato, Li Jiankun retracted his hand in an instant. He felt a sharp pain in his right index finger. He raised it and looked...

Hey!
The skin is open to the flesh.

Li Yunshang was shocked, grabbed his brother's hand and looked at it, and said in shock: "What kind of knife is this, so sharp?!"

If I didn't wrap a few layers of newspapers and just grabbed it, wouldn't my fingers be gone?

Li Jiankun, on the other hand, was not worried but happy, his eyes filled with sparkle.

Mr. Xia never deceives his apprentice!
Master Xie, you will not deceive me!
Nice knife!

He waved his hand to indicate to the two that he was fine, and put the cut finger into his mouth, "Old Lin, please open it and take a look."

Lin Jingmin slowly opened the newspaper and saw a Western-style kitchen knife lying quietly inside. What was different was that his whole body was shining green.

Li Yunshang was surprised, "Why is it this color?"

Lin Jingmin explained: "Master Xie said that a sword must have a green light to be considered a success. When he cast this one, most of them cried with excitement and knelt on the ground three times and nine times in the direction of his master's grave." Li Jiankun sighed, "This is It is a true ancient technique.”

He occasionally noticed descriptions of this kind of "green light" in some documents, but the objects described were all swords.

A kitchen knife can reach the level of "cold light", which can't be described as the Rolls-Royce of the kitchen knife world.

Li Jiankun flicked his fingers towards the blade.

"Qiang~"

There was a sudden sound of dragon roaring, which lasted for a while before disappearing.

It’s almost like a precious sword!
He said excitedly: "What processes have been changed?"

When talking about this, Lin Jingmin felt a little worried.

"Almost all have been changed. First there is forging. At the Heping Knife Factory, there is manual work and machinery. The red-hot iron blocks are taken out of the furnace and pressed into iron sheets using a heavy-pressure machine. Then the master hammers them, forges them, and shapes them.

"Master Xie doesn't allow the use of machine tools and beats them by hand. He says that the sparks are not sparks, but impurities and air. Only after repeated hammering can we get the best blade blank. He also says that no machine can replace it."

Li Jiankun agrees with this view.

He has used kitchen knives produced by later generations of industrial production, and to put it bluntly, those so-called high-end knives that cost thousands of dollars do not dare to come into contact with the thirty-forty-forty kitchen knives from the Heping Knife Factory.

Lao Lin continued: "During the beating, the master had to keep tempering, and after tempering, quenching was carried out. Master Jie brought a bucket of something unknown, it was pitch black, and he said it was the quenching agent he prepared himself.

"The most troublesome part is the final polishing. What do you think he had to use?"

Li Jiankun asked: "Isn't it a whetstone? Grinding wheel? Sandpaper?"

"No! Steel block."

"What? How to polish with a steel block?" Li Jiankun was surprised.

Lin Jingmin shrugged and said, "Grind it slowly. He changed the name of this process. It's not called polishing, it's called steel grinding. It's hard grinding. The best master in the factory grinds his body while standing on a horse." Press on with strength and grind hard for half an hour, here you go!"

He said, pointing to the kitchen knife on the Eight Immortals' table, "That's how it was polished to create this green light."

Li Jiankun: "..."

Li Yunshang didn't know anything else, so he scratched his head and asked, "How long does it take to make a knife like this?"

"That's what I'm saying!" Lin Jingmin slapped his thigh, looked at Li Jiankun and said, "It's so grueling, the workers are getting emotional."

After Li Jiankun pondered for a while, he waved, "Let's go and have a look at the factory."

The two of them each drove a [-]-inch car and arrived at the Longpai Tool Factory in a hurry.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

In Workshop No. 1, the sound of metal collision and friction can be heard all the time.

Xie Youming is teaching employees to adapt to the new production process.

Workers in the casting group and polishing group complained endlessly.

"Chief Engineer, I'm really exhausted. I've never fought like this before." A young man from the casting team turned his head and said with a grimace, sweating profusely.

Jie Youming stepped forward and scolded them, saying that they were used to being comfortable and could not afford even this little hardship.

Li Jiankun watched from a distance, biting his ears and confessed to Lao Lin.The latter left the factory, disappeared for a while and then came back.

The two of them walked closer, said hello to the busy Jie Youming, and said no more.

Not long after, the cafeteria chef ran over, looked at Lin Jingmin, and asked for instructions with a smile: "General manager, you brought back half a head of fat pork. Are you going to cook it all today, or keep some?"

Lao Lin cleared his throat and said, "It's all done."

As he spoke, he pointed to the agitated blacksmith boy and said, "Masters like these who are labor-intensive should be given priority."

Hey!
Upon hearing this, the young man raised his iron hammer and smashed it down hard.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

The crisp and continuous beating sound is very rhythmic.

This conversation was heard by all the surrounding employees. People from other groups who were watching the excitement were originally mourning for the colleagues in the forging group and polishing group. With such a change in the process flow, they were exhausted.

Suddenly, I discovered that my life as a dog had become a good life!

Some able-bodied employees are even considering whether they can apply to join the forging team or polishing team.

You know, this was 1981. Urban residents and workers only had 0.5 kilograms of meat stamps per month. Even during the Spring Festival, they only supplied one or two kilograms.

A big fat guy has enough meat every day, where can I find this kind of treatment?

Lin Jingmin secretly gave Li Jiankun a look that said, "You have something to offer."

Li Jiankun can't raise the wages of his employees at the moment. Heping Knife Factory is definitely doing something wrong, but it can still be done to make the employees eat better.

After all, how much money can you make by eating, right?
(End of this chapter)