Siheyuan: Starting from 1958

Chen Jun thought for a moment and replied, "Dongzi... I really don't have a classmate like that, but I can try to find out for you tomorrow..."

"I've heard that not only are state-owned steel rolling mills losing money or even going bankrupt due to poor management, but many state-owned livestock farms in Beijing are also starting to lose money for various reasons..."

"There must be a lot of the talent you're looking for inside..."

"Let me ask around for you... If there's anyone suitable, I'll come back and let you know tomorrow night."

…………

The Fifth Pig Farm of Sijiucheng is located in the suburbs. Before the reform and opening up, this pig farm supplied about 20% of the pork in Sijiucheng.

After the reform and opening up, with the opening up of rural animal husbandry, many farmers raised at least two pigs, intending to get rich through pig farming. As a result, the high-priced pigs from the Fifth Pig Farm gradually became unwanted.

Especially after pork was allowed to be sold privately in Beijing without going through the supply and marketing cooperatives, the already meager sales of the Fifth Poultry Farm were cut in half again.

If the supply and marketing cooperative hadn't kept its procurement channels open, the fifth pig farm might not have been able to sell a single pig all year round.

Rural people don't need to pay wages to raise pigs. Besides feeding them corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and other inexpensive grains, they also feed them a lot of free sweet potato vines and pig feed. The cost of raising pigs is very low, and they can buy a live pig for only 80 cents per kilogram.

Different farms are different.

The workers there all have secure jobs, and their wages alone amount to several thousand yuan every month.

The pig feed is all corn and sweet potatoes purchased from the grain station. Although it is very cheap, because the pigs are not fed pigweed and sweet potato stalks, the amount of sweet potatoes and corn consumed by a pig is two to three times that of farmers raising pigs, so the cost naturally goes up.

Selling live pigs for 90 cents a pound results in a loss for the farm.

In the era of the planned economy, there was no competition with pig farms. They could set whatever price they wanted for the fattened pigs they sold. Back then, pig farms not only had high wages but also excellent benefits, making them the envy of many people in Beijing.

On average, at least 5,000 fattened pigs can be slaughtered each year.

Things are different now. The fattened pigs from farms are not competitive because of their high prices, and they lose money on almost every pig they sell.

Not only has the number of pigs slaughtered each year plummeted from 5,000 a few years ago to just over 1,000 now, but the factory's wages and benefits have also been reduced again and again, and sometimes there have even been times when wages could not be paid.

Prices in Beijing are rising, and the cost of living for ordinary people is also increasing. However, the wages paid to workers by the Fifth Farm have not only not increased, but have even been delayed, which has led to increasing financial pressure on the workers.

Many people even considered quitting their jobs at the farm.

Guo Lin is the deputy director and head of the technical department of the fifth breeding farm.

After graduating from university, I joined a breeding farm as a technician in the technical department. Over nearly ten years, I climbed the ranks from technician to head of the technical department.

However, because he was not good at socializing and only liked to study technology, although he held the title of deputy factory director, he had no real power in the farm. Only a few technicians in the technical department of the huge farm took him seriously.

Faced with the difficulties of the breeding farm, Guo Lin had long wanted to reform it and had proposed his ideas to the farm manager several times.

But without exception, those ideas all involve layoffs and cost-cutting.

Many workers at the farm have connections with the factory leaders, and the purchase of pig feed is also the main way for factory leaders at all levels to earn extra money.

Guo Lin's reform ideas hit a nerve with everyone, cutting off their source of income, so the factory leaders certainly wouldn't agree.

Not only that, they also tried every means to ostracize Guo Lin at the farm, and some even wanted to drive Guo Lin, who was preventing them from getting rich, out of the farm.

But Guo Lin was, after all, Director Yang's deputy director and head of the technical department. If he were fired, all sorts of unexpected things would happen to the farm's breeding operations, so they had no choice but to keep him on the farm. But they didn't give him any power.

Apart from a few technicians in the technical department, not a single soldier could be mobilized.

Of course, this wasn't the most frustrating thing for Guo Lin.

The farm's production efficiency has been declining, to the point of insolvency, which has led to a situation where wages have not been increased for several years.

Although other factory leaders didn't get a raise either, they could earn some extra money by buying pig feed at high prices, and even a monthly income of two or three hundred yuan was considered low.

Guo Lin was ostracized by these factory leaders, so he had no extra income.

The total monthly salary and subsidies amount to less than one hundred yuan.

As for the technicians below, the more senior ones earn seventy or eighty yuan a month, while the younger technicians with less experience only receive forty or fifty yuan a month.

It sounds like a lot, but with the ever-increasing prices in Beijing, this income is nothing.

To know.

In Wang Dongkai's Dongjun Restaurant, even the lowest-ranking waiter's monthly income, even if it doesn't add up to a hundred yuan, is still not far off.

A chef with even a little skill can earn more than 100 yuan a month.

Compared to them, the jobs of the technicians at the breeding farm sound good, like a secure job, but their actual income is not as good as that of the grassroots waiters at Dongjun Restaurant.

Given the current prices in Beijing, an adult's monthly living expenses have risen to fifteen yuan, which is only enough to cover the most basic needs.

For a family of three to live a stable life in Beijing, they need at least fifty yuan a month.

After all, people need to pay for medical care, buy various other things, and so on, in addition to food. All of these require money.

The technicians in the technical department all have families to support. Some of them not only have young children to raise but also elderly parents to support, and their monthly income of seventy or eighty yuan is not always enough to meet their family's needs.

In particular, Guo Lin, the deputy factory director and head of the technical department.

There are two children, two elderly people, and a wife in total. The whole family of six depends on his salary.

I spend over eighty yuan a month just on food.

Now that the two children are of school age, their education will cost a lot of money.

Even though Guo Lin receives over a hundred yuan a month from the farm, he is now struggling to make ends meet.

If the farm's profitability continues to decline, workers' wages will be reduced sooner or later, and at that time, the wages I earn from the farm may not even be enough to support my family.

Under these circumstances, Guo Lin did consider resigning from the farm and finding a higher-paying job elsewhere.

But he studied animal husbandry, which was too unorthodox.

In the vast city of Beijing, apart from a few state-run breeding farms, almost no other factories needed someone like him.

If I can't work in animal husbandry after leaving the farm, all the experience I've gained over half my life will be useless. I'll only be able to earn money by doing manual labor outside, and my income might not even be as good as it is now. (End of Chapter)