Canteen System Assistance Notes

"That's right, the oil can't be burned in vain. It's a two-way street." Someone seemed to remember something and said, "By the way, Expert Qin, are you really going to look for oil? How can you really find oil in this desolate place in the northwest? The oil we burned on the return trip was saved for us by the coal- and wood-burning vehicles in our fleet. It was not easy."

"Yes! Even the oil coming from Xinjiang is mostly Mobil kerosene. Our team has to carry a lot of barrels to complete the journey. We've never used our own gasoline..."

Listening to the chatter of these people, Qin Kegong suddenly recalled a dozen days earlier. Back then, he had just fled to Gaojing, barely recovering from the Japanese bombing, the looting of the fleeing soldiers, and the flight of refugees when he heard Sun Tzu-qian's words: "Every man bears his share of responsibility for the fate of his nation." He told himself that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, oil was crucial for transportation and support to the front lines. With oil, cars could transport supplies, tanks could charge enemy lines, and airplanes could soar. Now, the scene in those words felt even more real and tangible, as if it were right before his eyes.

If they can dig up oil, these kind-hearted soldiers will no longer sigh.

"able!"

Qin Kegong said loudly and confidently, "I may not be as good as you in killing enemies on the battlefield, but I can still dig wells and find oil."

He swore loudly to all the soldiers in front of him: "I, Qin Kegong, will definitely be able to dig oil in Yumen and let everyone burn our own oil!"

Chapter 148 Goodbye Wuyin (I) New Workers

"Little Brother Zhang! Have you eaten yet? What's the dish today?"

"I've eaten! Today! Let me think, there's stir-fried minced pork with cucumber, scrambled eggs with chives, and seaweed soup."

After hearing Zhang Shihan's shout, the workers who had just finished their morning shift became excited. "Oh! We have to hurry! Today there are two meat dishes, but usually there is only one! Let's go, or we'll have nothing to eat if we're late!" "Okay! Can eggs be considered meat dishes? Hurry up!"

"Let's go! Let's go eat after get off work!" The crowd called workers rushed past and ran noisily towards the factory cafeteria. People who worked the night shift were so crowded that they had to stand aside. After a long time, the crowd became sparse.

The rest were basically comrades on today's evening shift. Everyone was already familiar with the three-shift system. Zhang Shihan took out an employee badge from his pocket, tapped it on the machine at the door, then unconsciously wrapped the lanyard around the badge several times and stuffed it back into his pocket. This kind of badge hung around the neck would probably only be hung out when taking pictures for newspaper reporters. Normally, Zhang Shihan found it troublesome and stuffed them all into his pocket.

"Okay! Work hard! Work hard for twelve hours! After you finish, you can take a night leave and go home to see your wife!" He pounded his chest, roared, and ran to his workstation.

Zhang Shihan was a local worker in the border region, originally from Dingbian. He had relocated to Huinong with the Eighth Route Army's factory-building team. However, Zhang Shihan himself was a bit embarrassed to call himself a worker: he used to be a copper bowl and pot repairman. He was the kind of person who carried a load on his shoulder, going from village to village, shouting, "Copper basins, copper bowls, copper vats!" and then using copper and mortar to patch up broken bowls and vats.

Compared to those "real handcraft artists" who can carve patterns and add finishing touches to cracks, Zhang Shihan's skills can only be said to be just mediocre. It's no problem for him to mend a bowl firmly and prevent it from leaking, but to make it look artistic is a difficult task for this big man.

So, when the Eighth Route Army's factory team set up a site in Dingbian to recruit workers, the idea of ​​a regular workday and a life without the hassles of sleeping outdoors immediately attracted him. After arguing with his wife for three hundred rounds, he finally convinced the "tiger" to sign up at the last minute.

The handover with his coworkers was complete, and now it was Zhang Shihan's turn. He put on gloves and sat at his workstation. In front of him was a large iron core shaped like a gear, made of multiple steel sheets. On the other side was a bundle of enameled copper wire and a wooden grid for miscellaneous tools. His job was to wind the copper wire around the large iron core, then place the wound core on the slowly rotating pulley in front of him, bringing it to the next worker in the process.

According to the training teacher, this thing is used to make generators, which are the things used for the light bulbs that light up at night and the rumbling machines in the factory. The small coils they produce will mainly be used in the production of some downstream products by Huinong and even Fushi.

This job wasn't difficult for Zhang Shihan. He just had to remember how many turns to wind a ridge, remember which phase of "A, B, and C" each ridge corresponded to, and finally wind the bundled enameled wire on, placing the grooves, gaskets, and other things. However, during the first test installation, things were not as smooth as they are now. Including Zhang Shihan himself, none of the twenty or so people in the group installed it correctly. They all installed it wrong.

As a result, the factory's trial production was halted, the director was criticized, and everyone continued to study. A few days later, the Eighth Route Army arrived at the factory! Zhang Shihan was terrified. He wondered if his men, unable to learn this "coil winding" trick, would be shot.

Fortunately, he did not wait for the bullet to be shot, but was gathered together and assigned to a one-month military training with the soldiers who were undergoing "June Training I" next door.

The life of this worker is quite different from what Zhang Shihan imagined.

He divided the enameled copper wire of the three-way coil into three groups according to the required number of turns. He wound it up one by one according to his memory and gathered the positive and negative ends of each direction into one strand: the copper wire with some temperature will gradually cool down in the subsequent processing process, will shrink, and will be firmly wrapped around the iron core.

The biggest change in a worker's life is that he's no longer as "free." He thought, "When I was making copper bowls, I would just go out with my load if I wanted to; if I didn't want to, I would just put down my tools and go home."

But after becoming a worker, everything was regulated: this was allowed, that was not allowed, and other things had to be done this way. In the past, Zhang Shihan would have thought this was just a case of having nothing to do and being overly strict, but after a month of collective life during military training, he actually started to get used to this routine of waking up on time, eating on time, and resting on time.

During those painful and still freshly remembered days, Zhang Shihan was repeatedly driven to distraction by the rhythmic radio gymnastics, mentally weakened by the twirling movements of marching in unison, and repeatedly racked by the struggle to fold a quilt into a square. However, it was during this period that he gained a full stomach, became stronger, and developed friendships with the workers he gradually met.

I have found friends to talk to. Although I am not as good as those who need training.

The Eighth Route Army soldiers were practicing military subjects, but Zhang Shihan vaguely felt that he also had a similar military aura.

More importantly, after completing the military training, I found that tasks like winding coils, assembling rotors, and testing generators were surprisingly easy. During the restarted trial production, the factory's pass rate saw a significant improvement; no longer were ten out of ten coils failing.

"Okay, next one."

Zhang Shihan muttered to himself, trying to cheer himself up. He placed the assembled coil on the conveyor belt in front of him and watched it slowly move to the next process. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he took a few deep gulps of strong, bitter tea from the kettle beside him, refreshing himself and preparing for the next step.

This work is dull, tedious, and not even that simple, but Zhang Shihan has gradually become proficient in it. At the same time, he also knows that the coils he wound will be combined with other parts in the middle of the factory and then become

Each small generator is then loaded onto a large cart pulled by a motor vehicle and sent to other factories - there, it will become a hand-cranked generator in the army radio, a power source for lighting the lights in the engine box of a motor vehicle, or a generator pack in a hot air balloon.

And all of this will eventually contribute to protecting your current life.

"Brothers and sisters! Supper's here! Everyone, come in groups and have your supper!" The kitchen boy's voice came through the loudspeaker. "Tonight's supper is roujiamo (Chinese bacon and pork bun)! Fragrant white steamed bun with mutton and cucumber! Come and eat!"

Chapter 149 Goodbye Wuyin (Part 2) Female Driver

Liu Jie'er belongs to a family of workers who migrated from the Huinong generation. The village, expanded from the original small village and nestled against a small grove of locust trees, has become a new home for the workers. Most of the villagers are workers, and while men are rare during their working hours, a large plot of land near the village is quite good and cannot be left uncultivated. Therefore, a group of strong women help tend the crops while the men are at work.

But this was still a bit inefficient. It wasn't enough for the young boys and girls to manage such a large piece of land with just a few old cows in the village. The families of the workers approached the village head and the village cadres with an idea: could we raise funds to buy one of those coal-fired tractors used in the factory?

The village chief was very surprised, thinking that these women had nothing to do after eating, but the village cadres became interested and even said that the border area could now build some pot-carrying machines and it would be no problem to buy them to pull plows.

However, the village official raised a very real problem for the women: this thing is large and heavy, requiring two pot-carrying machines and a plow truck to equip it. To operate it, coal needs to be burned and water needs to be added. Furthermore, the dangerous flywheel needs to be turned to drive the high-speed spinning winch cable to pull the plow truck with its multiple rows of diagonal plows. This work requires a small work team. At the very least, two drivers, two firemen, and one plow operator are needed.

The cadre reminded us: We can borrow money from Guanghua Bank in the border area to buy farm machinery, but can we afford the cost of hiring people?

Furthermore, how should this "means of production" be managed to maintain the orderly development of grain production in the village?

At this point, the women in the village fell into a long discussion. They had to work out a plan before next spring sowing: whether to buy that kind of pot-camel tractor, how to manage it if bought, how to do the routine maintenance after plowing the fields in our own village... In the process of discussion, the most controversial point was how many people to hire to manage the new type of plowing machine - if too few people were hired, the advantages would not be brought into play, and if too many people were hired, people would just be wasting money, and everyone would lose money.

Faced with the chattering quarrel, Liu Jieer's head lit up, her forehead heated up, and she shouted: "Sisters, fellow villagers, why don't we drive this tractor ourselves?

We can't swing a hoe with all our might, so how about learning to drive a tractor?"

"Who's going? Those little boys?" someone asked.

"Our government says that women hold up half the sky. Can't we learn how to operate this tractor ourselves?" Sister Liu rolled up her sleeves and asked.

While the village women's association was still discussing the details, the workers' families' high spirits emerged. Liu Jie'er and several of her sisters contacted the village cadres, obtained travel permits and letters of introduction, and finally found the newly opened driver training team in Huinong District.

"Hello comrade, a few of us would like to sign up for driving lessons."

The headmaster of the training team across from him, with a tan complexion and a sturdy build, frowned as he stared at the crooked registration forms filled out by the women for a long time, then looked up in disbelief. Seeing the serious expressions of the young women, he swallowed the words that were about to start. He took a deep breath and asked:

"What kind of car do you want to learn? The trucking class is already full, so there's no time."

"Tractor!" Sister Liu said loudly, "We don't want to learn to drive a truck. We want to learn the kind that makes a rumbling sound, emits white steam, and can pull a plow to plow the land! Yes, a tractor!" Her answer made a clerk present burst out laughing. Sister Liu's face turned red and she glared back fiercely.

"Um, a tractor... um..." The principal suppressed the thought of "Why is a woman causing trouble here?" and shook his head. "It's not that I can't, it's just that..."

"What's so good about learning to drive a tractor? Aren't you afraid? Learning to drive a truck is tiring," he said, trying to sound less scary. "Learning to drive a tractor is even harder.

It’s not something that ordinary people can endure!”

"We are not afraid of hardship!" "Yes! We are not afraid of hardship!"

The women chattered in response, and the principal shook his head. Not to mention the girls, he had seen many guys who were full of confidence at the beginning but backed down later. He pointed to the team of drivers who were training in the yard at the entrance and spoke in a rough voice, his voice raised half a degree.

"Learning to drive requires training in the coldest days of winter and the hottest days of summer! Tractor drivers are even more so, exposed to wind, rain, smoke and fire. Even those who are not made of iron can't stand it!"

"No... I'm not afraid! We're the ones who work the fields in the village every day! Who doesn't work with our faces facing the earth and our backs to the sky?"

"The coal burned in the steam engine has to be shoveled into the stove one shovel at a time. If you work for an hour, you have to bend your waist for an hour." The principal stretched out his hand and showed them that although there was no trace of coal on his washed hand, there was coal mud between his nails that could not be washed off. After saying this, the principal pulled up the clothes on his right hand, revealing a long scar.

"The steam engine has a lot of horsepower, and the steam inside is very hot!

Heartburns are commonplace!"

His voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing back and forth across the rough northwestern desert, deep as the howling of a white-haired wind, and carried the kindly intimidation of someone who'd experienced it before. "This kind of work wouldn't be tolerated by ordinary men. You women, are you really not afraid?"

The burn scars were like twisted snakes and worms, crawling on the principal's thin arms, looking extremely hideous. Now, except for Liu Jie'er, the other girls were really scared. Some of the timid ones even screamed and hid behind Liu Jie'er.

"What? Are you scared?" The principal put down his sleeves. "I haven't even told you about school yet..." "Don't be afraid!"

Liu Jie'er stood still, her teeth clenched, just like when she had moved here with her husband despite her family's opposition; or when she had faced the elders' criticism and resisted the pressure to send her children to school: at a time like this, there was absolutely no room for softness!

"A steam engine is not like a car. To operate it, you have to manage the air, coal, fire, and steam all at once! It requires not only one person to be capable, but also everyone to work together and coordinate seamlessly!"

"Don't be afraid!"

"That's not all! To learn how to operate a steam tractor, you also need to be able to repair a car! You need to understand some mechanical principles and scientific knowledge! That's all arithmetic! Even the intellectuals from Fushe complain that it's too difficult to learn!" "Don't be afraid! Don't be afraid! I'm not afraid!"

Liu Jie'er was also furious. She tightly grasped her fellow villagers, fearing they, or perhaps herself, would give up under the pressure and flee. "All skills in the world are learned, so why should we be dumber and unable to learn? If we endure one point of hardship, the whole village will have ten points less to endure! Our descendants won't have to endure this hardship!"

"Russian women can even weld! How come we can't learn to drive a tractor?"

Liu Jie'er spoke these words almost like a shout, shaking the walls of the small room and making even the battle-hardened headmaster of the training team feel intimidated. He stared into Liu Jie'er's eyes, looking directly into those large eyes: there was a part of fear, two parts of stubbornness, and three parts of unwillingness.

And the overflowing fearlessness.

This is just like those young Red Army soldiers back then... The principal suddenly laughed to himself, "Clerk!" he shouted.

"arrive!"

"Come and register these comrades! Our first group of female tractor trainees are about to begin training!" "Principal, this..."

"What's this?" His voice was like a hammer hitting a nail. "Everything will be done according to the training standards for tractor trainees, without any compromise! If they don't pass, they won't graduate, and they won't be allowed to drive their cars!" "You girls! Don't cry when the time comes!"

Chapter 150 Goodbye Wuyin (3) Poor Expert

Steam-powered wire rope tillers were already widely used on large farms in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century. Tractors powered by internal combustion engines are now more widely used. However, in China, where there was no industrial foundation, mass-producing a steam tractor from scratch was a significant undertaking.

However, it would not be accurate to say that this represents the highest level of domestic thermal engine power during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. With such a poor development foundation in the country, there were actually teams that were able to produce qualified and usable internal combustion engines with the help of a small number of purchased parts.

At this moment, the man was being called at the door by a deliveryman pushing a cart. "Mr. Zhi! Your goods!"

"Huh? Oh! Great! Here it comes!"

Mr. Zhi jumped up from his chair, causing the cheap folding chair to creak. “I’ll sign for it! Pen, pen, pen…”

He fumbled around for a moment but couldn't find a pen. The person sitting next to him grabbed a pencil from the drawing board and tossed it to him, completing the handover. As he signed his name, "Mr. Zhi" glanced at the blue-painted flatbed cart and noticed a single wooden box on it.

"Just one box?"

"It's just one box, not much! Mr. Zhi, this stuff is really hard to find." The delivery man scratched his head and smiled, "You have almost everything we can find here. Hey! This is what we have accumulated for several months! Although there will be more later, there will be so many, I am afraid there will be very few times."

"Ah... well... never mind. It's okay! It's okay! I'm already surprised to find so many. I can't thank you enough for your support!"

Mr. Zhi was a little disappointed, but soon smiled. "Using this stuff to refine alloys is a last resort. The proper method is to use metals to combine them. Imported goods will do the trick! Once we get the approval, there are Soviet aid goods entering through the Northwest Passage. We can just pick up a truckload and use it for a long time! Don't worry, don't worry!"

"That's true, but the approval documents... the approval documents for the preserved fruits... haha..." The delivery man smiled politely. "Well, Mr. Zhi, you might have to wait a while."

Zhi Aizhou's surname is not common in China, but if you take into account his own aura, he can be said to be unique in the country. As a genuine college graduate of the Electrical Engineering Department of Nanyang Public College in Shanghai, he possesses dozens of expert skills such as mechanical design, mechanical processing, metallurgical tempering, industrial management, bridge design, engineering design, industrial drawing, electrical design, etc. He leads a capable team and works hard in the country to build bridges and roads, open mines and factories, and repair and manufacture machinery.

In recent years, deeply aware of the lack of power in domestic vehicles, Zhi Aizhou decided to develop a vehicle engine suitable for China's conditions. Given the practical challenges, he decided to start with prevention. Zhi Aizhou's team searched the country for samples to be used for surveying and replicating. They even contacted the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of China, but unfortunately, no one responded.

In the original history, Zhi Aizhou's application for engine samples was delayed for a long time. It was not until the pressure from the Ministry of Economic Affairs that Zhi Aizhou obtained a scrapped diesel engine manufactured by the German MAN company and began to imitate it. By the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Zhi Aizhou's team had designed diesel, kerosene, gas and even tung oil engines for ships, power generation and vehicles, starting from 3 horsepower, to 6 horsepower, 8 horsepower, 10 horsepower and even 100 horsepower. Under the infighting between compradors and military leaders, they worked hard to overcome difficulties and put some of them into production, which strongly supported the domestic anti-Japanese war.

Therefore, in 38, when the Eighth Route Army found this team that was looking for engines everywhere through the relationship between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Resources Committee, and provided them with a number of American, Soviet and British engines at once, Zhi Aizhou immediately took the core team to Fushe and intensively carried out the research and development of the power system.

However, due to well-known reasons, things weren't going as smoothly as he'd hoped. As of now, Fushi has only been able to establish a dedicated laboratory and design bureau for the Aizhou team. The Xinzhong Factory team, which is already capable of low-speed engine production, can only be temporarily stationed in Hunan Province and cannot be relocated here.

"We have to wait for imports? Can't we buy them ourselves?" Zhi Aizhou frowned. "Then moving our machinery factory to Fushe wouldn't be..." "That's right," the comrade said with a wry smile. "For now, I'm afraid it's going to be a bit difficult."

Zhi Aizhou was somewhat stunned. His scholarly instincts led him to ask directly, "Why is this so? Is there another place in China with a fast-acting electric furnace? Is there any other place with the same supporting facilities as this? Is there a general manager in your army who values ​​domestic products as much as this? If we start production sooner, won't we be able to provide engines to the rear sooner?"

At this point, even Zhi Aizhou, who was not very sensitive to politics, could hear the hidden meaning - although the Kuomintang and the Communist Party were now cooperating to fight against Japan, the rift between the two armies was still very obvious, and it was directly reflected in the small team he led.

"This... why is it still like this at this time? It would be great if Xinzhong Factory could come too. It's a pity to waste all those people and equipment...

After sending the deliveryman away, Zhi Aizhou muttered, found a claw hammer, removed the nails from the wooden box, and opened the box - only to see that the wooden box was filled with rows of coins: small-denomination coins with Mr. Sun's portrait printed on them, Canadian 5-cent coins with the Queen's portrait printed on them, and shiny 5-cent coins.

"Forget it, forget it. Don't think too much. You have to look forward."

Not intending to collect or trade these coins, Zhi Aizhou and his assistant poured the entire box of nickels onto the table and began carefully sorting out the "Sun Yat-sen Head" coins.

Distinguishing between "Additional Five Cents" and "U.S. Five Cents" and some other coins mixed in

He then opened them, crushed them separately with a grinder, and stored them in a blue snail, just like a medieval alchemist or an old-fashioned German chef.

At the same time, he turned on the power switch at one end of the room, and a mini electric stove printed in Russian began to preheat.

With this much, at least the prototype shouldn't be a problem... but if we want to mass-produce it later, we'll definitely have to find a stable source. "Zhi Aizhou muttered, examining the Canadian cents that boasted 99.5% nickel. "Nickel... nickel... finding nickel in China is incredibly difficult. We don't have pure nickel, so we need to calculate how many coins are needed to create the alloy."

He calculated quickly on paper while his assistant wrote down the relevant conclusions and steps. Finally, Zhi Aizhou obtained a complicated multivariate equation. He asked his assistant to send the equation to the next door, picked up the receiver, turned the dial on the phone, and made a call:

"Mr. Casio, it's me from the Alloy Lab! My apologies... Oh, yes... yes, I'm glad you got it... I'm going to bother you again today to help me solve an equation!" That's right, Zhi Aizhou, currently in Fushi's lab, trial-producing nickel steel for use in piston engines!

Chapter 151 Goodbye Wuyin (IV) Japanese Monk

"Surrounded by Bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas as numerous as the dust particles in ten Buddha worlds, their names are..."

The sound of a wooden fish echoed in the cave. A thin man with a shaved head, dressed in a yellow cloth robe, made a Dharma seal with one hand and struck a wooden fish with the other, muttering something from the Avatamsaka Sutra: "Universal Worthy Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, Universal Virtue and Supreme Lamp-illuminating Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, Universal Light and Lion Banner Bodhisattva-Mahasattva..."

Inside the cave, there was a stove, bunk beds, and very cheap incense sticks. There were also two candles—this stuff had used up his already limited inventory, but he was completely unaware of it, still lighting candles in broad daylight. From this point of view alone, he was like an ascetic monk who lived a simple life but also pursued the path to Western bliss.

Just a second later, before the man finished reading the scripture, the door of the cave was roughly pushed open, and someone stuck his head in and shouted: "Miura Minji! Come out to work!"

Mr. Miura was the type of person who was very unwelcome in the Japanese army: he was from Kaga Domain, his achievements were not very good, he had no background and no connections. Even in the original history, he would have been thrown into the reserve and sent back to the country in December 1938. Therefore, after being caught by the Eighth Route Army this time, the Japanese army did not even send troops to rescue him: it was a waste of our army's efforts to transfer this precious senior prisoner to the Wutai base for temporary shelter.

When he was first captured, Miura Toshiji had his eardrums ruptured by a grenade thrown by the assault team. He then pretended to be deaf to the smell of a stone from a toilet, pretending to be deaf. However, this mentality soon changed. After the Japanese army lost the Battle of Fanzhi Pass but broke through the Great Wall defense line from the other side, he never waited for his Japanese colleagues to desperately rescue him. Instead, he waited for a Japanese battle report in the Wutai base. The Eighth Route Army handed him a Japanese newspaper, which contained only a tiny Japanese tofu-like fragment in the corner that announced General Miura's obituary.

The obituary said that our general Miura Toshiji died on the battlefield due to beriberi. The headquarters expressed condolences and gratitude for his fighting spirit for the Empire.