If a nation has been suppressed for thousands of years, what will it look like when it bursts out with entrepreneurial enthusiasm?

Everyone who sees the answer is destined to be shocked and moved.

Xie Niancheng, Kong Lingying, Song Meimei, and representatives of the U.S. delegation traveled in large trucks along the newly built dirt road to the highest hill in the area.

Xie Niancheng was covered with dust, but his heart was full of passion.

In August in the middle of the river, the heat is extremely hot, and from the top of the mountain, there is smoke and dust everywhere in a radius of dozens of kilometers, and hundreds of thousands of people are repairing the earth.

This area is where the steel plant and some supporting factories in Sichuan's industrial planning are located. It can be said that this will be the core of the entire Sichuan industrial system in the future.

Sichuan has no heavy industry base and no oil crops.

The few construction machinery shipped back from Germany, as well as diesel and gasoline imported from the United States, are all treasures in this country of abundance, and all need to be used in key places. The hardest part of the work here has been completed, and the vast majority of the rest of the work has to be carried out by manpower.

Groups of small and thin men from eastern Sichuan, shirtless under the scorching sun, used their calloused hands to split the rocks piece by piece. With their not broad shoulders, they carried a load of dirt.

An industrial base covering an area of tens of square kilometers has already taken shape.

The opposite mountain, which had been cleared, was bare, and it was difficult to find a single tree, only the bare rocks, shimmering russet in the morning sun.

Several improvised roads for transporting supplies and equipment have been built, winding up the mountains. A group of sappers of the revolutionary army were firing their guns.

The tower crane holds its giant arm high. Lifting large steel parts one by one, tens of millions of builders have to flatten the mountains here and fill in the ravines. On this hillside, which is about 10 kilometers long, about 5 kilometers wide, and has a height difference of 100 meters, seven large steps and 33 small steps are "made" with both hands, a 5 million square meter factory building is built, 190,000 tons of equipment is installed, and a large steel base with an annual output of 5 million tons of steel is placed.

Some factories along the river in the distance are brick factories, cement factories, building materials factories, thermal power plants, water plants, and warehouses that have been put into operation, and modern factories are being built. Fire bricks, cement and building materials are a must. The complete set of equipment shipped back from Germany and the steel and accessories needed for the construction of the plant have been stacked in the warehouse, waiting to be installed after the completion of the basic construction.

The mountains farther away have been dug up, and there are mines. Initially, it will be mined in open pit pit and will gradually go deeper into the ground until it is finished. The preliminary preparation of the mine has been completed and is ready for production.

Such an ambitious project. It's probably divided into hundreds of project groups. Basically every group had a German as the person in charge.

Once in Chongqing, the Germans in charge of the steel plant project quickly got to work. They first finalized the plan for the entire heavy industrial zone as quickly as possible, and then began to work with the 600,000 migrant workers assigned here.

These 600,000 migrant workers are not unorganized, they come from 12 counties in eastern Sichuan, and each county is personally led by the county magistrate sent by the National Salvation Association.

The backbone of the migrant workers also joined the National Salvation Association.

It's easy to identify who the German experts are on the construction site, but it's not hard to identify who the people are who are the people who will save the Congress: look at the toughest positions on each project, or the busiest people running around. It's usually the one who saves the Congress.

The flags of the federal government were flying everywhere on the construction site, and many of the flags of the Fifth Army could be seen.

On the way, the delegation heard it more than once. The people of the National Salvation Association are cheering everyone on:

"Fellow villagers, it's dark and dead, the factory is finished, and everyone can live a good life. As Commander Xie said, this military flag is not only the flag of the revolutionary army, but also the banner of our entire Sichuan people. Everyone works hard, we must be worthy of Commander-in-Chief Xie and the revolutionary army, we must be worthy of the land allocated by the government to everyone, don't embarrass ourselves on our own roof, don't embarrass our ancestors! ”

Hundreds of thousands of people working together to do one thing, what difficulties cannot be overcome?

Looking at the whole scene from the top of the mountain, the members of the delegation entered the project department on the mountain together.

There is a sand table model of the whole project in the project department, and the people of the investigation team circled around the sand table and made careful inquiries about every flat dam, every mountain, every ravine, and every river.

The sand table model of the Chongqing Iron and Steel Base Planning was carefully made by several German experts who were responsible for the construction and design of the entire project, where to build a coking plant, an iron-making plant, a steel-making plant, a railway, a power grid and running water on this mountain...... Under the extremely complex geographical conditions such as mountain shape, landform, and deep gullies impacted by mountain floods, they are all very clearly marked.

"Commander Xie, this kind of efficiency is really amazing, I wonder when this steel plant will be put into operation?"

After reading the sand table, Harrison, the head of the American delegation, asked with some excitement: "Please ask the person in charge here to answer this question." ”

A young man wearing a hard hat and slightly darkened skin walked over.

"Hello everyone, my name is Lei Zhenglong, and I am the Chinese person in charge of Sichuan Iron and Steel Corporation."

Lei Zhenglong is not the Xie Group. The student sent to Germany was recruited by Zhao Ke from the UK.

After studying metallurgy in England, Lei Zhenglong took up the position of engineer in a steel mill in England. Upon learning that he could have the opportunity to become the general manager of a steel mill with an annual output of five million tons of steel, he immediately resigned from his position in England and returned to Sichuan with the fleet.

"Chongqing Iron and Steel Plant will be the first project of Sichuan Iron and Steel Corporation, and it is expected that the installation of equipment in various plants will begin in December this year, mainly including steel mills, iron plants, coking plants, rail beam plants, wire rod plants, plate plants, and steel pipe plants...... It is expected that the earliest ironmaking plant will be put into operation at the turn of spring and summer next year......"

After listening to Lei Zhenglong's professional report, the delegation visited one of the "big ladders" with great interest.

This grand staircase covers an area of more than 2,000 acres and is where the planned steelmaking plant is located.

It was noon, and there were thousands of workers eating lunch together.

The delegation also arrived at this dusty construction site and, like the workers, ate a big pot of dishes.

The construction workers do heavy work, so the food is not bad: rice, steamed buns, pickles, fried pork and shredded potatoes.

The members of the delegation from the United States all had the cowboy spirit in the bones of Americans, and they had long been infected by the enthusiasm of the workers, and they crowded together with the workers to eat on the construction site.

What surprised Xie Niancheng was that Kong Lingying and Song Meimei, the two super-rich children, could actually squeeze together with the sweaty workers to eat together, and they had a good conversation.

After a simple lunch, according to the original plan, it was time to go to Chongqing to rest. However, the members of the delegation were still unsatisfied, and they all proposed to go to the factories that had been built by the river to have a look.

In the somewhat desolate canyons, large chimneys rising in the sky are constantly spewing white smoke, the first modern power plant in the whole of Sichuan. Accompanied by Lei Zhenglong and the person in charge of the power plant, the inspection team visited the equipment and production environment in the factory, and then came to a flat land in front of the factory.

Standing here, in front of you is the surging Sichuan River, rolling waves like ten thousand fierce lions, whistling past everyone's eyes. From here, a large army participating in the construction of the steel base is converging here from all directions.

On the river, countless small boats carrying people and equipment shuttle back and forth between different construction sites.

Harrison asked: "Sichuan has not yet built a railway, I think there is very little machinery and equipment here, so many large equipment in the steel plant, relying only on dirt roads and manpower, can the construction task be completed on time?" ”

Lei Zhenglong replied: "The provincial government has given us a death order, and the construction of this steel plant is a war readiness project to seize time and speed. In order to speed up the pace of construction, we will mobilize more manpower, under the command of German experts, to disassemble all the large equipment into parts, transport them one by one through various methods, and install them one by one after arriving at the destination. That's how the power plant you see now was built! ”

"This power plant, facing the Sichuan River, backed by mountains, has a narrow ground, the entire area is only 12,000 square meters, and it is all hard as iron rock. Proceeding from the actual situation, we built along the mountain, changed the flat-slope power plant to a stepped type, changed the outdoor booster station to an indoor semi-open hall type, and other auxiliary facilities were also inserted and layered, so that this large power plant was finally built on the slope. ”

"In order to install these equipment, our workers follow the experts from Germany every day to learn art, some time ago, it rained every day, some of our workers held umbrellas for their workers, some held umbrellas for equipment, and they did not stop work for a day, and it only took half a month to install all the generators."

"To set up the power grid, we have no professional equipment, all rely on manpower, the project team specially allocated 50,000 workers to us, we worked day and night for half a month, and now, the construction site above is all electrified!"

Away from the development of the power plant, the businessmen of the American delegation will never forget today's experience. At this point, all their doubts about the Sichuan project before coming to Sichuan have disappeared, and now they only have some regrets: why did the Sichuan government choose Germany for heavy industry cooperation!

Their regrets, as they went all the way west, deepened and deepened.

From Chongqing to Chengdu, along the way, there were dense crowds of people wearing hard hats and shirtless, devoting themselves to construction under the scorching sun.

Roads for trucks to pass in both directions have been built, and cement has begun to be laid on most sections.

As you can see from the road, the land is being leveled everywhere on both sides of the road, which is the site of the factory for future light and heavy industrial projects.

Commander Harrison sighed sincerely: "Commander-in-Chief Xie, I am very fortunate to visit the construction of Sichuan at this time, this is really a fiery era!" (To be continued......)