"Yo, Mr. Li, why are you eating now, I knew that I asked the child and his mother to cook more food for you, and it didn't take much effort, it was nothing more than adding two more bowls of water and sending an extra handful of firewood."

"Look at your bowl is all green, how can this work, you kind of intellectual, don't say that there is meat in the meal, you have to see a little oily, you see this, I just hooked a few crucian carp melon seeds in the moat, and I will send them to you in the afternoon, hey, don't mention the money, it will be too foreign"

"Mr. Li, in the morning, relatives in the countryside sent some acacia flowers, and immediately brought them to you, so that you can try them, the method is also simple, wash and wrap them on the steamer so that they are steamed, and then pour garlic juice on them, and live together."

After just a while, Cheng Nuo can be regarded as understanding how popular Mr. Li is among his neighbors, especially the workers. Men and women, young and old, tall, short, fat and thin, no matter who passes by, they will greet warmly, and those who are a little closer will come to send something, it seems that it is not much or expensive, but the intention behind the gift can not be hidden.

If Mr. Li insisted on giving money, people would just throw away the things and run away, and after seeing that he couldn't catch up, he turned around and instructed: "Mr. Li, hurry up and eat the noodles, or they will be lumpy after a while, and they won't taste good." ”

Cheng Nuo looked at the basket full of acacia flowers, all of them were in good spirits, and the petals were also covered with water droplets, exuding a faint fragrance, even if they were not eaten and put on the table as a viewing piece, it was also very good.

After weighing it a little, the amount is quite light, but at this time it is almost noon, and the water on it is obviously not dew.

"Mr. Shouchang, the acacia flowers sent by this aunt are all washed, and you can eat them after a little processing, it seems that Mr. is very popular here."

"Neighbors, usually help when they see difficulties, and after a long time, they slowly feel a little emotional." Mr. Li smiled shyly, knocked off the last clove of garlic in his hand, and ate the remaining noodles in one go: "Usually I don't dare to open the door, I'm afraid that's what I'm afraid of. ”

The person in front of him really does what he says, in order to save strange children, he took out all the money on his body, and now it seems that he is just helping some neighbors, and it is just a very ordinary "little thing", and in the future, he will just stretch out a pair of hands for those mud legs that the magnates can't see, who would have thought that it would be a different day.

Carrying the locust flower outside the door, Cheng Nuo asked, "Mr. Shouchang, what are you going to do with this acacia flower?" ”

Mr. Li walked over, took off the fallen leaves on Cheng Nuo's shoulder, and said with a smile: "Everyone has sent it to the door, and it's not appropriate to return it back, let's take it home and eat it ourselves, but there are so many, our family is two big, two small and four people, and we can't eat so much, so you can take some away when you leave in a while." ”

Before Cheng Nuo could speak, Mr. Li had already stepped into the courtyard and shouted inside, "Sister, when you are free, I will send some money to Aunt Zhao's house." ”

The two are childhood sweethearts, but his wife is 6 years older than him, and out of respect, Mr. Li has always called his lover sister.

Mrs. Li didn't know what she was busy in the kitchen, so she didn't see anyone come out, but she heard a voice: "It's that Aunt Zhao at the mouth of the alley, let's say, what did they send over?" ”

Mr. Li smiled: "It's nothing, this time it's some acacia flowers, wrap it on it for a while, and steam it, so that you can take it back and get your hands dirty." ”

At this time, Mrs. Li emerged from the kitchen, with her sleeves rolled high, holding a small bamboo basket with freshly washed mulberries on it, and bent down to her eldest son beside her and said, "Quick, take this to that uncle." ”

Looking at the full array of acacia flowers, Mrs. Li was a little helpless, pursed her lips and smiled: "This Aunt Zhao is too, you often don't come back to eat such a big bundle of leeks sent last time, and our mother and daughter haven't finished eating it yet." ”

For this sentence, Mr. Li just smiled, and didn't dare to say anything more on this topic, but just went over to help his wife brush the hair around her ears.

At this time, the eldest son trotted over with a small basket of mulberries, and said in a milky voice: "My mother said, you can't eat other people's things for nothing, uncle, this is a mulberry just picked from the yard, give you a taste." ”

Looking at the cute little guy, Cheng Nuo hurriedly took the small bamboo basket, for fear that he would be tired in the next moment: "Thank you, little friend, do you want to eat." ”

The child didn't know how to reply, so he secretly looked at Mrs. Li, and after receiving the instructions, he turned around and said, "My mother said, this is a guest's, uncle, you can eat it yourself." By the way, my mother also said, thank you uncle for your gluttony. ”

Cheng Nuo was also playful, pulling the child and not letting him go, and said with a smile: "Why is it your mother who said it, did your father say anything?" ”

The child instinctively looked at Mrs. Li, but Mrs. Li was also curious about this question, so she didn't give any more hints.

Here was caught by the bad uncle and did not let go, and over there the father and mother secretly carried out a "war" without gunsmoke, and the child was also in a hurry, biting his finger and suddenly surprised: "I remember, my father said that he would take us to eat meat after the salary"

As soon as these words came out, Mrs. Li hurriedly took the child away, for fear of embarrassing her husband.

Looking at the backs of his wife and children, Mr. Li sighed: "I recall that when I came back from Japan for the first time, my two children didn't know me as a father, and I owe too much to this family. ”

However, the two are obviously not too entangled in children's lovers, and after a little emotion, the topic gradually shifted to business.

"Mr. Shouchang, you are more familiar with Changxin Shop than I do, and you know more about our workers and masters than I do, I don't know if you have a skilled worker here who specializes in making matches." Cheng Nuo got straight to the point and asked directly.

"I know a lot of skilled workers, but when it comes to a single project, it's not easy to say." Mr. Li didn't directly take care of everything, but told the truth: "It seems that there are quite a lot of workers and masters in Changxin store, but in fact, they all eat railway rice." ”

The place through which a transportation line passes often brings huge logistics, people and information flows to important stations along the line, making it a population and logistics gathering place, and then providing non-agricultural conditions for the residents here to engage in commerce, handicrafts and other non-agricultural conditions, thus eventually forming towns. Because railway transportation can make the raw materials and products required by industries in various places flow more stably and efficiently in larger quantities and at a faster speed, thus stimulating the sustainable development of industry. With the capacity of railways to transport large quantities and long distances, large-scale material transactions and commercial trade are also possible.

Changxindian is an industrial and commercial town that has risen rapidly with the help of the popularization of railways along the line, and in order to protect the railway, it has opened the Pinghan Railway Changxindian Machine Factory and Changxindian Railway Factory, and there have been more than 800 workers in Changxindian by the fall of the Manchu Dynasty. It may not seem like much, but in fact there was no decent heavy industry in Beijing until the liberation, so the Changxindian Railway Factory was one of the largest machine industry enterprises in Beijing for a long time.

Regarding the doubts about work experience, Cheng Nuo explained: "Even those skilled railway workers, I believe that they start to learn slowly from the beginning of their apprenticeship, so as long as the master they find is willing to learn, then the problem is much easier." ”

Mr. Li was worried about the game and asked: "But this is an industry, it involves hands-on operation, and it is only a one-on-one teaching, and I am afraid that it will take too long. ”

As a party, Cheng Nuo thought very openly, stuffed a small string of mulberries into his mouth, but he didn't expect the juice to burst out, flowing out of the corner of his mouth, and hurriedly came to the basin, and said while washing: "The cost is too high, and although the master recruited has better skills, his way of thinking has been rigid, and it may not be suitable for a new factory like ours, and it may not be as fast as those young people to get started again." ”

Mr. Li took a towel from the rope and handed it over: "Wipe it." Actually, I'm a little curious, there are so many businesses that can be done, why do you want to start from matches, and become an 'iron tiger' running around the street, will it be more meaningful? ”

Cheng Nuo originally wanted to take the towel and wipe it, but when he saw that the juice on his hands was no longer easy to remove, and it was estimated that he would have to rub it on the towel for half a day, so it was better to cause less trouble to others, so he didn't take the towel, and threw off the water on his hand by himself, and said with a smile: "As the old saying goes, 'if you don't sweep a house, how can you sweep the world'." In the industry, we can't make a small match, more than half of the things need to buy foreign goods, at this time to talk about the production of more difficult technology, higher production requirements of the car, it is as difficult as the sky. ”

Mr. Li nodded, and then asked: "If I can recruit workers with suitable conditions for you, how are you going to train them?" ”

Cheng Nuo blurted out: "To run a labor cram school, don't forget, I am still the backbone of the China Vocational Education Society, in terms of vocational education, I still have some right to speak, if I can't do it myself, I can also find professional people to help, gather these interested workers and masters, take classes together, discuss together, and the learning effect may not be worse than those teachers teach one-on-one." ”

Mr. Li's eyes lit up, and after thinking about it for a while, he suddenly said, "This way, it's a lot better." Zhiyuan, do you think this will work, after you workers finish the remedial course, I will also take advantage of the opportunity to run a public literacy class, no tuition, specifically for the purpose of popularizing knowledge. There are always some profiteers who take advantage of the loophole that the workers are illiterate, pay less wages, and afterwards they still use strong words, which is really annoying, so we simply hand over this knowledge to the masters. ”

Cheng Nuoxin said, just teach some arithmetic how to can, the neighbors in the north have long been busy, but some words are not good to point out directly, after thinking about it, he said: "I agree with this idea very much, I can't let them be so brutal and squeezed, and after getting on the right track in the back, simply set up a special workers' school, teach the ordinary primary school courses for the children of workers during the day, and teach the workers the courses of the upper primary school at night, so that they can learn and maximize the use of school resources." ”

"Okay, I'll just say, how can you only see a small box of matches in your eyes, there must be something bigger hidden behind it, so in this way, turn around, no, I'll contact a few worker friends in a while, and take a look to see which place is suitable." Cheng Nuo's three or two sentences ignited Mr. Li's fighting spirit, and the whole person was about to boil, and it seemed that he really had the idea of doing a big job.

In this way, the Changxindian Labor Tutorial School was held in advance, and a large part of the start-up capital was paid by Cheng Nuo, after all, it was nominally used to train match workers in the early stage, and as for other uses after the completion of the training course, Cheng Nuo naturally deliberately did not know, he was a busy man, and it was impossible to keep his eyes on an unknown night school all the time, which was too delayed.

After all, it involves a special production project, and when the training course began, Cheng Nuo specially invited a master from a match factory to teach the whole process of match making, which is divided into the process of making stalk pieces, Qi stalks, arranging boards, oiling, adjusting medicines, applying medicines, dry cooking, unloading boards, pasting boxes, brushing, packaging and other processes, and talked about everything that could be talked about.

It's not that you can't do it by hand, it's just that it's troublesome to make, and the efficiency is slower than that of the machine, so that even if you have the best technology, the production cost can't go down, the output can't go up, and it's a dead end in the end.

After thinking about it, I decided to pull the Academy of Sciences and build a few machines that my own people can use.

"What, Dean, you asked me to build a match-making machine?" Wu Yulin, who is good at mechanical manufacturing, was a little confused, he was still studying how to improve the efficiency of bicycle driving just now, and now he was on the match again, and he didn't react to the span for a while: "No, I didn't deliberately shirk it, but I opened nine out of ten tricks for this thing." ”

Cheng Nuo was puzzled: "What do you mean?" ”

Wu Yulin pointed to his temple: "I don't know anything, my dean." ”

Cheng Nuo smiled: "I thought it was, come on, come on, look at what it is." ”

As he spoke, Cheng Nuo moved out the "scriptures" he got from various match factories some time ago, and drew the drawings of various machines needed for match production on the huge white paper, including but not limited to the stalk machine, unstalk machine, labeling machine, etc., with the memory of his human camera, he drew them all hard.

"What's the matter, you dean don't lose it, but you don't just slap your ass and give orders, and you understand your difficulties." Looking at Wu Yulin's shocked expression, Cheng Nuo was still a little proud in his heart: "When others look at it, they really don't know what these things are for, do you want me to introduce them to you." ”

Although these machine drawings are known to be drawn by laymen at a glance, and even the annotations are not in accordance with the industry conventions, they are all drawn according to the fixed proportions, and the size numbers and words are not passed or covered by any drawing lines, just like there is really a machine being presented in front of you, and it is almost the same as the electric buzz.

Wu Yulin took the drawings, looked at them again and again, and finally couldn't help but circle around Cheng Nuo twice, and said in shock: "Dean, fortunately, you are not a mechanic, otherwise with your hands alone, I dare to guarantee that there will not be many factories to let you in." ”

Cheng Nuo said with a smile: "What I said, it's too late for me to change careers now, if nothing else, I'll just rob your old Wu of food." ”

Wu Yulin put the drawings aside, and hurriedly begged for mercy: "Don't, dean, we are a family, I still eat the food rewarded by your old man, how can there be any reason to bring it back." ”

Cheng Nuo waved his hand and took the drawings over: "Yes, don't joke about it, hurry up and tell you what these drawings are for, and then you can discuss with Lao Shi whether you can come to one by one." ”

"First of all, the stem-making machine, the stem-making department first moves the wood to the sawmill and cuts it into thin sticks that are more than an inch long, and then roasts or dries them to remove the moisture, which is the match stem."

"Next."

It is said that it is a machine, in fact, it is not complicated, of course, it is only for Cheng Nuo and others, for most other Chinese, it is still very difficult to understand, which leads to the fact that the manufacturing machines are all bought from foreigners, and they have to pay their repair and maintenance fees during use, which leads to the upstream, middle and downstream of the entire industry are all controlled by foreigners, and the profits that Chinese people can grasp are pitiful.

Until the liberation, our match preparation process was still a big problem, and some readers even wrote to the newspaper to complain that the quality of matches was too poor: some match heads were uneven and crooked, and some match heads were too small to attract match sticks; The red phosphorus coated on the matchbox is uneven and sticky, and often only half of the matches in a box are used, and the red phosphorus surface is worn and broken, and the remaining half of the matches cannot be used.

In the 80s, a normal old smoker had to use about ten boxes of ordinary matches a month, and a family of five needed six or seven boxes of matches a month to boil water for cooking, but at that time there was only one match factory in Beijing, and there was a huge gap between supply and demand, so it had to be supplied in limited quantities.

So much so that there was a rush to buy matches at that time, which was very similar to the rush to buy salt later.

On paper, I finally feel shallow, and I never know that I have to do it. After explaining the drawings, Cheng Nuo simply took Wu Yulin and Shi Jin, pretended to dress up, and touched some foreign-run match factories in the name of cooperation, and immediately returned to the Academy of Sciences after feeling the use of the machine.

With the addition of Cheng Nuo's human camera and computer, a week later, several semi-automatic machines were really made, and the power system was all changed to electric transmission, including drying machine, oil dipping machine, stemming machine, unstemming machine, etc.

Of course, they also know that these machines are not original, they are all improved on the basis of foreign goods, but the safety and production efficiency have been greatly improved, leaving a big cut off the original.

As a result, a factory called "China Match Co., Ltd." was established in a low-key concession in Tianjin, which did not attract anyone's attention at first.

Everyone knows that the foreign people are fighting the European continent and are busy producing armaments, so the import of this kind of production product will naturally decline, and they will even have to import it from our country, so that the domestic market will be less competitive with foreign imperialism, and there will be a vacuum in the domestic match market.

But who would have thought that it would occupy the market at a rather exaggerated speed, and when everyone found out, Zhonghua brand matches had already occupied half of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.