Chapter 57: Changing the Logistics Director
Coal briquettes were an absolute necessity for every household, so building a good relationship with the people who handled them was always a smart move.
“Auntie, this really won’t do. It’s too expensive,” Wu Jiaxiu’s husband protested, eyeing the bag. “We just ran a few errands. This much candy is far too big a reward for a little hard work.”
“Exactly,” his coworker chimed in. “Otherwise, it feels like we’re charging you a labor fee!”
Grandma Sheng made a show of turning back toward her bedroom. “If you won’t take the sweets, then hold on a moment while I fetch some cash for your trouble!”
The two grown men were startled and scrambled to stop her. “Auntie, please, don’t do that!”
“The candy is wonderful, truly,” Wu Jiaxiu’s husband added quickly, waving his hands. “My son loves sweets, and my wife has a sweet tooth too. We’ll take it!”
Seeing them finally relent, Grandma Sheng smiled and stopped pressing. The two men, completely defeated by her relentless hospitality, had no choice but to carry the paper bag of candy downstairs. Privately, they both resolved to be even more proactive the next time the Sheng family needed help with their fuel. Delivering to a household this appreciative was a rare pleasure.
By the time Sheng Wanyan returned home from work, the five hundred coal briquettes had already been neatly stacked in a corner of the living room. Mother Sheng had covered the pile with a large sheet of transparent plastic film, weighing down the bottom edges with a few heavy pieces of firewood to keep coal dust from settling over the room.
Lately, Sheng Wanyan hadn’t disappointed her mother’s expectations. She quietly brought home a few pounds of fresh meat every now and then, and Mother Sheng was thrilled to see their winter stash accumulating bit by bit.
With the end of the year approaching, a household needed meat for countless occasions. If they were still living back in the countryside, they would probably be expected to cart over half a pig just to fund Sheng Wanze’s wedding banquet. Fortunately, because they lived in the city, the family saved a massive amount of food and coupons, sparing them from constantly stressing over where to buy pork.
“With your brother getting married in just two months, a huge weight has been lifted off my chest,” Mother Sheng sighed contentedly. Then, she paused and shot her daughter a pointed, heavy look that spoke volumes. And what about your other half?
Sheng Wanyan immediately looked away, pretending not to notice. Ever since her mother found out she was officially dating Gu Tingxiao, she had been dropping hints about marriage at every opportunity, both openly and secretly.
Wanyan could understand her mother’s anxiety, though. Once the New Year passed, she would be twenty-one years old. In this era, a twenty-one-year-old unmarried woman was considered a true old maid. Most girls married by seventeen or eighteen, and their families usually dictated every detail of the match. Everything she was doing now was based entirely on her own choice, and Sheng Wanyan knew she was incredibly lucky. At the very least, she hadn’t been born into a family of toxic, manipulative relatives; otherwise, she would still be exhausting her energy fighting them off.
“Mom, marriage is a monumental step,” Wanyan said gently. “We should just let things take their natural course.”
In truth, she had absolutely no plans to rush into marriage. She wanted to date Gu Tingxiao for at least a year or two first. Moreover, Gu Tingxiao was a soldier stationed far away, meaning they couldn’t even see each other on a regular basis. She had no intention of blindly leaping into a lifelong commitment without thorough thought. She needed to be entirely certain that their core values and life plans aligned before she ever considered moving forward.
Mother Sheng quieted down and pondered her daughter’s words. In the end, she didn’t press the issue. After all, Xiao Gu’s profession carried an undeniably high risk. It was actually a blessing that her daughter was being so level-headed and cautious. The young couple only communicated through written letters and had barely spent any real time together, so rushing into a wedding was unnecessary. Besides, time was the ultimate judge of a person’s true character. Given enough months, even the most carefully hidden flaws would eventually bleed through.
“As long as you know what you’re doing,” Mother Sheng murmured.
She was fiercely protective of her children, motivated entirely by a maternal desire to see them secure a peaceful, prosperous future. To her, her children were the driving force behind every hard hour she worked—they were her absolute everything, her entire life.
“Mom, I know exactly what I’m doing,” Sheng Wanyan smiled. She looped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, leaning in playfully. Faced with her daughter’s sudden affection, Mother Sheng’s irritation melted completely.
“Go on then, massage my shoulders.”
“Right away!”
Mother Sheng lay face down on the bed. Thanks to Sheng Wanyan’s regular targeted massages over the past few weeks, the agonizing tightness in her shoulders had largely faded. Her cervical spine was in rough shape from years of factory labor, and whenever she kept her head bowed for too long, her neck would turn stiff and intensely painful. Now, her shifts at the mill felt significantly less exhausting.
Watching her mother suffer the physical toll of manual labor made Sheng Wanyan’s heart ache. It only reinforced her secret vow to rebuild her business empire once the economic reforms took hold in a few years, allowing her to open a comfortable shop for the old couple where they could simply sit and manage things at leisure. Factory labor in this era was brutal.
The current societal narrative glorified hard manual labor above all else, but forcing hungry, freezing people to exhaust every ounce of their physical strength for basic survival didn’t strike her as glorious at all; it was just survival.
Sheng Wanyan let out a quiet sigh, continuing her steady, rhythmic pressure until her mother drifted off to sleep under her hands.
She tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door with a soft click. In the living room, Father Sheng looked up from his newspaper and gestured toward the bedroom with a questioning look. Wanyan offered a small nod, confirming her mother was asleep. The father and daughter had developed their own unspoken code over the months, reaching a perfect level of quiet understanding.
Over the next few weeks, Sheng Wanyan’s life settled into a quiet, predictable rhythm. Every day on her way to work, she checked the post office box to see if Gu Tingxiao had written back.
More often than not, she walked away empty-handed, but she felt no anxiety. She knew the postal routes across the country were highly unreliable and subject to endless logistical delays.
Instead of worrying, she channeled her focus entirely into her translation work. The more text she processed, the more her personal savings grew. Working efficiently inside her spatial dimension, she managed to translate the entire remaining stack of articles from the capital newspaper in just a few days. However, she didn’t dare mail the completed manuscripts back all at once. Delivering eighty translated foreign articles in a matter of days would look incredibly suspicious; it was far safer to pace her submissions.
She selected forty completed articles, packaged them up, and resolved to hold the remaining texts until the following month.
Early the next morning, she made a trip to the post office. Because the bulk manuscript was seriously overweight, the clerk required an additional fee to clear it for the long-distance route.
“That will be one yuan,” the postal worker announced.
Sheng Wanyan counted out a one-yuan bill, handed it over, and pedaled her bicycle toward the factory gates.
The moment she walked into the Propaganda office, however, she was caught completely off guard by a massive piece of gossip from Wu Jiaxiu. Her colleague was a virtual repository for internal factory news; if a rumor existed within the compound, Wu Jiaxiu knew it first.
“Wanyan, have you heard the news yet?” Wu Jiaxiu whispered, darting over the second Wanyan sat down. “Our head of logistics has been officially replaced.”
She lowered her voice to a bare murmur, sharing the volatile information.
“What?” Sheng Wanyan blinked, thoroughly confused. She had crossed paths with the director of logistics several times; he had always struck her as an honest, hardworking man who genuinely cared about factory operations. Why on earth would he be suddenly stripped of his title?
“Lean in close,” Wu Jiaxiu urged. “Word is, the logistics director’s elderly father is an old-guard university professor, and one of his own students formally reported him to the political committees. The director strictly refused to sign the paperwork to legally sever ties with his father, so the committee stripped his rank and sentenced him to accompany his father down to the rural labor camps.”
“The director’s wife caused a massive scene, screaming that she would divorce him on the spot if he didn’t sign the denunciation. In the end, the director actually finalized the divorce papers yesterday and accepted his exile.”
Sheng Wanyan’s brow furrowed deeply. A dark shadow crossed her mind.
The former logistics director had been a genuinely practical, upright administrator who treated his subordinates with fairness and respect. This sudden, violent shift in leadership suggested the internal political climate of the factory was becoming volatile. More importantly, she realized that the peaceful, harmonious atmosphere the cotton mill had enjoyed for so long was about to fracture.
Her own low-level position as a clerk meant she was powerless to affect executive decisions, but the vast authority held by the logistics director directly influenced the raw materials, housing, and general welfare of every single employee in the compound.
Our daily lives are going to become significantly harder, she predicted silently. A new executive arriving out of nowhere under a political cloud was always the most difficult type of manager to navigate, especially when their underlying motives and factions remained entirely unclear.
“They say the new logistics director is scheduled to clock in the day after tomorrow,” Wu Jiaxiu whispered, darting a nervous glance toward the hallway to ensure no one was listening. “And rumor has it he’s being transferred all the way down from the capital.”
She dropped her voice even lower, sharing a highly sensitive detail. “My sources say he was actually demoted and exiled to our region because he’s a bit of… a volatile thug. But because his family line possesses massive political connections in the capital, instead of being sent to a labor camp, he was simply reassigned here to manage our logistics.”
Sheng Wanyan let out a heavy breath. Still, as a basic clerk, she knew her best shield was to simply keep her head down and perform her duties in absolute silence.
“We need to be exceptionally disciplined and compliant during our shifts for the foreseeable future,” Wanyan warned her friend quietly. “Make sure your files are flawless. Do not give him a single reason to single you out.”
Wu Jiaxiu nodded fervently. An old proverb dictated that a new official always lit three fierce fires upon taking office to assert his dominance. Who could predict whether that erratic fire would burn an innocent clerk? In times like these, caution was their only armor.
