This book is dedicated to the discipline inspection and supervision personnel, and to the hardworking working class.
“Contemporary realism + a focus on officialdom + the erosion of human nature in a state-owned enterprise in Northeast China”
In the bitter winter of 2010 in Northeast China, Qi Dongsheng, a mechanical engineering graduate with the top written-exam score, couldn’t even get through the interview door at Hongxing Heavy Machinery Plant. At this old state-owned enterprise founded during the First Five-Year Plan, “open recruitment” was already just a cover for a foregone conclusion. Desperate to help pay his father’s medical bills, he finally went with his mother, carrying local delicacies and liquor, to knock on Deputy Plant Manager Ma Shangjun’s door.
When he first joined the plant, he rode a battered bicycle between its workers’ apartment blocks and returned a 200-yuan “tea fee” to a supplier, convinced that “ability alone could secure a steady job.” But an opportunity to modernize the production line became a turning point. First came the sleepless night after accepting a 20,000-yuan kickback; later, he grew numb enough to ask suppliers directly for a 5% cut. He went from a greenhorn who rejected the ways of favors and connections to a purchasing department chief weaving a web of self-interest and drafting sham contracts. He moved into an apartment building with an elevator, but lost sight of what he once believed in.
When his old classmate Zhao Quan reported him with an inspection report, when his wife, Zhu Jiali, uncovered hundreds of thousands in ill-gotten money, and when the lights in the inspection team’s interview room turned as cold as the snow in Northeast China, Qi Dongsheng finally remembered that winter in 2010. He had stood in the job market clutching his resume, with only one thought in his heart: “I’ll make it on my own.” It turned out that the so-called iron rice bowl was never what shattered. It was his own conscience.
The novel focuses on the growing pains of the old industrial base in Northeast China as it transforms, the unspoken rules of state-owned enterprise workplaces, and the corruption of human nature. It highlights the need for anti-corruption efforts, while revealing the struggle ordinary people face between ideals and survival, power and principle.
