In 2000, a wave of factory closures swept across the country, and Qingshan Steelworks teetered on the brink of collapse.
On the day Zhou Chuyu reported for duty, hundreds of workers owed back pay surrounded him.
The factory was to be demolished, their wages were gone, and their families had mouths to feed.
No one knew Zhou Chuyu had been reborn.
He remembered clearly that the steel industry’s golden decade was just around the corner.
The decrepit steelworks everyone despised looked to him like a mountain of gold waiting to be mined.
He upgraded the equipment and kept the furnaces running, making it the only plant in the county to earn a spot on the preservation list.
He dug into the hidden accounts and uprooted an entire illegal steelmaking operation.
He kept watch at the counter overnight and saved the rural credit cooperative from a bank run.
He turned the tables on a fake Hong Kong merchant and caught the scammer red-handed.
He followed the trail and pulled out, one by one, the protectors behind the embezzlement of state assets.
Step by step, he rose smoothly through the ranks.
