The queue of workers entering the factory snaked along the street, moving step by step. The road was busy with traffic, and trucks carrying goods came and went with a rumble. The factory door had an electric fence, and security guards were maintaining order.
The program team's shots started from the factory gate and captured the long queue. An assistant director from the program team came over the next day to direct the female reporter and cameraman to shoot the necessary materials.
Most of the young people who entered the factory were only seventeen or eighteen years old, thin, ignorant, and walked into the factory gate with the crowd. They were sent by local government organizations. Because the number of places to enter the factory was limited, people from all over the country relied on competition.
When they arrived at the factory, the city cadres finally found a few workers for the program team who were willing to be interviewed. They could be called 'workers' rather than children. They were really young.
"Anyone under the age of seventeen will be sent to a technical school for one year of training. Those between seventeen and eighteen will be trained for half a year. Those over eighteen will be trained for one to three months, depending on the situation.
Before training, a physical examination is required to screen out those who are not suitable for the production line. 'Holy Light' is worthy of these dolls. If they are allowed to stay in their hometown, they will have no future and may have to go to jail."
The cadres set up a few bamboo chairs and asked the young workers to sit in a circle. The female reporter grabbed the microphone and asked questions one by one, while the cameraman was filming nearby.
In the first ten minutes, everyone didn't talk much. They basically asked and answered questions. After chatting for half an hour, the female reporter finally got these young people to take the initiative to speak.
When asked whether they would like to work, young workers all nodded. One young man from the Yi ethnic group mentioned that township cadres came to him and said that he had a job that could earn at least 200 yuan a month. His parents didn't even ask what he was doing, so they pushed him away.
came out.
"It won't work if we don't come out. The village is too poor. We can only grow corn and potatoes, and we have to rely on relief to eat rice. In the past, we didn't even have to eat potatoes, which was even more miserable."
The Yi guy's Mandarin is not good and he can't speak many words. But as the female reporter listened, she could feel the suffering caused by poverty and isolation.
"There is no road in the village, so you can only go to town by horse-drawn carriage. I transport some mountain goods to sell. When I come back, let alone people, even the horses are lame from exhaustion. It was the first time I saw a car after I left the village, and it was the first time I wore dry clothes.
It’s clean and everything looks great.”
When the young people talked about the current situation, they all grinned and were deeply satisfied.
It is hard for residents living in the city to imagine that there are still people in remote areas who are so far away from modern civilization. They have no electricity, no roads, and even water shortages. They are busy all year long and can barely make much money.
The poorer they are, the harder they are to escape the fate of poverty. They cannot save money, provide good education for their children, and cannot enjoy medical security. They can only make ends meet with their only income, and have no skills to survive in the outside world.
Without external help, poverty will remain forever. However, this is not the most serious problem.
This city is so nice, I don’t have to worry about food and clothing. Now I just want to earn more money to take my parents out." The Yi guy said with tears streaming down his face and full of hope for the future.
Other young workers have similar experiences. Compared with young people in the city, their cultural quality is lower, but they are willing to work hard and bear no complaints. Once they enter the city, they never want to go back and have a strong desire to stay.
"What should the people in the village do?" the female reporter asked again.
Young people don't know.
The cadre next to him jumped in and answered, "Build roads, build schools, expand counties and cities, and move people out of remote places. At the beginning of the year, the CEO of 'Shengguang' said he would come to Yunnan to invest, and now he will use all the money he earned from selling VCDs."
Take it out and continue investing.
When building a school, you can get the younger children out first and let them go to at least junior high school. If they perform well, they can go to high school to take the college entrance examination. Otherwise, they can go to a technical school after junior high school.
'Shengguang' has also taken over several technical schools in the city and reorganized them. I went there last month. They have paramilitary management and are much stricter. You can still learn a lot after studying for two or three years.
There is work.
Adults are organizing themselves to engage in agriculture, which is more difficult. We started research in February, but we still don’t have a clue yet. It is estimated that we won’t have a plan until next year.
The key is that many places have no roads or electricity at all, and it is very difficult for us to carry out our work. To solve these problems, we will need at least hundreds of billions of investments. I estimate that I will never see the day when every village has access to electricity until I die."
The city cadre is quite optimistic about the future. But no matter how optimistic he is, he cannot be happy about the poverty situation at the grassroots level in the province. No one can imagine what it will be like in ten or twenty years.
Everyone always feels that the ‘Holy Light’ is very powerful, but it cannot be infinitely powerful. People are used to estimating the future based on linear thinking, but they have never thought that there is another kind of ‘exponential growth’.
'Shengguang Audio-Visual' may recruit 15,000 general workers this year. If VCD production reaches 5 million units in two years, its number of workers will only reach 100,000.
But how many young people in Yunnan need to work?
"The province estimates that 'Holy Light Audio-Visual' can create 10 to 2 billion in profits and taxes every year and provide about 30,000 to 50,000 jobs." City officials hesitated when talking about this figure.
The female reporter keenly caught this hesitation and asked: "Is this number high or low?" Her inner judgment was that profits and taxes of one billion and employment of tens of thousands were very high.
The same goes for large central enterprises.
But the city cadres scratched their heads, "This estimate was made by the Provincial Department of Light Industry. But there is a rumor in private that when the CEO of 'Shengguang' heard this number, he said with disdain that the province looked down on people."
The female reporter was also curious, "Is there any follow-up measures for 'Holy Light'?"
"Currently, we are mainly promoting VCD and using the profits brought by VCD to establish a complete set of white goods industry. As for the other things, we really don't know. After all, everything has just started, and we will not have a clearer development plan until at least next year."
Speaking of this, the city cadre laughed again, "If you come next year, the situation will definitely be different. The 'Holy Light' does things really fast. We can't be sure."
The interview lasted for two hours, and the program team was quite satisfied. The young people who entered the factory were all smiling when talking about their current lives. The accompanying cadres also did not shy away from talking about both good and bad things.
But after the interview ended, the female reporter asked again: "Now that "The Sword of China" has been broadcast, the social response is extremely strong, and the people are paying special attention to it.?"