Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard

16. A Mouse Wants to Fly to the Sky

 A Mouse Wants to Fly to the Sky The No.  Workshop of the East Wind Aircraft Factory to which I was assigned was a large concrete building, the size of a soccer field, where jet engines for MiG- fighters were assembled. More than anything else, the workshop reminded me of a hospital: it was clean, quiet, and white. All workers wore white uniforms and white shoes, and the entire assembly line was painted white. The first time I walked into the building, I was mesmerized by the white cranes that moved smoothly on rails attached to the ceiling, and by the white steel cabinets that housed spotlessly clean tools. The ghostlike battery-operated car that noiselessly pulled the assembled engines into and out of the building was also white, and the gargantuan doors it pulled them through were white as well. Although the sterile atmosphere gave me a slightly uneasy feeling and the gasoline fumes made me queasy, my excitement and eagerness to explore the wonderful technology and organized efficiency of modern industry more than made up for any negative feelings. All day long, I listened to the faint clinking sound of metal on metal coming from different directions in the workshop and enjoyed it as much as I would have enjoyed a harmonious symphony. I liked the jingling and jangling of the assembly lines, stainless steel’s crisp pitch, titanium ’s dull thump, magnesium’s cheerful chirping, aluminum’s sullen echo, chromium’s hushed drone, and cadmium’s low murmur. The music of modern industry was beautiful to me and rekindled pleasures and interests that I had had since I test-fired my first bamboo rocket in the fourth grade. The technology nerd in me had found a perfect playground . I was grateful that fate had provided me with the opportunity to follow in my father’s footsteps, something my mother would be proud of. After the war, my father, whose formal education ended at the sixth grade, studied on his own and became an outstanding mechanical engineer and inspector in the army. And now I had the chance to become an engineer like him.  metal Like all the Beijing Kids, I would start at the bottom and serve as an apprentice for three years, at a monthly stipend of eighteen yuan (nine dollars at the time). The amount was just enough to cover my meals (if I did not eat meat dishes too often) and dormitory fees. In my fourth year, I would become a probationary worker, with a monthly wage of thirtysix yuan. In my fifth year, I would become a regular worker, earning forty-two yuan and fifty-two cents a month. That would be my permanent wage, but it might be raised slightly every five or six years. The low wage, however, did not concern me at all, for I was confident that I would make something out of myself before long and would rise far above the ordinary rank of assembly worker. I had set my eyes on a higher goal even before I arrived at the factory in . While I was in Yan’an waiting for my physical examination, I scoured the secondhand bookstores there and bought two books that I thought would get me started on my way to becoming an engineer. One of them was The Biography of Yakovlev, a well-known Soviet aircraft designer during World War II. I was very excited to read the story of how he labored in a factory and eventually taught himself college courses to become an engineer. After reading the book in one night, I told myself that I would become a Chinese Yakovlev through self-education. I knew that since I had only a fifth-grade education, my desire was very ambitious —one could say that it was like a mouse wanting to soar to the sky like an eagle, but I never doubted that I would succeed. The other book I bought in Yan’an was An Introduction to Relativity, which showed how ignorant I was at that time. Not even knowing that a mechanical engineer had no use for theoretical physics, I thought becoming an engineer meant that I must begin my studies with the theory of relativity. And that was what I did. I began studying the book on the train to the East Wind Aircraft Factory and found that I could not understand a single mathematical equation in the book. I was undaunted by the setback, though...