The new production director was named Dou Baoguo. He was forty-five years old, with a scholarly air about him, and appeared quite refined.
But he was known for stirring things up. Today, he called a meeting with both the scheduling and inspection departments. Also in attendance was the Forest Management Director, Fan Zhisheng.
With two major figures attending, the meeting was undoubtedly imbued with a greater degree of seriousness and tension.
And when Dou Baoguo announced the purpose of the meeting, the once-silent conference room immediately erupted in discussion.
Dou Baoguo announced two things. First, to support the construction of the Divine Land, this year's winter transport production quota would be double last year's!
'This is just asking for trouble!'
Doubling the production quota meant doubling the workload. The work for the log stackers and skidders could be handled by outsourcing to the Leaders of contracted logging teams.
But the people in scheduling and inspection were official employees. Without an official post, you couldn't just hire more people. This was especially true for the schedulers, who weren't like the inspectors. An inspector's pay included a base salary plus piece-rate wages; the more timber they measured, the more they could earn. Schedulers, however, were on a fixed salary. With such a sudden, massive increase in workload, how could they not have complaints?
Wu Feng said only one thing: the workload was too great, and they didn't have enough people.
But as soon as he finished speaking, Dou Baoguo rebuffed him with a response that was neither soft nor harsh.
Farm Director Dou first spouted some high-sounding rhetoric, then slapped him with the grand label of "supporting the construction of the Divine Land." Wu Feng could only sigh in helpless resignation.
But this was just the appetizer. Dou Baoguo's second proposal was even more outrageous.
He said that with the increased production volume, the existing timber collection trails, Wood Transport Routes, and sled paths would be insufficient. Therefore, over the next two months, the Forest Farm had to organize road construction.
Building roads. Mountain roads.
Carving roads out of the mountains required immense manpower and resources. And Dou Baoguo wanted to build more than just one. After all, for such a vast mountain area, a vast mountain forest, how could one road possibly be enough?
They would need to build at least ten more roads.
But with the example of Wu Feng being shut down fresh in their minds, this time, not a single person among the more than eighty in the room objected.
Seeing no objections, Dou Baoguo immediately declared the meeting adjourned. He and the Forest Management Director then went to see Zhou Chunming.
That's right. He hadn't even discussed the two resolutions he had just announced with Zhou Chunming before assigning the tasks to the scheduling and inspection teams.
His ambition was an open secret.
Everyone understood that Dou Baoguo was gunning for Zhou Chunming. As long as Zhou Chunming was around, he couldn't get promoted. Moreover, Zhou Chunming was only three years older than him; by the time Zhou Chunming retired, he himself wouldn't have many years left to be the top boss.
So, this Dou Baoguo wanted to stir up some trouble to seize power as quickly as possible.
But in the few months since he had arrived at the Forest Farm, Dou Baoguo had discovered that the top two leaders of every department, and even the head chef in the cafeteria, were all Zhou Chunming's trusted confidants.
His attempts at organizing study sessions and the like had been completely useless.
And so, like a cornered dog jumping over a wall, Dou Baoguo decided to make a big move. Of course, it couldn't be denied that the man was, at his core, someone who craved grand achievements.
It was unclear what Dou Baoguo and Zhou Chunming discussed, but early the next morning, a notice was sent down to every work crew.
The notice's general message was that the Forest Farm's production target for the year had doubled from the previous year. It expressed the hope that everyone at the farm would unite as one to support the construction of the Divine Land, an undeniable responsibility. Furthermore, the Forest Farm would soon be building a Wood Transport Route from the main camp to Grinding Sand, requiring the active cooperation of the scheduling, inspection, and log stacking teams.
Carving roads out of the mountains was different from ordinary road maintenance. It required felling all the trees along the planned route, after which road maintenance crews would use dynamite to blast the area and then level the roadbed.
The blasting and leveling would come later. The initial phase of logging required chainsaw operators to fell the trees, skidding crews to haul the logs to the Logging Camp, inspectors to measure the timber, the log stacking team to stack it, and the scheduling team to dispatch vehicles for transport.
So, the scheduling, inspection, log stacking, and vehicle teams all had trouble ahead of them.
This was supposed to be the slack season, a time when many people could skip work to go home and help with the autumn harvest.
So, naturally, no one was happy about suddenly being assigned this much work.
But the official notice was out, and no one could disobey a direct order.
Fortunately, for the time being, they were only building this one road. The Forest Farm, which had been quiet for more than half a year, sprang into action, and the various tasks proceeded in an orderly fashion.
First, a site was selected near the planned route. Then, construction workers cleared the land to build a simple Logging Camp, a dynamite storage shed, and a detonator storage shed.
Compared to the strict supervision required for the dynamite and detonator storage, the Logging Camp and the workers' sheds were built easily and smoothly.
Once the Logging Camp was built, the log stacking department sent two teams. A team leader was chosen to move in with eighty log stacking workers.
Then, they hired three Leaders from the surrounding villages. Each Leader brought a crew of skidders, for a total of eighty horses and eighty sets of harnesses.
An operation of this size was considered a large Logging Camp. The inspection team had to send two inspectors to assist with measuring the timber.
Xu Baoshan managed the inspection team in a very humane way. So, during an internal meeting, Xu Baoshan said that if anyone volunteered to go to the New Logging Camp to measure timber, he would assign them directly. If no one volunteered, then everyone in the inspection team, including himself as the team leader, would go on a rotating basis.
Although measuring timber at this time came with extra piece-rate pay, none of the inspectors were short on cash. They would rather go home and shuck corn than go to the New Logging Camp to measure timber.
Therefore, very few were willing to volunteer.