CHAPTER 12

On Tuesday, Suo Jing went to the factory for a symbolic appearance. On Wednesday, he attended a large conference at the Cultural Bureau. On Thursday, Director Zhao organized a smaller meeting, inviting the few literary workers in Sui City, a few investors from the city, and Suo Jing to join.

Aside from meeting a few leaders in the renewable energy sector on the first day, most of what Suo Jing heard over the next two days revolved around the upcoming construction of a cultural town and a historical residence for a local writer in Sui City.

So when Director Zhao called him again on Friday, inviting him to attend a literary lecture in Lin City and participate in a five-day literary exchange event, Suo Jing politely declined.

He explained that he feared a single day wouldn’t be enough to gain a comprehensive understanding of the operations of the local wind power enterprises. He planned to head back to the mountains that very day and would prefer to stay in the employees’ dormitories to conduct a detailed investigation into the lives of the workers.

This wasn’t entirely an excuse.

In the year since completing his postgraduate studies, Suo Jing, through connections with the Jicheng Writers’ Association, had taken on no fewer than five assignments in reportage literature. Reportage, which sits at the intersection of journalism and literature, is neither strictly factual nor entirely fictional. While it allows for some artistic embellishment, it must still be rooted in field investigations and research.

This time, his task was to produce a report focusing on Sui City’s renewable energy sector—a short piece of about 12,000 characters, for which he’d be paid less than 10,000 yuan, with travel expenses covered out of pocket.

Such “work” wasn’t considered lucrative in his circle. He’d only taken it on to repay a favor.

Thus, he wasn’t planning to stay in Sui City for long.

As for the cultural attractions being developed in Sui City, while some investors had expressed interest in leveraging his personal brand for promotional purposes, Suo Jing had seen too many failed projects across various places that attempted to revitalize local economies through tourism. He wasn’t particularly interested.

He didn’t have high hopes for the city’s development, either economically or culturally.

Director Zhao had hoped to help his junior colleague by paving the way for networking opportunities within his capabilities, enabling him to earn some extra money. But to his disappointment, Suo Jing wasn’t receptive.

By Thursday afternoon, after being given the cold shoulder, Director Zhao didn’t even bother to assign a vehicle from the Cultural Bureau to Suo Jing on Saturday. Instead, he kicked this uncooperative junior down the chain, handing him off to Mr. Huang, whom he’d met at Monday’s reception.

At that Monday dinner, Mr. Huang hadn’t received any updates on government subsidies. Frowning at the task handed to him, he delegated Suo Jing to Director Zhang at the factory. Director Zhang, in the middle of conducting a safety meeting for his team, glanced at the task posted in the WeChat group by his superiors and forwarded Suo Jing’s contact information to the team’s maintenance supervisor.

And so, Suo Jing’s contact information was passed along like a game of hot potato, making its way through four or five hands until it eventually landed with Lou Zhiyun, the least-liked employee in the unit.

By around 11 a.m., Lou Zhiyun had already given Suo Jing a full tour of the Central Electric Sui City Wind Power Company’s office building, dormitories, cafeteria, and other areas. For the professional knowledge that Suo Jing was keen to learn, Lou brushed over it with a few perfunctory remarks. On the other hand, for details that Suo Jing didn’t care about, Lou shared them in exhaustive detail.

At first, Suo Jing still held a voice recorder in hand, occasionally making notes on his phone.

But once Lou Zhiyun completely turned the interview into an opportunity to narrate his own life story, enthusiastically recounting how he got into the wind power industry, Suo Jing quietly put away his phone and discreetly turned off the power on the voice recorder.

Lou, oblivious, launched into a passionate tale about defying his family’s objections to take out a loan for graduate school in Jiangcheng and eventually accepting a management trainee position in Sui City. Full of grandiosity, he utterly failed to notice Suo Jing’s waning interest, continuing to boast as if on the verge of popping his own bubble of bravado.

Even a polite nod from Suo Jing could be interpreted by Lou Zhiyun as encouragement for his life achievements.

Wind power wouldn’t function without Lou Zhiyun. Sui City wouldn’t function without Lou Zhiyun.

In short, Lou seemed to embody the entire youth contingent supporting renewable energy construction. He was determined to save all beings on Earth with his lifetime of expertise.

Suo Jing no longer had the habit of making snap judgments about people upon first meeting them. Experience had taught him to allow a reasonable grace period for evaluating strangers.

Lou Zhiyun’s messy, bird’s-nest-like hairstyle might have been a result of his busy schedule. His habit of looking at people with his nostrils might have been due to severe nearsightedness. Such minor details were tolerable and couldn’t define the entirety of his character. However, Lou’s constant harping on his personal heroism made Suo Jing feel faint.

How could someone under thirty already suffer from such a pronounced “dad complex”?

Even the scriptures recited by Tang Monk weren’t as endless—and at least those were real scriptures.

No wonder Lou complained about being unable to find anyone to talk to in this place. Suo Jing didn’t sympathize with his besieged situation. If he could, Suo Jing would have selectively shut his ears to this man as well.

When Lou Zhiyun’s saliva once again sprayed onto the back of Suo Jing’s hand like a pressure kettle, Suo Jing couldn’t bear it anymore. He turned on his heel and headed for the bathroom a hundred meters away. Once there, he not only washed his hands with soap in front of the mirror but also splashed his face vigorously with cold water.

Drying his hands and face, Suo Jing was filled with discomfort. He crushed the damp paper towel in his hand into a ball and threw it into the trash can.

He had had enough. This wretched place called Sui City didn’t love him, and he didn’t care for it either.

He couldn’t stay here another day. He had grossly overestimated his recent tolerance for social interactions. Everyone here seemed clueless about the concept of boundaries.

He wouldn’t even wait for Sunday’s flight. He had to leave for Jicheng tonight.

He desperately needed to return to his sparsely furnished apartment, shut the door, draw the curtains, put on earplugs, and give both his ears and his sight a much-needed break from the chaos.

Even if it meant not finishing the report, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time he ghosted on a project or delayed a submission.

As long as one was shameless enough, no one could hold you accountable.

Just as Suo Jing had made up his mind, the walkie-talkie clipped to Lou Zhiyun’s work belt buzzed nearby.

There was a fault in Wind Turbine No. 17, requiring immediate maintenance.

The voice from the control room informed Lou that the No. 17 turbine monitor was showing wind speed and direction errors, with the wind deviation gauge and other sensors all reporting malfunctions.

Suo Jing wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to witness firsthand how wind power employees repaired a turbine. The tone for his reportage was already set, and this repair would provide the vivid details to flesh out his article. So, without hesitation, he abandoned his plans to head down the mountain and instead followed Lou Zhiyun into the factory’s battered pickup truck.

Wind Turbine No. 17 was approximately 15 kilometers away from the office area. Although the straight-line distance wasn’t far, by the time Lou and two other maintenance workers met at the storage facility to collect their safety gear and tools, signed a series of repair logs, and set off again, the truck had traveled only a third of the winding mountain road. Suo Jing’s watch already showed 12:20 p.m.

On the way, the driver and the worker in the front passenger seat grumbled about how inconvenient the timing of the turbine breakdown was. Lou Zhiyun rolled his eyes disdainfully. Suo Jing pretended not to notice the awkward atmosphere in the truck and, after switching his recorder back on, broke the ice by expressing sympathy for their hard work. He then joined the conversation between the two men up front.

During the casual chatter on the road, Suo Jing learned the following:

The wind turbines on the mountain were scattered far apart. In conditions suitable for high-altitude work, it could take several hours for the repair team to complete their tasks once they reached the turbine, making it nearly impossible to return to the cafeteria for meals within a reasonable time frame. As a result, the repair teams were typically composed of three people—two for the actual repairs and one for ground support, including delivering meals to the technicians working high up.

Today, they could have had lunch before setting out. However, Lou Zhiyun’s insistence on urgency forced the other two to go hungry.

“Now we know why he’s in such a rush—it’s because you’re here, isn’t it?”

The driver, a dark-skinned man slightly older than the others, glanced at Suo Jing’s recorder through the rearview mirror and made a pointed remark in his local dialect. The chubby worker in the passenger seat immediately caught on and turned around to ask Suo Jing in surprise, “Are you a reporter? I thought reporters all wore glasses.”

Suo Jing, having spent seven years in academia, had some understanding of regional dialects. He nodded gently. The chubby worker let out a laugh and turned back to the front, muttering under his breath, “No wonder. Fake enthusiasm.”

“Speak Mandarin! Why are you using dialects all the time? Doesn’t the factory hold weekly training sessions? Communication during repair tasks should be in the most efficient language!”

Lou Zhiyun shouted at the top of his lungs, and the two men in the front exchanged glances before falling silent.

The remainder of the drive was quiet, save for the howling wind outside. Visually, the scene beyond the truck’s windows resembled an old film: the factory buildings became smaller and smaller, and the road ahead stretched across barren land. Apart from the turbine blades slowly turning high above, the ground occasionally featured clusters of tumbleweeds racing alongside the truck.

When they arrived at their destination, Lou Zhiyun was the first to leap out of the vehicle. He quickly ran up the stairs, opened the small door at the base of the turbine tower, and beckoned Suo Jing to follow him inside the generator.

After explaining the inverter and main control cabinet, Lou donned his safety gear and proudly told Suo Jing: generally, before any repair work, drones were deployed to inspect the turbine’s exterior. However, he was so familiar with this particular machine that he could determine the issue just from the computer diagnostics—it had to be outside the nacelle at the top of the tower.

Since Suo Jing didn’t have a certification for high-altitude work, he naturally couldn’t join Lou inside the nacelle. This was a job for professionals.

But Lou offered to record the repair work using an action camera and promised to submit an application later so Suo Jing could review the footage for learning purposes.

With that, Lou began directing the other two repair workers to retrieve the battery for the turbine’s climbing assist system.

The older repairman snorted twice and had already stepped outside to sit on the ladder at the base of the turbine tower, lighting a cigarette. The chubby worker also curled his lip and said in Mandarin to Lou Zhiyun, “Engineer Lou, didn’t you say you’re afraid of heights? You rarely leave the nacelle for outside work. Why are you suddenly volunteering to inspect the anemometer this time?”

Lou Zhiyun did indeed rarely leave the nacelle. As a senior engineer primarily responsible for drive equipment, he usually stayed inside the nacelle to adjust machinery during repair operations.

But with Suo Jing standing nearby, observing him with a critical eye, Lou couldn’t swallow his pride. Gritting his teeth, he waved his hand grandly, attached the fall arrester to the elevator, and declared, “Who said that? I’m an expert! What’s there to fear about going outside? I’ll go up first; you two follow after me.”

As he spoke, Lou Zhiyun pressed the button to activate the climbing device, and the motorized elevator began to ascend steadily. The chubby worker also walked out of the nacelle, leisurely returning to the truck to retrieve his plastic cup and sip on his sweetened tea.

Suo Jing stood inside the tower base for a while, looking upward, and when he noticed the two men outside weren’t in any hurry to climb up, he followed them out, found a place to sit, and innocently asked, “Aren’t you two going up?”

The older repairman extinguished his cigarette, smiled at him, and said, “No rush. Let’s give him a moment. Once we’re up there, it’ll just get hectic. Going outside the nacelle alone? Even if you gave him the courage of two men, he wouldn’t dare. He’ll probably come back down in the elevator.”

“Experts aren’t meant for manual labor,” he added.

Suo Jing nodded, fully understanding that this was the pair’s way of expressing dissatisfaction with their superior.

Conflicts between people were commonplace in daily life, and Suo Jing was happy to observe and experience them. Not intervening in any situation was part of his professional ethics.

Before leaving the house that morning, Suo Jing had anticipated the possibility of unforeseen circumstances on the mountain. He had bought some portable snacks at the supermarket downstairs. Now, he pulled a few pieces of compressed biscuits and beef jerky from his backpack and shared them with the two men. Together, the three of them ate their lunch, and the conversation shifted from serious work topics to personal lives.

The chubby worker tore off a piece of beef jerky with his prominent canine teeth and winked at Suo Jing as he shared some gossip.

“Did Engineer Lou tell you about the girl he’s been chasing lately? I bet he didn’t. He probably doesn’t have the face to admit it. He thinks earning two hundred thousand yuan a year in this poor area is such a great deal and keeps bragging about his master’s degree, but so what? The girl wouldn’t even add him on WeChat. She’s totally not into him.”

Suo Jing twisted open a bottle of energy drink and handed it to him, playing along casually, “The woman he likes—is she also an employee at the plant?”

From his observations, the employees at the wind power plant were predominantly male, with only a few women who worked in logistics. He speculated that this was likely due to the physical demands of the job. Spending an entire day climbing 35 floors and working atop a wind turbine wasn’t aligned with the typical physical strengths of women.

Of course, raising pigs probably wasn’t either, yet the image of Ha Yue riding an electric scooter with two piglets in tow had lingered in his mind for nights. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back on that tricycle, swaying precariously as the cold wind battered him.

Even when he managed to fall asleep, he woke up startled four or five times, leaving him utterly sleep-deprived.

“There aren’t any young women at the plant—just some older ladies who cook meals. He’s got his eye on a young college graduate who runs a shop in the county. A local girl.”

“The shop owner? We’ve all bought things from her—snacks, drinks, soap, towels, toothbrushes, that kind of stuff. What’s her last name again? It’s pretty rare.”

The chubby worker tore open another bag of beef jerky and turned to ask his smoking colleague, “Hey, bro, what’s that girl’s last name?”

“Her last name’s Ha—third tone. Not sure if she’s from a minority group.”