Chapter 239 Former Residence
On the second day after arriving in Shanghai, Xu Qiang and his classmates officially started classes.

Xu Qiang never imagined that their study and life in Shanghai would be so stressful and difficult.

Since there are seven of them in total, but they were admitted in three batches, the courses they study every day are also different.

Squad leader Du Xingguo is the first employee of Shengli Machinery Factory to be admitted to the TV University. Now he is in his thirties and is open-minded. He will enthusiastically help the class no matter big or small things, life or study. So when several people see Du Xingguo, they will call him Brother Du.

Du Xingguo has now started studying his senior year courses. He has been in Shanghai for two years. He is usually responsible for the liaison work with factories and correspondence courses. If nothing goes wrong, he will graduate this winter.

As for the other three old students, Yang Xiuli, Zhang Caiyun and Luo Hao, the two girls were admitted to university the year before last, and Luo Hao was the only one from the factory who made the list last year. They are also studying sophomore and junior courses respectively, and have fully adapted to the living conditions here.

At the study point, the factory equipped them with a black-and-white TV and two tape recorders. They usually watched TV and studied in the morning, and in the afternoon, they would go to the nearby library to do their homework.

In the evening, they would take the bus from their YP district to Nanshi district for classes. There was a correspondence school at Fanger Primary School in Nanshi district, which had borrowed two classrooms to provide tutoring classes for these TVU students.

Although it is just an open university, it is actually quite difficult to graduate. What makes the open university different from ordinary full-time universities is that it adopts a model of lenient admission and strict graduation. If you fail the exams consecutively, you will be forced to drop out.

Therefore, once you enter the electrical engineering school, you still have to study hard and pass rigorous exams one by one before you can graduate.

In view of this, none of the students in Xu Qiang's class studied lazily. Some students with weaker foundations worked even harder. For example, class monitor Du Xingguo and deputy class monitor Zhang Caiyun were both in their thirties. Their memory was certainly not as good as that of young people. In order to avoid being forced to drop out, they studied very hard and almost every night they would not go to bed until twelve o'clock.

However, for Xu Qiang, it only took him a few days to completely adapt to the study and life here.

Compared to the others, Xu Qiang and Liu Siying are the youngest, especially Xu Qiang, who has an amazing memory. After all, he was a top expert at the Beijing Institute of Chemistry in his previous life. He can understand everything in the textbook after reading it once. After the tape recorder finishes the lesson, he can also repeat it almost exactly, so learning is quite easy for him.

"Here are the monthly bus passes for the three of you. We are students and get half price, so it's three yuan per person." After class that morning, class monitor Du Xingguo called Xu Qiang and the other two together, and then handed them the newly issued monthly passes.

"Thank you, Captain Du!" Xu Qiang and others hurriedly thanked him and handed him the money.

"We are all classmates, and we should help each other." Du Xingguo took the money and put it in his pocket, then said: "I hope everyone will graduate smoothly in the future and enter a better unit."

"Team Leader Du, aren't you going back to the factory after graduation?" Liu Siying asked.

"I would like to go back, but the problem is that my mother hopes that I can find a job in Shanghai. She really doesn't like the environment in our mountain village." Du Xingguo smiled and continued, "Besides, we go to college to have a good future, right?"

"That's right." Xu Qiang nodded in agreement.

In fact, not only Du Xingguo, but several other students also wanted to stay in Shanghai.

Compared to the mountain valley where the Victory Machinery Factory is located, the temptation of the big city of Shanghai is really too great.

Although the conditions of Shengli Machinery Factory in all aspects are very good compared with other third-line enterprises, it still cannot compare with urban enterprises in terms of medical care, education, material supply, and cultural life.

Speaking of which, the factory director Liu Biao has applied for factory relocation for several years, but it may take another two or three years to implement it. By then, when the factory moves to Fuzhou, the living conditions of the employees will be much better.

"What about you?" Liu Siying suddenly asked at this time.

"I definitely won't leave. My home is right next to the factory. Besides, the factory just allocated a new house to me. I can't let others take advantage of it!" said Xu Qiang.

"Haha." Liu Siying chuckled when she heard that.

"Now that we can ride the bus for free, how about Captain Du take us around Shanghai to get familiar with the situation here?" Xu Qiang said. Although Xu Qiang had come to Shanghai for meetings many times in his previous life, he had never really walked around the city, let alone Shanghai in the early 1980s.

Xu Qiang also had his own plans for coming to Shanghai to study. In addition to studying, he also wanted to make more money. Especially since he had mastered so many top product production technologies in his previous life, Xu Qiang must cash in part of them to accumulate enough funds for future entrepreneurship.

The chemical industry is an extremely asset-heavy industry, and the initial investment is quite large. For example, if Xu Qiang wants to start a company that specializes in the production of aramid paper 1313 and aramid 1414, the investment will start at at least one million, and this money may not be enough. However, if there are several million, it should be enough.

You know, when Xu Qiang developed the small-scale verification equipment for aramid paper manufacturing, to put it bluntly, it was something that could only be used once. These alone cost the factory more than 100,000 yuan. If all regular equipment had been used, this number would have to be at least five or six times higher!
Moreover, a factory cannot have only one production line. In order to ensure the regular maintenance of the equipment, at least three to five production lines are needed, which requires two to three million yuan of funds. In addition, there are land, factory buildings, water and electricity lines, raw material purchases, workers' wages, etc. Without five or six million yuan, it is simply impossible!

But trying to make five or six million these days is as difficult as climbing to the sky!

So Xu Qiang can only take things one step at a time. For now, he has to stabilize the business at the dye factory. Next, he plans to start some new businesses in Shanghai and strive to earn enough money to start a factory before graduating from university.

However, it is not easy to make money in Shanghai.

Before, when Xu Qiang was drinking with Wang Zhong, the director of the town supply and marketing cooperative, the other party had mentioned the matter of 'Sunday engineers'. Currently, there are many technical personnel from state-owned enterprises in Shanghai. Every weekend, they would take a boat to the surrounding cities and towns to help township enterprises and private workshops with product research and development and technical support. The amount of money they made varied, but it was always much more than working in an office.

Xu Qiang could also take this route of technical support, but he still looked down on the few hundred or thousands of "hardship fees". He wanted to do a bigger business, the kind that could earn hundreds of thousands or even millions a year. After all, he mastered the production technology and processes of hundreds of chemical products in his previous life, which is not comparable to those Sunday engineers in current state-owned enterprises.

"Okay, since you just arrived, I will take you around this afternoon." said squad leader Du Xingguo.

Afterwards, the three of them returned to their room, changed into new clothes, and then left the dormitory building together.

Public buses are quite crowded these days, but fortunately this place is very close to the starting station, so after several people get on the bus, they can all get seats.

Liu Siying and Liu Lianhua sat in the front row, while Xu Qiang and Du Xingguo sat in the back.

Along the way, Du Xingguo introduced the situation in Shanghai to several people. Du Xingguo was very familiar with almost every old building. After studying in Shanghai for nearly three years, he had developed some feelings for every tree and blade of grass here.

"I want to get off here."

When the bus had just gone three stops and was about to stop in front, Liu Siying suddenly stood up.

"Get off here?" Du Xingguo asked doubtfully, but then said, "Okay, Qiaojia Road is in front. Before liberation, it was inhabited by wealthy people. I'll take you there to have a look."

After all, Liu Siying is the factory director's daughter, and Du Xingguo would never dare to neglect her in the slightest. Moreover, when he returned to the factory to celebrate the New Year a few years ago, Liu Biao had asked him to take better care of his daughter in Shanghai.

After saying that, Du Xingguo also stood up and led Xu Qiang and others out of the car.

"Let me tell you, in Shanghai, the most prosperous place is definitely the Nanjing Road area..." Du Xingguo said with some pride, "But Qiaojia Road where we are now was also considered a wealthy area before liberation. From the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the early Republic of China, it was where the rich lived. It is also the best integrated and largest historical area in the central urban area of ​​Shanghai with Shanghai's traditional regional culture as its style and features. It retains the historical traces of Shanghai's 700-year urban development, contains rich material and intangible historical relics, and concentrates on the traditional urban life culture of Shanghai after the Ming and Qing Dynasties and the early Republic of China..."

At this time, Du Xingguo was like a professional tour guide, introducing the history and past glory of this street to several people.

"...For example, this two-story white building has a bit of a Western style. It was where a big boss of a pharmacy lived in the past, but now it is rented out as public housing..." Du Xingguo was talking when he suddenly saw Liu Siying standing there motionless, staring at the white building, so he asked with concern: "What's wrong with Xiao Liu? Are you thirsty? Or should we buy a bottle of soda?"

"I'm fine." Liu Siying came back to her senses after hearing this. She gently brushed her bangs on her forehead and said lightly:

“This building is my former home…”

　There is only one picture today. I have a fever of 38 degrees and I really can't write anymore. I will make up for it when I have time. Sorry for that!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)