wavenovel Chapter 31 Possessions
Chapter 31 Possessions
On the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, the tenth day since the service station opened, Old Sun came.
He didn't come by boat, but on foot. He stood empty-handed in the courtyard, looked inside for a while, and then came in and squatted at the entrance of the old parts warehouse.
Old Fang came out of the workshop and asked him, "Is the sampan broken again?" Old Sun said, "No, Master Qiu repaired the sampan two years ago. It's in great condition. I'm just bored at home, so I came here to sit for a while."
Old Fang chuckled and then asked him to sit down.
Old Sun sat on a small stool in the used parts warehouse, watching A Guang register the used parts, then watching Hong Xiaobing dismantle the filters, and then watching Xiao Zhou sharpen his chisel at the entrance of the shed.
After watching all morning, at lunchtime, Lin's mother brought over a bowl of fish soup and served him one as well. Old Sun drank it with both hands, then stood up, patted his pants, and said, "It's time to go back and feed the chickens."
They came again the next day.
Still empty-handed, still sitting at the entrance of the old parts warehouse, I spent the whole morning looking around, drank a bowl of fish ball soup, and went back to feed the chickens.
Ah Guang quietly asked Jiang Haiping, "Brother Ping, what does Uncle Sun come here for every day?" His tone was full of confusion and doubt.
Old Fang answered for Jiang Haiping: "I'm getting old, and I'm afraid of being alone."
On the eighteenth day of the first lunar month, Xiao Zhou officially took over part of Master Song's thread-twisting work.
It was a wooden fishing boat from the town on the other side of the river with a crack in its bottom. Xiao Zhou squatted under the boat and spent the whole morning chipping away at the crack. He chipped the crack very smoothly, but he was much slower than Master Song.
Master Song just squatted down and watched the whole time without saying a word.
After Xiao Zhou finished removing the last piece of rotten wood, he inserted the new board, making sure it fit perfectly with even hemp fibers and smoothing it out with tung oil putty.
He stood up, rubbed his lower back, and then looked back at Master Song.
Master Song shoved the chisel into his tool bag and said, "Starting tomorrow, you'll be spinning thread independently, and I'll watch from the side."
Xiao Zhou said, "Okay."
During lunch, Hong Xiaobing asked Xiao Zhou, "Brother Zhou, what's the difference between ship repair in Guangdong and on Moon Island?"
Xiao Zhou chewed on his steamed bun, thought carefully for a moment, and said vaguely, "The shipyards over there repair big ships, iron-hulled ones, and there are a lot of welders. There are very few wooden-hulled boats that need lacquering; you might not see one for a month. When I was learning lacquering, my master said that this skill would leave me with no food in the future. But I never expected that I would be doing lacquering every day after returning to Moon Island."
Hong Xiaobing said, "Then all the skills you learned in Guangdong came in handy on Moon Island."
Xiao Zhou said, "That's right. All the stitches you can make in Guangdong combined don't amount to what you can make in a month here."
Hong Xiaobing responded with an "oh," then lowered his head and continued eating.
On the 20th day of the first lunar month, Wang Cunzhi arrived, riding his Jialing 70 motorcycle with a box of ribbonfish tied to the back. He said, "These are New Year's goods distributed by the fishing company. My refrigerator is overflowing."
Ahai took it and moved it into the kitchen.
Wang Cunzhi squatted at the workshop entrance, lit a cigarette, took out a notice from his pocket, and handed it to Jiang Haiping, saying, "The province has issued a document requiring all pilot units to submit five items by the end of March: annual assessment materials, equipment list, maintenance ledger, safety production records, customer satisfaction survey, and financial audit report. Each item must have an original file."
Jiang Haiping took the notification and read it from beginning to end.
The first four service stations all have them. Ah Guang's registration book is the ledger, and the repair records are written from the first book to the fifth book.
Old Fang knew the equipment list by heart. He remembered the names of the lathes, welding machines, and overhead cranes in the workshop, including when they were purchased, their models, and their prices, even more clearly than the ledgers.
Old Fang is responsible for the safety record. Since the service station opened, there has never been a safety incident. In customer satisfaction surveys, the acceptance forms with the ship owners' fingerprints on every boat he has repaired are lying in the drawer.
The only thing missing was the financial audit report service station. In the past, Director Sun only looked at the ledgers and acceptance forms during inspections and never requested an audit.
Old Fang squatted down beside him and asked, "What does 'audit' mean?"
Wang Cunzhi replied, "We just need to get the people from the county's audit department to check the accounts from beginning to end, making sure every income, every expenditure, and every receipt matches up."
Old Fang thought for a moment and said, "Ah Guang keeps detailed records, but some of the service station's old records are not recorded correctly. Fishermen only pay after they have finished repairing their boats and catching fish. Some delay for half a year, some for a year. The time of receiving payment does not match the time of repairing the boat. Also, there was the major repair when Hong Chuandong's ship sank and was salvaged. The money has not been collected yet. All of these are balanced on the books, but if we audit them, it may not make sense."
He stubbed out his cigarette and added, "Auditors check the rules, not personal relationships, but our accounts have too many personal relationships involved."
On the 22nd day of the first lunar month, Lao Fang asked A Guang to bring out all the receipts since the service station was established and check them one by one.
Five registers, maintenance records for more than two hundred ships, every material cost, labor cost, receivable, actual receipt, and balance.
Ah Hai and Ah Guang each flipped through a book, while Lao Fang watched from the side.
Ah Hai stopped when he turned to the record of Hong Chuandong's sunken ship.
The total repair cost for this ship was 2,400, but we only received 1,700, leaving a balance of 700.
At the end of last year, Hong Chuandong paid back 500, and now he still owes 200. Every entry in the register is dated, but there are only a handful of receipts.
Ah Hai said, "Don't worry about the money, Captain Hong. He'll pay it back when he makes money fishing."
Old Fang shook his head: "Auditors don't care whether it's natural or not; they only look at the documents."
Ah-Guang asked, "Then what should we do?"
Old Fang pondered for a moment and said, "Make a list of all the shipowners who owe money, and also list the dates of the debts and the amounts already paid. When the auditors come, just say that this is a long-term customer agreement of the service station, which allows installment payments."
The fishing boat repair industry has a practice of charging on credit. Make the rules clear; they won't check if you do. Don't try to hide anything.
On the 23rd day of the first lunar month, Lao Fang personally went to the county to deliver a statement to the audit department of the Fisheries Bureau.
When he returned, he brought a document and said, "Director Sun looked at the service station's list of outstanding payments and said that it's common practice for fishermen to buy boat repairs on credit, as long as the records are clear and there are no violations. The Fisheries Bureau will issue a unified explanation during the audit, and the service station just needs to make up the difference according to the rules."
Ah Hai breathed a sigh of relief and said, "I haven't been sleeping well these past few days."
Ah Guang was even more nervous than him. He stayed up for three nights in a row, recalculating every number in the register with a pencil.
Old Fang glanced at him and said, "Auditing isn't about checking people, it's about checking the rules. Once the rules are clear, there's nothing to fear."
Just then, Wang Cunzhi arrived again.
He came here specifically to deliver a notice from the province: this year the province is compiling a compilation of experiences from fishery maintenance stations, and each pilot unit is required to provide a report of their experience, no less than 3,000 words.
After reading the notice aloud at the workshop entrance, he looked at Jiang Haiping and said, "You have to write these three thousand words yourself, and the materials need to be submitted to the province."
Jiang Haiping said, "Okay."
He then turned around, patted Ah Hai on the shoulder, and said, "Go and tell Hong the shipowner to gather up all the outstanding debts and settle them by the end of the month."
When it was time to leave work in the evening, Lao Fang called A Guang to the workshop alone and handed him a freshly sharpened wrench with the character "Guang" stamped on it in steel lettering.
Ah Guang took it and looked at it over and over again.
Old Fang coughed and said, "Don't look at it. I typed this myself, it's a little crooked."
He led Ah-Guang to the wall of tools and took down an old wrench that had been used for many years from the top shelf. There was a character on the back, which was the character "Hai" (sea).
"This belongs to Ah Hai. He made it when he was just an apprentice. Now he's an intermediate-level technician, and he's still using this wrench."
Looking at the various sizes of wrenches on the wall, Ah Guang asked, "Master Fang, will everyone at the service station have to have their name stamped on their wrenches from now on?"
Old Fang didn't answer, but simply put the wrench back in his hand and said, "I typed the lettering, but the craftsmanship is yours."
On the twenty-fifth day of the first lunar month, Old Sun came again.
This time, however, he wasn't empty-handed; he was carrying a small cloth bag filled with dried shrimp that he had prepared himself.
He placed the cloth bag on the kitchen table and said, "Keep it for Xiu'e, she can eat it when she comes back."
Lin's mother said, "Xiu'e won't be back for more than a month."
Old Sun said, "Then leave it there; it won't spoil."
Then, as usual, I sat on a small stool at the entrance of the used parts warehouse and spent the whole morning looking around.
After having a bowl of fish ball soup at noon, I stood up, patted my pants, and said, "I'm going back to feed the chickens."
Jiang Haiping asked Lao Fang, "Did Uncle Sun come to the service station often before?"
Old Fang leaned on his broom and thought for a moment before saying, "He didn't come often before, only when the boat was being repaired. But he started coming more often last winter, and he comes to sit for a while every few days."
On the 28th day of the first lunar month, Hong Xiaobing independently completed the first filter replacement.
It was a fisherman's boat. The oil filter was clogged. Hong Xiaobing removed the old filter, scraped the sealing surface clean with a scraper, applied a layer of oil to the sealing ring of the new filter, and tightened it diagonally.
It's installed and tested; no leaks.
Ah Guang, watching from the side, said, "Well done, you can install air filters now."
Hong Xiaobing wiped the wrench clean and put it back on the tool wall, saying, "This is simpler than disassembling the gas cutter nozzle. Once the threads are aligned, you can screw it in. In the future, for any threaded parts, first turn the wrench by hand a couple of times to make it smooth before using it. If it's not smooth, take it out and readjust it. You can't use brute force."
Old Fang happened to be passing by and overheard this, saying, "Hong Xiaobing, what you said is quite right."
Hong Xiaobing said, "This is what Master Ding taught me after I twisted the cutting nozzle until it became stripped of its threads last time."
The rain stopped on the second day of the second lunar month.
The sun rose over the sea, and the algae on the rocky beach began to turn green again, sprouting one by one from the cracks in the rocks.
The loquat saplings were covered with flower buds. Ah Guang squatted next to the enclosure, looked up at them for a long time, and said, "Both trees have blossomed this year."
Lin's mother brought over a pot of seafood porridge from home, along with a plate of dried radish: "I just mixed it this morning."
Several people were eating breakfast around the workshop entrance when Hong Xiaobing suddenly blurted out, "By the time Sister Xiu'e comes back, the loquats will have ripened."
Xiao Zhou was taken aback: "What loquat?"
Ah Guang pointed to the two loquat seedlings and said, "These loquats were sent by Director Wang; they grew in the cracks of the rocks where the pits were stuck."
After the first month of the lunar calendar, Jiang Haiping was organizing the materials needed by the province when he found an old notebook in his drawer. It was the first old document registration book.
The plastic cover was worn white, but the two cranes on the cover were still clearly visible. He turned to the first page, which had Ahai's handwriting on it: three gears, five bearings, and two rudders.
The handwriting was neat and tidy, with each stroke carefully written.
This register has been kept since the service station was called a ship repair point. After it was full, it was replaced one register after another, and now it is the fifth one.
He placed the register on the table: "Master Fang, look, when this register was made, the service station was still called the ship repair point. Back then, there were only three dilapidated stone houses."
Old Fang took the register, flipped through it, and glanced at the few lines of text, saying, "Three gears, five bearings, two rudders. That was all we had back then. Now the iron racks in the old parts warehouse are four layers high, and the register is almost full of five entries."
He put the notebook back in the drawer and added, "Looking back, I really am a little reluctant to part with how poor we were back then."
Outside the window, in the area next to the stone trough, the workers had been busy all year, the sounds of hammers striking rust mixed with the winches of the electric boat rafts.
The waves gently lapped against the rocks, one after another, unhurriedly.