Chapter Seventeen: Waste is also treasure

  Actually, the gatekeeper's actions were just a formality. The steel mill had already closed in name only, but still existed nominally because no county leader wanted to take responsibility for shutting down an enterprise. In this situation, someone had to guard the steel mill, so several old workers including Wang were left behind as symbols of the steel mill's continued existence. For this symbol, the county guaranteed to pay them wages every month, and it has been over a decade.

  These old security guards, who receive a salary, naturally have to do something. For young people like Ning Mo who come in and stroll around, they must ask a few questions to show their seriousness and responsibility. In fact, the walls surrounding the steel plant had collapsed in many places, and if there were thieves coming to steal things, they wouldn't need to enter through the main gate.

  After sending away the old man who was watching the door, Qin Hai and his group walked into the steel mill and began to visit this industrial site.

  This is a factory covering an area of over 1,000 mu. At the time of its construction, due to the emphasis on "production first and life later", no residential area was established. The entire plant area, except for the workshop, has only one two-story office building standing alone. All doors and windows of the office building have been dismantled, leaving only dark holes. According to Ning Mo and others, all furniture in each office of this office building has also been removed, and its only function now is as a habitat for stray cats and dogs. From time to time, greedy people come to see if they can catch a wild dog to take home and cook it.

  Qin Hai was not interested in the stray dogs, so he walked straight past the office building with Ning Mo and others towards the production area behind.

  The core of the production area is a blast furnace, with chimneys, hot air furnaces, and feeding belt cars all present, forming an open-air blast furnace workshop. After years of exposure to wind and rain, thick rust has grown on all exposed iron equipment, while bricks have been eroded by rainwater into pits and hollows.

  Qin Hai walked to the front of the blast furnace, looked up and gazed upwards, then tapped the hot air pipe on the side of the blast furnace with his hand, sighed and said: "Alas, what a pity! Such a good blast furnace has been scrapped like this."

  "It's better if it's scrapped!" Ning Mo said heartlessly, "I heard my dad say that when the steel mill was still in production, the whole county was covered with coal ash, not to mention that the county government forced all units to use the products of the steel mill. The steel they produced couldn't be forged at all, and it would crack open as soon as it was hit by a forging machine, it's almost no different from pig iron."

  "This is a technical issue," said Qin Hai, "Actually, if the process is improved, it won't end up like this. Of course, shutting down such an inefficient small steel mill is also a good thing, keeping it open will only pollute the air."

  "Actually, almost every county in our city used to have an iron and steel plant, but now they're all closed down. The only one left is the Beixi City Iron and Steel Plant, and the steel materials we use in our factory are mainly produced by them. By the way, Qin Hai, didn't you say yesterday that their steel quality isn't good either?" Miao Lei said.

  "Yes, their production process must also have problems, so the quality of steel can't meet the standard. We use such steel to produce farm tools, and the quality will definitely be affected." Qin Hai said.

  A few people walked and talked, and came to the steelmaking workshop again. The situation in the steelmaking workshop was slightly better than that of the blast furnace workshop, perhaps because there were still some valuable equipment in the workshop. All the doors and windows outside the workshop were welded with iron railings, leaving only the large gate that could be opened, but it was also locked with a large iron chain as thick as a child's arm, and the lock head was as big as a palm, which couldn't be easily broken open.

  "Is there still a steel furnace in this workshop?" Qin Hai asked Ning Mo and others. These people all grew up in this factory area, they have some understanding of the surrounding factories, at least, Ning Mo even knows that the gatekeeper's surname is Wang.

  Ning Mo said, "I've never been inside this workshop. When I was in elementary school, the factory had already closed down, and from then on, this workshop has been locked up like this. However, I heard that there are still some equipment inside, and someone once tried to pry open the lock to go inside and steal electric wires to sell."

  Qin Hai was speechless.

  Further back, there were machine repair workshops and the like. Because there were machine tools in the workshop, they were all iron generals guarding the door, and Qin Hai and others could only lie on the window sill to take a look inside. The equipment was coated with thick yellow oil, which had not rusted much, but the dust that had accumulated over the years had already covered up the original color of the equipment.

  "There's nothing ahead, just these two small hills." Ning Mo pointed to the two large mounds of earth in front of them and said to Qin Hai.

  "How can there be two small hills here?" Qin Hai asked in surprise, those two piles of earth were quite large in scale, and could indeed be described as small hills. The hills were covered with wild grasses, and had several not very big trees on them.

  "These two piles of soil were left over from the steel mill's production. This pile on this side is iron ore, all of which was pulled from the mountains in the past. The other pile is slag, which has been left for over a decade. Because it's been piled up for so long, it's grown full of grass."

  "Oh?" Qin Hai's mind stirred, "Let's go take a look."

  Qin Hai said he wanted to go take a look, and several little friends naturally didn't have any opinions. In fact, they were also idle every day after work, wandering around everywhere. Of course, if Qin Hai wasn't here, they wouldn't be interested in going to see that pile of mining slag, which was where they played hide-and-seek when they were young. Now that they're all grown up, who would still come to a place like this to play?

  Qin Hai walked quickly to the front of that pile of ore residue, picked up a piece from the ground and examined it carefully.

  The slag left over from the iron smelting in the blast furnace was a porous, block-like substance that still had some fuzzy stuff on it. If you weren't careful, you might even cut your palm. Qin Hai carefully examined it under the fading light of the sunset, nodding thoughtfully as if he had come to some realization. He turned to Ning Mo and the others and asked, "These slags have been piled up here for many years, right?"

  "No, it started piling up since there was a steel mill, and when the steel mill closed down, these slag heaps were left here." Ning Mo replied.

  Qin Hai asked again: "After so many years, didn't anyone think of clearing away these mining residues?"

  "Who is willing to spend money to clean them up? I remember that one year, a unit said they wanted to take these tailings to pave the road, but later found that these tailings were too hard and couldn't be crushed. In the end, they didn't want them anymore. Anyway, the steel plant has closed down now, so these tailings are just discarded like this."

  Ning Mo seemed to have seen something from Qin Hai's expression, and he tentatively asked: "How about it, Qin Hai, do you think this ore is useful?"

  Qin Hai smiled and said, "I'm not sure yet, but judging from the distribution of mineral resources in Beixi City, iron ore is not our main resource. Instead, it's the rare metals associated with iron ore that are more valuable. The Pingyuan Steel Factory only smelts iron and doesn't extract rare metals, so those associated minerals should be left in these slag."

  "You're saying that these ores can be refined into the rare metals you mentioned?" Ning Mo asked, his interest piqued by Qin Hai's words "worth a lot of money".

  "I'm telling you, I'm not entirely sure yet. If my judgment is correct, the value of these ore residues will be worth hundreds of times more than the steel produced by a steel mill. Don't breathe a word about this to anyone, and also, keep your wits about you. If someone wants to get rid of these ore residues, you must tell me at once, we'll think of a way to keep them."

  The three companions exchanged a look, and all had an inexplicable excitement. Ning Mo asked: "Qin Hai, are you saying that you have a way to extract the valuable things from this ore and turn them into money?"

  Qin Hai Dao said: "It's not possible yet, to refine these rare metals, we need a high furnace and a high-power electric furnace. This is almost the equipment requirement of a medium-sized smelting enterprise. With just the four of us now, it can't be done."

  "What's the use of that?" Ning Mo felt a bit discouraged. He had thought that Qin Hai could refine rare metals as easily as tempering fire, just by casually setting up a small coal stove. If it required a medium-sized enterprise to do so, what did it have to do with them?

  Qin Hai patted Ning Mo's shoulder and said, "Fatty, a good fatty who doesn't want to be the boss of his own factory isn't a good fatty. Haven't you ever thought about saving up money to open your own factory and being your own boss?"

  "It seems there's no hope." Ning Mo said in a self-abandoning tone, "However, Qin Hai, I think you might have the potential to be a boss. You've got such great skills and business acumen. By the way, if you become a boss, we can all go work at your factory as mid-level executives, how about that?"

  "That's right, being a workshop director is enough for us." Miao Lei and Yu Haitao also chimed in.

  "Believe me, anything is possible." Qin Hai said, looking at the sky gradually turning dark, and then walking around in this desolate factory didn't make much sense either. He said, "Let's go, let's go back. After going back, we still have some things to do."