[**Hangzhou CPPCC News Network CPPCC News].
In 1975, more than 10 children of employees from Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory and other units settled in Ruqiao Village, Fenshui Town. In 1977, through the matchmaking of educated youths, we also had contacts with Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory, and there was no income in the village, so we asked them if they could do some business for the village. They agreed to give our village two old machines to produce plastic tip sleeves for the heads of bamboo pole ballpoint pens. After the machine came, the village changed the name of the original agricultural machinery repair factory to "Fenshui Ruqiao Plastic Products Factory", in addition to processing pen sleeves, but also to Tonglu pesticide factory to process plastic bottle caps, supply and marketing business by me in charge.
By chance, we started with the production of plastic tip sleeves, and painstakingly produced the first ballpoint pen, because the plastic pen sleeves processed for the Hangzhou factory exceeded their needs, we found another way to sell to the bamboo factory in Fuhe District, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province. Once, when I went to Nanchang to collect payment, I met a person in the hotel, he took out a sample pen and asked me: "Can your factory produce this kind of pen?" I have a market. "I immediately said yes, but in fact, I don't know the bottom in my heart.
I brought back this sample pen and discussed it with the village cadres to try to produce a ballpoint pen. But we didn't have production equipment and technicians, so I went to Master Li, the mold master of Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory. Master Li told me that there is a scrapped mold equipment in the factory, but it cannot be taken out. At that time, it was stipulated that scrapped equipment could only be sold to scrap yards.
I couldn't think of any other way, so I could only ask Master Li for help to repair this waste mold equipment first. Then, after several rounds, the repaired mold equipment was transported back to the village. I remember that the village committee also rewarded me at that time.
When the machine arrived, we started to work in full swing. The year is 1979. We bought 200 kilograms of plastic raw materials from Hangzhou ballpoint pen manufacturers and began trial production of ballpoint pens. The production is also not high, and only more than 5,000 pens can be produced per day. The pens produced were shipped to Wengang Fur Mall in Jinxian County, Jiangxi Province, and contacted the person who asked me for a sample pen at the hotel at that time, and he sold it.
As long as we deliver the goods, the payment can be paid to the village on time. Every time the goods are shipped, the last payment will be settled.
There are machines, there is a market, but raw materials have become a problem.
Because it was still in the transition period from a planned economy to a market economy at that time, raw materials (plastics) for production could not be obtained without a plan. I asked Master Wang of Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory to ask Ningbo Ballpoint Pen Factory for raw material indicators, and then went to Gansu Lanzhou Chemical Factory to pick up raw materials. After living in Lanzhou for more than half a month, I finally mentioned 2 tons of raw materials (polyphenylacetyl). At that time, there were many people in Jiangxi who came to Ruqiao to ask for pens, and Ruqiao Village purchased two pen-making machines in Xiaoshan Changhe Machinery Factory in 1980 in order to expand the scale of operation.
A total of 7 people, including repairmen, worked in the pen factory. At the beginning, we were very strict with our requirements for products, and we were very careful when we made them. But I can't resist the many goods, some people can't wait for us to deliver, come to collect, and collect the waste pens that we are ready to discard.
Later, a merchant in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province met the leader of the Fenshui Commune and said that the ballpoint pens produced in Ruqiao Village are so pretty, you can set up a few more pen factories. At that time, there were a few brains in Dongguan Village, the next village next door, who smelled business opportunities and invited a Hangzhou master to come to our village to see the pen-making molds and machines. Later, he managed to send people to Hangzhou to study, and also bought machines to start production. But the pens they produced couldn't find a market for a while, so they went to Ruqiao Village to find someone who ran the Jiangxi market with me. The man made a profit by setting up a sales point in Jiangxi for Dongguan Village, but the customer's name and contact address were not told to Dongguan Village.
Ruqiao pen walked into the Yiwu market and opened another door to pen making.
In 1982, the two brothers Zong Jinfa and Zong Jinheng of Zongze Village, Yiwu, went to Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory to sell ballpoint pens, but Hangzhou Ballpoint Pen Factory is a national enterprise, and the products cannot be sold to private individuals. The factory recommended them to me.
I remember very well that it was a rainy day, and the brothers rushed to Ruqiao in their robes and drove a walk-behind tractor to buy more than 200,000 empty plastic pen barrels, which were packed in sacks and shipped to Yiwu. They went to the ballpoint pen factory in Leping County, Jiangxi Province to buy refills, assemble and sell them.
At that time, the Yiwu small commodity market had not yet formed a scale, and their goods were sold at stalls next to the farmers' market. We also went a few times later, and the place is really big, and there is everything in the market. At that time, it cost 7 cents a night to stay in a hotel, so in order to save money in the hotel, we slept there in a folding bed.
Ruqiao Village collectively set up a ballpoint pen factory until 1984. I bought the old machine, as well as a couple of new pencils, and continued to do it. But the aging of the machine always has to be repaired, so I casually said that this machine is worthless to repair, and I will sell it. As a result, my wife thought that I really didn't want to continue working, and during the time I went to my sister's house in Qiandao Lake, she really sold my machine. When I got home, I was a little annoyed to find that the machine was gone, but I thought that it would take a lot of effort to repair the machine, so I was fine. In the second half of 1986, I was elected village chief. Although I no longer have a factory, people from the village often come to me to ask me some questions, and I help them without reservation.
Our village is the birthplace of water-dividing ballpoint pen production, and later the production focus was shifted to Dongguan Village, and slowly, pen factories sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. In 2000, my daughter and son-in-law established Tonglu Yunhong Pen Industry, which also has more than 10 machines. Although the pen industry has encountered a bottleneck now, I still believe that pen making has a future, and it will get better and better in the future.
Article**: The Light of Enriching the People - An Oral History of Tonglu's Blocky Economic Development
Dictation: Shao Guanfa Collation: Tao Yu.
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