Conference—The Women’s Army

While the conference adjourned, Xiao Zishan left the room and saw the women of the General Affairs Team gathered in a lounge. Most of them had slipped out not long after the conference began. After all, there was nothing fun to do in this base, so they could only get together and gossip. The more mischievous ones even started calling out “Leader!” as he approached, as though this was all a funny skit.

Xiao Zishan said to the room, “The main conference is on break, so let’s have a small meeting as the General Affairs Team.”

“Alright”

“Let’s hear it, leader!” This brought another round of laughter.

Xiao Zishan sat down and waited patiently for everyone to re-focus their attention.

“Our General Affair Team, put bluntly, is in charge of logistics.” He looked around at his future co-workers. A total of seven people, most of them between 23 and 30 years old except for an aunt in her 50s.

Xiao Zishan had already seen their personal profiles when they were gathering everyone. Except for the older lady who filled in “housewife”, the other six had all worked before. Li Yuyuan was a secretary, and all the other five had also been in clerical positions. The other women who had technical backgrounds were in the other room. Needless to say, the ones in this room were the people who didn’t have such a background. It was no wonder that no one took the position of the general affairs group leader seriously.

“Since we are in charge of logistics, we must be ready to deal with a lot of trivial chores. Let’s start with the topic of food. The first thing the General Affairs Team is responsible for is the provision of meals to everyone else. That is, we need to cook.”

“I have never cooked before, and I hate cooking!” As expected, some of these women were quite strong headed, and almost knocked out Xiao Zishan with a single line.

“Me neither,” another girl said quietly, “but you can learn.”

“I don’t mind cooking, as long as you guys dare to eat what I make!” another girl laughed.

“I can make rice, pancakes and noodles for everyone. But with so many people, I’d have to prepare a huge pot. I have never worked in a canteen, I don’t know how to make such large batches.” Aunt Cao hesitated.

Xiao Zishan knew that Aunt Cao’s full name was Cao Shunhua. After graduating middle school she went to the countryside, and only returned to the city very late. Apart from working as a migrant worker in a street-side collective enterprise for a few years, she had basically been a stay-at-home mom her entire life. Her husband had passed away young, and her daughter was in the construction industry. She had obviously experienced much of the vicissitudes of life, a simple but tenacious woman. Like the old saying, she exemplified the ‘traditional virtues of a Chinese working woman.”

“Why don’t we just order takeaway?” Someone else suggested. “There’s already so many people here, and there will only be more in the future. We wouldn’t be able to catch up even with all of us cooking.”

“The quality of takeaway food isn’t good, everyone knows this surely.” Xiao Zishan shook his head. “Maybe once or twice as a lunch-time meal, but we’re going to be here for at least half a year, maybe an entire year - do you plan to have takeaway for every single meal, every single day?”

He smiled and put it from another perspective. “Does everyone hope their partners and families eat well?”

This set of rhetoric wouldn’t work in another context, but here, it was a little different. These women were willing to travel back in time for love, and they obviously cared a lot about their loved ones.

The reason why Xiao Zishan was so adamant about setting up a canteen was to accumulate experience for the other side. There were no fast food chains in Hainan in the 17th century.

Hearing Zishan’s reasoning, the women only looked at each other and didn’t respond.

“Zhao Xiaoqin, you did acquisitions at a catering company right?”

“Yes, about five years on the acquisitions team.” The woman, who was nearing 30, sighed.

“Then you’ll handle it for us as well,” Xiao Zishan suggested, “you must be an expert at talking with suppliers.”

Zhao Xiaoqin hesitated, “But… I’m not familiar with the local suppliers.”

“It’s fine, seeing that this is your expertise, it should be easier for you than everyone else.” Xiao Zishan knew that the best way to get someone motivated was not just economic incentives but also to value their skills.

“Okay, I’ll give it a go. But I have some requests.”

“Shoot.”

“I need my own office. Although I have my own computer, I also need a phone and a fax machine. Also, it would be best if we could get internet access.”

Xiao Zishan jotted her requirements down in a notebook.

“Tsss, internet connection is hard. I haven’t even applied for it yet. The phone and the office room I can do right now. I will get back to you later.”

“Also, I need to get a menu, and recipes, from you, so that I can estimate what I need to buy and how much.” She muttered to herself, “vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs, dairy…”

“Sister Xiaoqin, we don’t need to buy these directly, right? We can just order ready-made products.

Xiao Zishan nodded in agreement. He had been thinking this too. Someone else brought it up which meant that people were actually putting their thoughts in the right place. The advantage of buying direct from retail was that they wouldn’t need to do too much extra processing. They could be directly cooked, saving the tedious steps needed to sort, clean and cut raw produce otherwise.

If they really bought a bunch of live chickens, ducks, fish, raw meat or vegetables right out of the ground just like in a real canteen, only the processing would cause conflict between everyone.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll work.” Zhao Xiaoqin smiled. “Otherwise it’d be way too much of a hassle.”

Xiaoqin brightened up at the prospect of less work. “Then I will go into the city in the next few days, get some product catalogues and also scout out market prices. I’ll gather everyone’s opinions once I do that.”

“Sounds good.” Xiao Zishan was very happy with the progress they’d made already.

“Then… can I also get an assistant?” Zhao Xiaoqin hesitated. “I probably can’t get everything done by myself.”

As expected of a veteran worker, they knew how to advance and retreat. Xiao Zishan, who knew what was going on, respected her wishes.

“Fine, pick someone.”

“I’ll help you.” The little girl who had proposed to buy products from retail volunteered herself. “I can speak Cantonese as well.”

“Alright, you can join me. But Team Leader, how do we go about payment?

Xiao Zishan explained the financial plan. During this one-year preparatory period, it would be necessary to establish a simple but complete administrative and financial system.

…

“Then I understand. Everything paid for on delivery, right?”

“Yes. This is to avoid too much outside contact. If it’s just a delivery, it would be enough to unload at the front gate.”

“Now, with that aside. Sister Cao, the cooking is up to you.” Xiao Zishan said sincerely. “To be honest with you, us young people are not very good at cooking, but the canteen must satisfy everyone. The army runs on its stomach after all. Your cooking is really good, so I’ll have to leave this to you.”

“Look at what you said, ummm…Leader Xiao.” She wasn’t used to using this title.

“Please, just call me Zishan.”

“Alright, Zishan.” Aunty Cao smiled. “Cooking isn’t actually hard, you’ll know after you’ve watched me a few times. It’s just that I only know northern style dishes, I don’t know if our comrades of the south would be used to it. I heard that you have to add sugar?”

“I think that won’t be a problem, don’t worry about it.” Xiao Zishan smiled. “Nowadays everyone’s taste is more or less the same. We should just purchase fresh ingredients, make stuff that’s popular and easy to cook. As long as you try to make a different main dish every day and make sure the staples are there, that should be more than enough for everyone.”

“Okay! I can do that.”

“Zhao Xiaoqin,” Xiao Zishan turned around, “we also need some kitchen equipment. You know about this topic, so after this meeting ends you should investigate.”

Xiaoqin made a little addition to her notebook. “How many people do we need to serve in one go?”

“About five hundred.” Xiao Zishan smiled apologetically at Aunt Cao. “Uhh, but also try to be frugal. Many things, like rice cookers, won’t be useful to us on the other side.” Zishan seemed a little embarrassed at their lack of funds.

“Oh that’s fine,” she said, “we can rent this equipment. I’ll make a note of that.”

Xiao Zishan nodded. As expected, the best way of making use of everyone was to assign them according to their skills and experience base.

Zishan next arranged all the other personnel needed to run the canteen. In addition to other duties, the General Affairs group would have to run kitchen duty. In addition, all other travellers were divided into groups of four and assigned kitchen duty alongside General Affairs on a rotating basis.

As a reward, the General Affairs group would have a chance to have one group dinner off-base. They could bring their partners or family, at a maximum expense of 20 yuan per person. Everyone seemed quite satisfied with this arrangement.

Xiao Zishan next started assigning other duties.

“Li Yuanyuan.”

“Here! “ The girl stood up.

“You are going to be responsible for all paperwork and documentation. This includes personnel files, meeting minutes, reports, applications, financial statements, and so on. In essence, all the formal materials from all the working groups. These must be collated and sorted into archives. Do you understand?”

“Understood!”

“Fang Yijing. You are responsible for overseeing the distribution of daily necessities and sanitation packs, as well as the dormitories.”

“Me?” The woman who was named was surprised.

“Didn’t you work in childcare?”

“But those were children. Here they are all men—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. There’s not much difference anyway. I’m sure that with such a pretty lady such as yourself supervising them they will pay more attention to their image and won’t be too messy.”

During the short half-hour break, Xiao Zishan basically sorted out all the jobs of the General Affairs group.

Acquisitions: Zhao Xiaoqin

Canteen: Tian Shunhua

Dormitory: Fang Yijing

Secretary: Li Yuanyuan

Every person was also paired with an assistant.