Round House

Tuesday, 16 April

At ten in the morning I went with Deng Zhaoyin to follow Sun Fo to visit the Xingye Company’s iron and steel department at the Hong Kong temple at Jiangbei. This said company was formed by Fu Mubo (傅沐波) and others from a merger of Hualian Steel and the Iron Holdings Company on August 1939. The capital was twelve million dollars. The site of the company was about 460 mou. Together with the Fuling Iron Works, it occupied about 1,100 mou of land. Currently there are one thousand machine workers there. The officers in various departments are all returnee students from Britain and the United States. Firstly, we toured its steel rolling factory. The daily production could reach twenty tons. Now because the production capacity of the electric furnace was only five tons it could not reach its highest production capacity. These machines were all made locally. Though they were crude they could be barely used. Then we went to see the Martin furnace. It was still under construction. The daily production was ten tons. Then we proceeded to the one-ton electric furnace and the steel-mould factory. Lastly, we went to the fire brick factory. Its annual production was two thousand tons, for silicon brick five hundred tons, magnesite brick two hundred tons. The research team’s facilities were quite good. That the laboratory could be like this under such trying circumstances was already very good. We then went to see the workers’ dormitories, which were similar to those of our Legislative Yuan but its design appeared to be cleaner. It held operas and films and other things. The manager was [no name in original] while the deputy manager was Tang. They were both in good spirits. The person who came with us was Dr. Wu. Dr. Wu was the head of the Hanyang Iron Works who had stayed the longest in his post. (eighteen years.) When he was young he graduated from Sheffield University in Britain. He was a veteran expert of casting iron and steel in our country. After the visit we had lunch at the factory then we crossed the river to return to Chungking. As Madame Sun was meeting the Soviet Russia’s ambassador in the Round House at noon it was not appropriate for us to return home so we went to Li Dugong’s home instead. We heard that it was Ma Xiuzhong’s birthday so we invited her for supper. I returned to the Round House about eleven in the evening.

Also at 5.00 p.m. I went with Wu Naiguang (吳迺桄) to view Lang Jingshan’s photo exhibition at Xinyunhui. There were many good pictures but the selection could have been much better.