in february 1993, the company was going to launch a new project--r22. at that time, pang feng was the deputy director of the r22 workshop. his first task was to reconstruct the shutdown oxalic acid and to tear down the concrete foundation.
pang feng divided ma kewu, zhang gang, che dongyang and other young fellows into several groups, and they had to punch a meter deep hole on the concrete by skewer, and to fill expanding agent into it. and they were asked to punch 3 to 5 holes per shift. but they had never done this kind of work before, and at the beginning they often hammered others’ hands by accident. some of them wanted to quit, but pang feng himself showed them how to do it correctly. even though his hands grew numb by holding the skewer, he continued to work. when the steel skewer broke, he just had it repaired and went on working. in order to catch up the time limit, pang feng led the workers to work full-time,
during the early preparation of this project, there were no techniques and no experiences. moreover, r22 project requires high temperature resistant and high pressure resistant equipment. thus, they had to follow their instinct to work all day and night, and to explore and summarize as working. at the beginning of the factory establishment, there was no crane available so that any setup of the equipment relied on the manual labor. they used hands and shoulders to carry the equipment, and used chain blocks to lift the equipment to different floors of the frame and assemble them. and they shouldered the filler of the rectifying tower to the frame one package by one package. installing the reaction kettle required two chain blocks to work by turns, and pang feng was the commander as well as a combatant. he not only pulled the chain block, but also went upstairs and downstairs to coordinate every job. sometimes when his gloves were worn out, he just did it by bare hand, and totally ignored the blisters on his hands. when the 80 cubic meters chloroform tank was putting in position, it rained heavily, and many suggested that they would stop working until the rain stopped. but pang feng was the first one rushing to the site to give directions, and other colleagues were so moved and they went to do the installing work spontaneously.
when the first reaction kettle was put into use on may 1st, 1993, president zhang, general manager liu, general manager zhou and other leaders of the company visited the site in person, and vice general manager wang weidong gave technical guidance. although there was some experience in producing ahf for a few years, the r22 production was brand-new and the actual operation was their first time of doing this as well. there was no experience to draw on, no technicians to give guidance, and no operation standard to use for reference. so the trial production was not very successful. once for a while, they could not find the causes for the unstable reaction and the unqualified products. pang feng leaded workers of three shifts to stick to the site to do research and to adjust the process parameters. sometime they did not sleep for several days, and when they were really exhausted, they lay on a chair, took a short nap and then went back to work. they ate and lived in the factory for over twenties days. when their voice became hoarse, they used gesture language to communicate. they climbed the frame up and down days and nights, and days later they could find the steps with their eyes closed. no one remembered how many times he went upstairs and downstairs during one shift. even they had blisters on their feet, their persistence in accomplishing the project was not weakened a little bit. because of the heavy workload and the urgent construction task, pang feng had worn out three shoes within three months since the beginning of the r22.
because this kind of tenacity, dongyue people successfully implemented the r22 project. later, there is a jingle, which says, ‘ if you think it’s hard, think about the long march. if you think it’s exhausted, think about the r22 project.’