Chapter 1. Engineer Ye Mo

      December 21, 2019, Xishan Industrial Park, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, China.

      Chuanming Group is one of the world’s top 500 companies, with production capacity mainly in heavy industry, including steel metallurgy, precision manufacturing, mechanical processing, automobile industry, electronic communications and other major blocks.

      Ye Mo is a project manager of the precision manufacturing engineering department of Chuanming. She holds relevant certificates such as senior mechanical engineer and equipment engineer, and is currently engaged in mechanical design-related work.

     It sounds a bit high-end, but the money earned was not enough to pay off the mortgage and car loan until three years ago.

     In science and engineering, especially engineering work, the imbalance between men and women has been going on for more than a day or two. The main factors are the physical fitness gap between men and women, fixed labels in the eyes of the world, and working environment.

     Ye Mo was lucky to find a job in a related major when she graduated from university.

     Then she worked in the workshop for a year and a half as a rookie student, and finally mastered the process flow proficiently and well. This was her personal ability. Finally, she was able to stick to the boring assistant job…

     This series of levels eliminated many people.

     Less than 10% of Ye Mo’s classmates were engaged in mechanical-related work.

     Except for her, there was no female among them.

     Of course, there were not many girls who chose to study engineering at that time, and it may be that the engineering management and engineering cost next door were a bit rare.

     Despite her strong professional skills, Ye Mo was still treated differently by gender at work.

     At the beginning, she could not get any projects related to mechanical equipment design. Her daily work mainly focused on designing beautiful shells for light industries such as the electronic communications industry to match the main performance of the products.

     After two years as an assistant, Ye Mo began to take projects independently.

     Because her work ability has always been good, she has gradually become a little famous in the industry. Now when the next department is busy, she can also cooperate with professional consultants for key automotive parts and matching integration.

     Mechanical design work is very hard.

     Just drawing on the computer, dozens or hundreds of parts, designing and integrating them one by one, we need to consider the structure, equipment quality, price and cost issues from many aspects, and the project process is quite hard.

     Fortunately, all projects have been completed this year, or have entered the final stage of testing.

    As long as the two projects in hand are completed, this year’s task indicators will be exceeded immediately, and we can basically do soy sauce before the Spring Festival.

     It’s worth it to be a little tired.

    “Ah chi——”

     Glancing at the combustion threshold of a certain composite material, Ye Mo sneezed twice in a row through the mask.

…

     Outside the flame retardant test laboratory.

     A tall and thin young man, holding a stack of design drawings with a confidentiality red official seal in his left hand, pulled the light gray work clothes he was not used to wearing with his right hand.

     “Ah Xiang.” A shorter young man with a flat head beside him deliberately frowned and spoke silently with his mouth, “Are you attracted to our Manager Ye?”

     “…” A Xiang’s hands froze as he was tidying up his work clothes. He quickly glanced at the heavy door of the laboratory in front of him, “No, don’t talk nonsense.”

     But the back of his ears turned red.

     “I understand. Who hasn’t been young before!” The short young man shook his head in disbelief and muttered in a low voice.

     “Our Manager Ye is pretty, but I tell you, she is not young. She is in her thirties and almost forty. It is not suitable for a young man like you in your twenties. It is better for you to find a partner in the administrative department or the sales department. There are a group of interns coming this year.”

     “Forty…” A Xiang’s pupils dilated, and then he shook his head again and defended himself, “Really not.”

     This time, the redness behind his ears faded a lot.

     As a dull young man who often soaks in work drawings, he pursues his girlfriend with the intention of getting married. Such a big span of sister-brother love is not in his plan.

     This is the reality.

     However, A Xiang still doubted that Manager Ye was almost 40.

     “Over 38.” The short and fat middle-aged man stretched out his hand to indicate a number and continued, “Manager Ye is about the same age as our Deputy Manager Liu of the Engineering Department. They came in at the same time.”

     A Xiang’s eyes widened: “How is it possible? Brother Qing, you won’t fool me, right?”

     The deputy manager’s name is Liu Bo, a middle-aged greasy man with a beer belly and sparse hair, while their manager’s tall figure and beautiful appearance are worthy of the word “beauty”.

     Ye Mo rarely wears makeup except for skin care. Her skin is very white because she stays in the laboratory and at home for many years. In addition, she has a young oval face, which makes her look younger than her actual age.

     Deputy Manager Liu Bo and their Manager Ye don’t get along very well. Liu Bo’s professional level is far inferior to Manager Ye, but he married the only daughter of a middle-level leader in the group.

     As we all know, China is a society of personal relationships.

     Fortunately, Ye Mo has a good technical foundation and is a pure technical route.

     Manager Xie, the head of the engineering department, is both her mentor and friend. He helps her block most of the open and secret attacks. In addition, Chuanming Group’s experimental equipment and funds are among the best in the country, so Ye Mo stayed and worked for so many years.

     After saying that, the man called Brother Qing was tangled.

     He patted Axiang on the shoulder and whispered to Axiang’s ear: “This matter was told to me by a friend of mine. I’m only telling you. Don’t tell anyone else.”

     “Deputy Manager Liu is unhappy with our supervisor. It’s because he didn’t catch up with Supervisor Ye when he first joined the company.”

     “He is so petty. Damn, is he still a man?”

     “It’s really embarrassing for us men!”

     “Isn’t it? His technology is not as good as our supervisor. He became a deputy manager by relying on his connections. Tsk!”

     “…”

     The conversation went completely astray.

…

     While gossiping, the door of the flame retardant room made a slight noise, and the indignant young people stopped talking at the same time.

     As the door opened, a slight smell of burning overflowed from the laboratory. Then, a woman with a net height of 1.7 meters came out, wearing a long white work coat and a light gray sweater.

     She tied her hair up high and took off her mask, revealing a well-proportioned oval face.

     Her facial features were pretty, but she wore slightly thick half-frame glasses because of her high myopia. Her skin was one or two shades whiter than normal people, and it was cold white skin. Due to the working environment, there were many minor problems.

     A Xiang looked very carefully.

     But with his straight-man aesthetics, he really couldn’t tell that his boss was more than ten years older than him.

     “Manager Ye, this is the engineering drawing of the keyway of Project B.”

     Ye Mo took the information from A Xiang’s hand, flipped through it, and walked towards his office area.

     The two young men looked at each other, breathed a sigh of relief, and hurriedly followed the team leader to report the situation.

     “The switch life test of Group B is in progress. Twenty minutes ago, there were 8983 results left. It will take at most four hours to get the results.”

     “Didn’t it say it would be completed at noon today?”

     “Uh, um, the people in the test group said that Group 3 interrupted the team and did a life test on a small part. Deputy Manager Liu approved it. I heard that the test data of Group 3 was wrong. I was so anxious that I almost got angry.”

     “…”

     Ye Mo took out her mobile phone from her pocket and looked at it. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. She had to work overtime again today. Overtime is common in project work.

     “A Qing, ask them to bring the results after get off work today.”

     While talking, she turned her eyes to an app that appeared on the homepage of her mobile phone.

     The app’s icon is a world map. There is a very realistic red eye right above the map, which makes people feel uncomfortable. Below the map are three simple words:

     ‘Survivor’.