Fulaerji Central Construction Engineering Department Directly Affiliated Company

In January 1956, the ground in Fulaerji was indistinguishable from solid rock. Temperatures held at thirty degrees Celsius below zero, turning the northern plain into an environment hostile to human survival, let alone massive industrial construction. Into this frozen expanse arrived the Direct Engineering Company of the Central Ministry of Building Construction. The crews had just completed work on the Changchun First Automobile Works, setting the stage for the country's vehicular production. Their new assignment was harder, heavier, and colder: building the China First Heavy Industries plant, one of the Soviet-aided key projects of the First Five-Year Plan. Planners conceived this facility as the 'Mother of Industry,' a vast complex designed to manufacture the colossal equipment needed to build subsequent factories across the country.

Constructing a factory of this scale required the workers to physically break the landscape. The crews waged what they called the 'Three Major Battles' of early construction. They drove deep piles into the unyielding permafrost, executed dangerous caisson engineering beneath the freezing water table, and erected massive steel structures to house the large and medium metalworking shops. A stark contradiction defined the site: the builders slept in primitive, self-constructed shacks, enduring the bitter cold at night, while by day they assembled vast, technically demanding spaces according to advanced Soviet blueprints. The central laboratory, auxiliary facilities, and office buildings rose gradually from the frozen mud, achieving an 'excellent' quality rating and securing the physical infrastructure for the nation's heavy manufacturing capabilities.

The builders eventually moved on. In August 1958, the organization underwent multiple reorganizations, evolving into modern entities like the First and Sixth Bureaus of the China State Construction Engineering Corporation. The heavy machinery plant remains an enduring physical record of the thousands of laborers who engineered it. They imposed a grid of high-grade steel and concrete onto a wasteland. The cavernous scale of the metalworking bays and the deep, permafrost-piercing foundations reflect the immense human endurance required to build the machines that would build a nation.