A Workers' Canteen in the People's Republic, 1974

Liu Su-ya (in front) and Chef Yang at the snack counter.

From China Reconstructs Magazine, April 1974 (written by an unnamed staff reporter):

LUNCHTIME was approaching and Lao Sun, manager of the workers' canteen in the Peking No. 2 Cotton Textile Mill, showed me around. The dining room, with rows of tables and benches, was bright, clean and spacious, the floor well-scrubbed and the walls whitewashed.

Varied Menu

In the kitchen the cooks were making a large variety of items served every day — pork dumplings hot in a steamer, chiaotzu and huntun (other kinds of meat dumplings) bubbling in a big cauldron, the rice cooked and the noodles almost done.

"Our canteen prepares about 24 regular items every day — steamed, boiled, baked and fried," Lao Sun said, "and we not only try to make them taste good but look good." My eye caught one kind of steamed bun, with fluffy layers, made in the shape of a star and dotted with red and green.

In addition to these, the day's menu offered 11 dishes. These were grouped as A, B, and C. "A" offered steamed breaded meat, meatballs in soup, fried meat slices and celery with meat slices. Each cost from 20 to 25 fen (100 fen equals 1 yuan), "B" listed fried spiced beancurd slices, cabbage with beancurd and meatballs in sauce, from 10 to 15 fen. "C" included turnip slices with bean noodles and cabbage in meatbone soup, each for 5 fen. (Workers spend about 25 percent of their monthly wage for food).

Next to the kitchen was a smaller made-to-order kitchen where workers can select already prepared dishes which the kitchen will cook for him. Nine kinds were listed, from 15 fen to 40 fen each.

A snack counter in one corner of the dining room displayed cold dishes, sausages, liver, salted eggs, bean products and a dozen salted vegetables. At this counter Chef Yang told me that in the summer when there are more varieties of fresh vegetables they offer 40 kinds of salads.

Everything for the Workers

The factory is on three shifts. In order to guarantee hot meals for everybody the cooks also work in three shifts.

Varied baked pastries and buns made by Chef Sun.

Through constant attention to the workers the canteen people found that the night shift prefers simple meals, mainly liquids or semi-liquids. For them the cooks prepare chiaotzu, huntun or noodle soups.

Some workers prefer to eat in their shops. The cooks therefore deliver food in carts to small canteens in the different shops. These have gas stoves where food can be cooked and served on the spot.

Some of the mill workers are Moslems whose food needs are different. The mill has a special canteen for them with six Moslem cooks.

The mill's canteens are supervised by a committee of 15 members. These are a mill leader, an administrative leader, the canteen manager, the chief chef and one worker elected in each. shop. The workers on the committee take up shop suggestions and criticisms about the canteen with the committee. To help improve the canteen, mill and administration department leaders work in the kitchen from time to time, getting to know the job, the people and the problems.

A doctor from the mill's clinic is responsible for canteen sanitation. She gives periodic talks to the canteen personnel on hygiene, inspects sanitation in the canteen and its surroundings and gives physical checkups.

The Old Days Are Gone

I asked veteran workers what they thought of the canteen. The question immediately provoked bitter memories of the past.

Kao Kuei-chi, a worker in the finishing shop told me, "I was 12 years old when I went to work in the Japanese-owned Takang Mill in Tientsin. We had to work 12 hours a day without even stopping for meals. Every morning I brought some corn or beanflour cakes or, dried potato slices and gulped them down when no one was looking. Sometimes the cakes were ice cold and hard as rock, but heating them was out of the question. A lot of workers got stomach trouble or tuberculosis."

Liu Kuei-hsin, a tender in the roving shop, who had also worked 12 hours a day as a child laborer before liberation, added, "There weren't any workers' canteens then. All I had to bring were sweet potato leaves and roots wrapped in a rag. We were not allowed any time to eat and had to eat secretly while we worked and if the boss or foreman caught us we got beaten."

"There was no air-conditioning or dust-prevention equipment and the shops were hot and stuffy. It was like being shut up In a steamer. There wasn't even any drinking water. Once I got so thirsty I couldn't stand it anymore, so I went to get some cold water. A foreman saw me, he cursed me and kicked the bowl out of my hand. Workers in those days didn't even have the right to eat or drink."

"Now we not only have a canteen, but the service keeps getting better. Some of the workers bring their own lunches. When mealtime approaches somebody in the shop collects them, takes them to the kitchen to be heated and then brings them back so everybody can have a hot meal. Our leaders urge us to eat in a healthy and hygienic way. There is always plenty of drinking water in the shops and in the summer the mill provides free soft drinks for preventing heat stroke."

One of the mill leaders helps to sell dishes in the canteen.

The Cooks

A blackboard in the canteen has the cooks' pledge on it: "So comrades on the production front can spin more yarn and weave more cloth to support the Chinese revolution and the just struggles of the world's revolutionary peoples, we guarantee to make our meals better and better." And they are doing just that.

One of these cooks is Sun Chang shu. The canteen people told me Chef Sun is "a man who's always busy". He is in charge of the baking. In one shift he makes 25 kilograms more flatbread than the other cooks. His flatbread uses less oil but tastes best. All the workers like his bread so he keeps trying to increase the amount he can bake. When he finishes his own work, he helps cut noodles, make steamed buns or wash and cut vegetables or meat. Everybody says, "Old Sun never stops!"

I asked Chef Sun, "Why do you always come to work before the others? Without a pause, he answered, "Well, I figure it this way: Who are we working for? That's the most important thing. We don't work for the mill bosses anymore, and we don't work for our own personal benefit either — we work to build socialism. A man's ability may be big or small, but we should all do our bit to add bricks in building the new society."

Liu Su-ya, 21, works at the snack counter. In 1968 when she graduated from junior middle school, she went to work in the kitchen making the regular items. Some of her friends and relatives grumbled that the job was beneath her and that they were burying her talents. Su-ya didn't feel that way. "In our society," she said, "all work is valuable, all work serves the people. Isn't cooking revolutionary? If nobody cooks their meals, how can workers tend the machines?" She stubbornly broke with the old prejudices against cooks and cooking.

Modest and eager to learn, she took on whatever heavy task she saw needed doing. After a lot of practice she learned to raise the flour and make steamed buns, cut vegetables and meat, and regulate the fire for different dishes. Best of all she learned the older cooks' working-class thinking, feeling and way of working. She especially admired the hard-working sincerity of Chef Yang at the snack counter who always put his whole heart into his very ordinary job. Su-ya pledged: "With the older chefs as my example, I will learn to do my job well.