Song of Baoshan

During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in response to the provincial metallurgical conference's call for large-scale steel smelting from local materials, a county's deputy secretary Yang Min (played by Zhang Yuan) got rid of superstition and personally led an exploration team to the mountains to prospect for minerals based on clues provided by the masses. They conducted exploration and finally found a few pieces of iron ore. However, the conservative Yang Kezhong (played by Liu Zengqing) believed that these were foreign ores washed by floods and lacked confidence in prospecting. After that, they found a lean iron ore with an iron content of only 19%. Yang Kezhong believed that it had no use value and proposed to search for ore sources elsewhere. He ignored Yang Min's criticism and persuasion and went down the mountain alone. Yang Min was not shaken by this. He asked everyone to open the front and fight separately! With the help of local fellow Uncle Feng (played by Wang Yabiao), they finally found a rich iron ore with an iron content of 70%, and realized the county ironworks' wish to produce iron on the National Day.