Literary Master 1978

Lin Chaoyang and his companions entered the room and exchanged greetings before sitting down. Shen Congwen first looked him up and down and exclaimed, "You are so young!"

"You were not very old when you became famous in the literary world." Lin Chaoyang replied with a smile.

Shen Congwen asked again, "I heard that you work in the library of Yanda University?"

"Yes."

"Or was it arranged by your father-in-law?"

The old comrade's question was somewhat explicit, but Lin Chaoyang still nodded, "Yes."

Wang Zengqi said, "What I told you before was right, wasn't it? His experience is very similar to yours."

Shen Congwen smiled when he heard it, "It's a bit of fate."

In the eyes of many intellectuals, neither of them had studied seriously. They both enriched their knowledge in the library of Yanda University and made a name for themselves in the literary world when they were young.

Shen Congwen married Zhang Zhaohe, who came from a wealthy family, and Lin Chaoyang also married Tao Yushu, who came from a scholarly family. Shen Congwen asked Lin Chaoyang about his work because of this.

He praised again, "To be honest, I have seldom read novels in recent years. Zeng Qi said he would bring you to my house, so I studied your novels for two days, but the time was too short, so I only read them roughly, and they are very well written. The one that impressed me the most is "Little Shoes", which is fresh and timeless, and not clichéd."

"You are too kind." Lin Chaoyang said modestly.

Wang Zengqi said, "The style of "Little Shoes" is similar to that of your works. I read the article in "Yenching Literature" the other day. Chaoyang has studied your works very deeply and can be said to have integrated them."

Shen Congwen looked at him, "You are over 60 years old, how can you still learn to flatter? If someone writes a good novel, must he learn from me?"

Wang Zengqi was not deliberately flattering, but today he brought Lin Chaoyang to visit, and he always wanted to avoid letting the topic get dull, so he said a few more words.

Lin Chaoyang came to Wang Zengqi's rescue and said, "Old Wang is right. Your works have indeed inspired me a lot."

"I have also read some of your works in the past two years. The style is different from mine."

Lin Chaoyang smiled and said, "That's because I don't just read your works!"

His tone was humorous, and Shen Congwen couldn't help but laugh and praised, "Good! Learn from many people and integrate hundreds of schools. All articles in the world are copied!"

After talking about Lin Chaoyang's creation for a while, the topic focused on life again.

In May, Shen Congwen went back to his hometown in Xiangxi. The matter was arranged by Shen Congwen's cousin Huang Yongyu. On May 8, Shen Congwen and his wife returned to Fenghuang accompanied by his cousin Huang Yongyu and his wife and his good friend Huang Miaozi and his wife.

After being away for half a lifetime, he experienced the people and things in his hometown, and went to Zhangjiajie for a trip. He didn't return until the end of the month.

The short trip back home gave Shen Congwen great comfort, and he always had a smile on his face when he talked about it.

After lunch, Lin Chaoyang and his wife said goodbye, and Shen Congwen sent the three of them downstairs.

"Your generation has caught up with a good time!"

After sending Lin Chaoyang downstairs, Shen Congwen looked at his young face and suddenly sighed again, his words full of vicissitudes, which made people sigh.

On the way back, Wang Zengqi said to Lin Chaoyang with emotion: "You and the teacher do have too many similarities, but fortunately the times are different now."

Wang Zengqi's words contained injustice for the teacher and also the relief of the passage of time. He looked at the young Lin Chaoyang, and for some reason, an idea came to his mind.

In fact, this is not a kind of inheritance.

Guangzhou, Gaodi Street.

Because it is close to Hong Kong and Macau, Guangzhou's clothing styles have always been at the forefront of the times.

After the reform and opening up, Gaodi Street took advantage of the policy and became a well-known clothing wholesale distribution center in South China.

At this time point in 1982, not many small vendors from the north came here to purchase goods. Du Feng had only heard of the reputation of Gaodi Street when he came here to purchase goods. He took Xiao Cao and went straight to Gaodi Street after getting off the train.

Gaodi Street Industrial Products Market was established in October 1980. It was the first industrial products market in Guangzhou and gathered the earliest batch of self-employed people in Guangzhou.

They used bamboo and iron frames to set up simple stalls to sell the latest fashion clothing, shoes and hats, and small sundries at that time.

In the past two years, Gaodi Street has gradually become famous. Both sides of the street are full of stalls and stalls, filling the entire street.

Compared with the old-fashioned clothing in department stores at this time, which requires cloth coupons, the clothing on Gaodi Street is cheap and fashionable, and is very popular with customers.

Du Feng has been setting up a clothing stall in Xiushui for two months. This is the third time he has come to Gaodi Street to purchase goods.

Gaodi Street is short and narrow, connected to Yanjing Road in the east and Qiyi Road in the west. It is now very prosperous, with hundreds of stalls. Every day, there are at least 800 foreign merchants who come to buy goods.

In addition, some foreigners come on business trips or travel, and they have heard of the reputation of Gaodi Street and come to bring some clothes for their relatives and friends.

As a result, the densely packed stalls and bustling crowds of people are crowded and lively from morning to night.

Du Feng took Xiao Cao into Gaodi Street. He did not go directly to the two stalls where he bought goods before, but walked around Gaodi Street twice to see if there were any new styles of clothing.

After walking around for a long time, the two of them came to a stall with familiarity. Du Feng spoke to the boss in plastic Cantonese.

The stall owner recognized Du Feng at a glance, and said to Du Feng in plastic Mandarin with a painful expression: "Boss Du, you should speak Mandarin. I can understand it."

Du Feng smiled nonchalantly and asked, "Do you still have the floral-patterned waist dress from last time?"

"Yes, of course."

…

After spending the whole morning on Gao Di Street, the goods were almost in. Du Feng and Xiao Cao each carried two large bags of clothing. They walked with difficulty to a snack stall, stepped on the packages under their feet, and asked for one each. Pig's feet rice.

After finishing their meal, the two got on the bus and went to a guest house two kilometers away.

In fact, there are guest houses and privately owned small hotels near Gaodi Street, but Du Feng did not dare to stay there.

The manager of the guest house where he came was a comrade of his eldest brother. They had an old relationship and felt comfortable staying there.

After staying here for one night, Du Feng asked Xiao Cao to stay at the guest house to guard the goods the next day, while he took a bus to the port town of Huizhou.

Since the reform and opening up, Gangguang Town has become a political center in Guangdong. It is filled with electronic watches, tape recorders and televisions from Xiangjiang.

Du Feng recently discovered that electronic watches are quite popular in Yanjing City and wants to buy a batch of them to sell.

As for the tape recorder and television, he had not considered it. The cost of purchasing those items was too high. With his current strength, the risks were too high to make them.

After successfully importing 100 electronic watches from the port town, Du Feng returned to Guangzhou.

Entering the guest house, he saw Xiao Cao holding a book and reading, "Where did the book come from?"

"I bought it outside when I was eating. Writer Lin's new book."

Xiao Cao was not well educated and had no habit of reading. However, in 1979, the publication of "Garland Under the Mountain" triggered a reading craze among soldiers in the army, and he became Lin Chaoyang's loyal reader.

Du Feng listened to Xiao Cao's words and didn't pay attention. He rested the goods for a while and discussed with Xiao Cao about returning to Yanjing tomorrow and buying train tickets later.

When it was time for dinner, Xiao Cao went to buy food, leaving Du Feng alone in the room.

Bored, he took out the book that Xiao Cao was reading just now. It had a simple cover with "The Master of Chess" written on it.

"The Chess Master" is a novel written by his brother-in-law Lin Chaoyang. Du Feng naturally knew it, but when he looked at the cover of the book, he felt something was wrong.

He opened the novel and read it. The content was familiar to him and there was nothing wrong with it, so he didn't take it seriously.

The next day, I took the train back to Beijing and had been busy with business matters for a few days. On this day, Xiao Cao suddenly came over.

"Brother Feng!"

"What's wrong?"

"Look at my book." Xiao Cao took out two books, one was the "Chess Saint" he bought in Guangzhou, and the other one also had "Chess Saint" written on it, but the covers were completely different.

"What's going on?" Du Feng was confused.

Xiao Cao couldn't explain clearly. He accidentally saw someone reading "The Master of Chess" and found that it was different from the book he bought, so he took it to Du Feng to read.

The two of them looked at the two books in front of them and couldn't figure it out. Du Feng simply took the books and ran to Lin Chaoyang's house.

"Hey! Brother-in-law, your yard is quite spacious!"

After entering the door, Du Feng first praised Lin Chaoyang's new yard. After chatting for a while, he took out the two books and said, "Brother-in-law, why do you have two different editions of this book?"

Lin Chaoyang looked at the two books carefully and immediately realized that the one with a simple cover was probably a pirated book.

However, there is still no concept of genuine and pirated copies in China. According to the current terminology in the publishing industry, this kind of book should come from secondary channels.

After the reform and opening up, the domestic book publishing industry gradually broke the publishing pattern of "one province only has one People's Publishing House". From 1980 to this year, more than 300 publishing institutions were established across the country in two years.

According to current national regulations, all publications must be sold uniformly by Xinhua Bookstore.

In the past two years, the publishing industry has experienced unprecedented prosperity. As the only sales channel in the book industry, Xinhua Bookstore has also felt tremendous pressure.

Due to the limited business level, in order to ensure the safety of operations, we had to take in less and replenish more frequently. Some books were not accurate and we did not dare to quote the order quantity.

As a result, some popular books and magazines are in short supply and readers have no books to read.

As a result, some smart people came up with a way to send money to publishing houses for mail ordering. This suddenly increased the pressure on many publishing houses and made them overwhelmed by the mail order business.

It also prompted some people in the society to smell the opportunity to make money from self-operated books, so they spontaneously went to the publishing house to purchase some books at the fixed price, and then retailed them in the downtown area with a price increase of 5% to 10% for each volume.

The emergence of this book retail model has surprised and delighted publishers. Many publishers have even set up this type of book sales companies on their own initiative.

Over time, domestic book distribution channels have gradually formed three models.

The first is the main distribution channel, mainly the Xinhua Bookstore system; the second is the social distribution channel where the publishing house handles its own distribution; the third is the private channel formed by collectives and individual booksellers.

The latter two of these are called the second channel.

During the development of the second channel, booksellers continued to evolve, and some smart people were not content with following the publishers and began to collude with editors.

Books that are obviously non-compliant are quickly reviewed and published, and even the manuscripts that pass the review are privately rewritten during the printing process to make them more popular.

Some booksellers will think of ways to deal with the printing process. The contract between the publishing house and the printing house is for 10,000 copies. The booksellers will privately contact the printing house and ask the printing house to print 20,000 copies. The extra 10,000 copies will not be needed. Share profits with the publishing house.

The above two methods are relatively formal.

Since the reform and opening up, popular literary works from Hong Kong and Taiwan have been pouring into the mainland.

Taking martial arts novels as the first, the works of Jin Guliang and others only need to change traditional Chinese characters to simplified Chinese characters and change vertical layout to horizontal layout to be printed and distributed. The price is very high, but readers are still willing to pay for it. This is the earliest pirated book.

This kind of thing is not only done by irregular book vendors, but also by some regular publishing houses. In the past two years, some domestic publishing houses have published Jin Yong's martial arts novels. You must know that before 1984, Jin Yong had never authorized his works to be published in the mainland.

"Where did this book come from?" Lin Chaoyang asked.

"Xiao Cao bought it at a stall when I went to Guangdong to purchase goods."