1990: Starting from Baojia Street

After Zhou Yan and his friends arrived at Xijiao Hotel, they first went to the front desk to check in and get their room keys.

The rooms for the participants of this writers' congress have been determined in advance. If no one informs in advance, the rooms will be arranged randomly.

Because it is a random arrangement, there will be a problem.

There are various types of rooms in the hotel, including single rooms, double rooms and quadruple rooms, and they may be arranged to share a room with other people.

The girl at the front desk found the three people's names in the notebook and gave them three keys.

"318, 202 and 310, turn left in front of the elevator."

Zhou Yansan gave all the keys to Yu Hua, and then asked the girl at the front desk, "Excuse me, are there any rooms available tonight?"

The little girl shook her head. "No more. There weren't enough rooms to begin with."

"Oh, okay, thank you."

He had originally thought that if he wanted to stay here tonight, he could book another room so he wouldn't have to share with other people, but unfortunately all the rooms were full.

Liu Zhenyun looked at the key in Yu Hua's hand and said with a smile, "I'm in 317. Who of you lives in 318?"

"Let Tie Sheng live here, so he can take care of him."

Shi Tiesheng smiled and said, "Put away the keys first. You don't have to stay here tonight. Isn't it still early?"

"Whether we live here or not, let's build a base first. Otherwise, we have nowhere to stay right now, so let's go to 318."

"Row."

The four of them took the elevator to the fourth floor and found room 318.

Room 318 is a double room. The inner bed is already occupied, but that person hasn't come back yet.

They actually came back faster than the main group by car.

"I don't know who the other one is." Yu Hua glanced at the bed near the inside, "I hope it's not an old man."

Zhou Yan looked around the room and said, "He should be a local member of Yanjing."

Liu Zhenyun nodded, agreeing with Zhou Yan's guess, "Yes, if they are from outside the city, they will definitely bring a lot of luggage. This person brought a paper bag, so he must be a local member... There is some bad news."

"what news?"

“This member does not smoke.”

Yu Hua patted his head. This was indeed not good news.

Since his roommate doesn't smoke, it's not easy for them to smoke either. He was just about to take out a cigarette and smoke one, but gave up.

"Let's go to our dormitory and sit for a while." Liu Zhenyun suggested.

"Who is your roommate?" Yu Hua asked.

"Mo Yan."

Hearing that it was Mo Yan, Yu Hua laughed and said, "Okay, I'll go to your dormitory."

Then, he pushed Shi Tiesheng out and turned to the door of 317.

There are two beds in room 317. The quilt on one is messy, while the quilt on the other is neatly folded.

Shi Tiesheng said with a smile, "The one inside is definitely Mo Yan's bed, and the one outside is yours."

"Isn't this obvious?" Yu Hua also laughed. "Mo Yan, if nothing else, is definitely good at folding quilts."

Mo Yan has served in the army and indeed pays great attention to this aspect.

Yu Hua and Mo Yan were roommates when they were studying at Lu Xun Academy of Literature, so he is quite familiar with Mo Yan's living habits.

Mo Yan hadn't come back yet, so Liu Zhenyun went over and opened the curtains, then took out a cigarette box and offered cigarettes to everyone.

When it was Zhou Yan's turn, Yu Hua smiled and said, "He doesn't smoke, give me the cigarette."

Liu Zhenyun retracted his hand. "Logically speaking, you should have given me the cigarette. I heard that you have made a lot of royalties recently."

Yu Hua said seriously, "Don't believe those rumors. My royalties are far less than yours. You guys wrote scripts for the Seahorse Dance Hall before and earned more than a hundred thousand yuan."

Liu Zhenyun raised the corner of his mouth, "I'm going to return what you just said to you, don't believe those rumors, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you are going to scare me to death."

"Don't be modest. I'm not asking you for money."

"I wish I had the ability to lend you money."

Liu Zhenyun lit a cigarette, sat down on the bed, and the three of them began to smoke.

Zhou Yan moved closer to the window and opened it a crack, trying to reduce the amount of secondhand smoke he was exposed to.

After a while, the sound of the keyhole turning was heard outside the door, and then Mo Yan pushed the door open from outside.

Seeing the smoke in the room and a few more people, Mo Yan's eyes widened... but not that big actually.

Mo Yan is not tall, a little fat, with a round face, compact features, small eyes and short eyebrows.

Seeing Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng clearly, Mo Yan smiled and said, "Tiesheng, Yu Hua, you are here too."

He looks simple and honest. When he smiles, his eyes and eyebrows are squeezed together as if they have nowhere to hide, making him look even simpler.

"Teacher Guan, you are quite fast." Liu Zhenyun said with a smile.

"I'm small, so I can fit into any space in the car." Mo Yan looked at Zhou Yan again, "This is Zhou Yan, right?"

Zhou Yan responded with a smile, "Hello, Mr. Mo Yan."

Mo Yan smiled and waved his hand, "You're welcome, just call me Mo Yan."

Mo Yan was not surprised that Zhou Yan appeared here, because he knew that Yu Hua and the others had a good relationship with Zhou Yan.

This is no secret. The collection of novels by Zhou Yan, Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng sold very well in Japan, and it was even reported in the news.

Moreover, Mo Yan kept in touch with Yu Hua and the others, and he also heard Yu Hua talk about many things related to Zhou Yan.

After Mo Yan came, the number of cigarettes in the room increased from three to four.

Seeing that the smoke concentration in the house was gradually increasing and visibility was becoming lower and lower, Zhou Yan opened the window a little wider.

After smoking two cigarettes, Yu Hua asked, "When do we have dinner tonight?"

Liu Zhenyun shrugged, "Then you can go eat whenever you want."

"Aren't we going to eat together tonight?"

"No, everyone eats their own food. There are set meals in the restaurant. If you want to eat, just go there. Dinner is available before nine o'clock."

"Oh, I thought everyone was eating together. How is the quality of their restaurant?" Yu Hua was a little disappointed. He thought everyone was eating together in the evening.

"It's just okay. It's not bad at all."

Yu Hua curled her lips and said, "I should have gone to Zhou Yan's studio to eat for free."

"I've heard you talk about their studio cafeteria several times. Is it that good?" Mo Yan said with a smile.

"It's that good. I'll take you there to experience it next time when I have time."

Shi Tiesheng smiled and said, "Zhou Yan is here, just help him make the decision."

Zhou Yan took over the conversation and said, "If you are interested in the studio cafeteria, you can go over there when you have nothing to do. It just so happens that our studio has recently set up a reading room. You great writers can go over there to help give us some suggestions."

"You also set up a reading room? I didn't see it a few days ago." Yu Hua asked in confusion. "Well, it was just set up these past two days. There's nothing special about it. It's just one room, about 50 or 60 square meters, and it's not decorated. The books haven't been put in yet, and they're still being put in."

"Why did you think of setting up a reading room?" Shi Tiesheng asked curiously.

"Nothing, I just want to give employees more places to rest. It's always good to read more books. In addition to the reading room, there will be a gym, a game room and other places for employees to rest in the future."

"Are the treatments in your studio so good?" Liu Zhenyun looked surprised. "Do they have time to rest? I mean, are there any uses for these places?"

"The work in our studio is not fixed. Sometimes it is relatively idle, and sometimes it is quite busy. When we are idle, these places can be used."

"You are a good boss. At least you can tolerate your employees having some free time. It must be a blessing to be your employee."

"But I won't hire people who can't add value to our studio."

Yu Hua said with a smile, "That sounds a bit like a capitalist."

Liu Zhenyun asked again, "Where is the value of employees reflected? Is it in how much money they make for you?"

“Whether employees are valuable depends on whether I think they are valuable. If I think they are valuable, then they are valuable. If I think they are not valuable, then they are not valuable.”

"This sentence has a bit of a dictator's flavor." Mo Yan laughed.

"I'm still interested in your reading room. How many books do you plan to put in it?" Shi Tiesheng said.

"First, buy 3,000 books. We'll see if we want to buy more later."

"What books are there?"

"Novels account for 60%, professional books on film, television and music account for 20-30%, and the rest are miscellaneous books. If there are books that employees want to read but the reading room doesn't have them, they can write an application form, and as long as more than ten people sign, they can buy it."

"Three thousand books is already a lot," said Mo Yan.

Many people have no idea about the number of books and think that three thousand books are not a lot, but in fact, three thousand books piled together are very impressive.

Most of the small bookstores on the street sell less than 3,000 books.

As a reading room, there must be many places for reading, and the books cannot be spread too thinly.

So if a space of fifty or sixty square meters is filled with three thousand books, it is already quite a lot.

The key point is that considering the size of Zhou Yan’s studio, it is a bit extravagant to display 3,000 books.

"Are there our books?" Yu Hua asked directly.

Zhou Yan laughed and said, "Isn't this nonsense? Everyone sitting here has their works in it."

Of the three thousand books, sixty percent are novels, which means there are eighteen hundred books in total.

For most people, Zhou Yan only allowed them to import one book. These 1,800 books basically covered all the best-selling literary works on the market in recent years.

Mo Yan, Liu Zhenyun, Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng are all best-selling writers in recent years, and their representative works are naturally included in the book.

Collections of novels such as Liu Zhenyun's "A Pile of Feathers" and "Officialdom", and Mo Yan's "Red Sorghum" and "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" are all on the list of books.

Not to mention the works of Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng, not only are all their published single volumes on display, but also some of the publications that previously serialized their novels are also included. Moreover, they are placed in a very conspicuous position and can be seen basically as soon as you enter the reading room.

In the reading room, the works of these two people should be the most numerous, except for Chekhov, whom Zhou Yan loves the most.

Upon hearing that their books were also in the reading room, Mo Yan and Liu Zhenyun were quite interested and expressed their desire to go and take a look.

Yu Hua and Shi Tiesheng were also very happy. From now on, they could not only listen to music in the studio, but also read books in the reading room.

……

They chatted for a while, and suddenly someone knocked on the door.

Liu Zhenyun asked loudly, "Who? Who are you looking for?"

"Me." A cheerful female voice came from outside the door.

"An old classmate is here." Liu Zhenyun smiled, stood up and ran to open the door, "Here he comes."

When Zhou Yan was wondering who the visitor was, Liu Zhenyun opened the door and a woman in a black coat and high heels stood outside.

The woman had a cheerful voice and a cheerful appearance, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and she looked very energetic.

Zhou Yan recognized at once that the woman was Chi Zijian.

There are not many famous female writers in contemporary China, especially among Yu Hua's generation. There are only a few well-known female writers, and Chi Zijian is one of them.

Chi Zijian's most well-known work should be her novel "The Right Bank of the Ergun River", but this work has not been published yet.

Her road to fame really began this year. In this year's Lu Xun Literature Award, her "The Cowshed in the Misty Moon" was awarded the Best Short Story Award.

By the way, there is another work in this room that also won this award.

That is Shi Tiesheng, who also won the Lu Xun Literary Award for Best Short Story this year with "A Brief Account of the Old House".

As soon as the door opened, Chi Zijian raised his hands in front of him with a look of disgust, "Ahem, there are so many of you smoking in there, it's almost invisible."

Liu Zhenyun chuckled, "Four Smoking Guns, do you want to come in?"

Although there was a strong smell of smoke, Chi Zijian still walked in covering her nose.

Only when she got into the house did she see clearly who was inside.

Of course, she knew Yu Hua, Mo Yan, and Shi Tiesheng. As for Zhou Yan, she was a little unsure: "Who is this..."

"He is Zhou Yan." Yu Hua helped introduce him.

"Oh, it's you, no wonder."

Mo Yan asked curiously, "Why not?"

"No wonder he's so handsome, he's actually a big star."

Many writers do not know Zhou Yan, nor do they know what Zhou Yan looks like, but they know that there is such a person as Zhou Yan, and that he is a big star.

Such an alternative is naturally easy to remember.

Chi Zijian has an ordinary appearance, but she looks very sharp, and when she smiles, two dimples appear on her cheeks, which adds to her charm.

She, Liu Zhenyun, Mo Yan and Yu Hua were all students of the same Lu Xun Academy of Literature, so it was touching that Liu Zhenyun said that old classmates had come.

It was precisely because they were all classmates that she was willing to walk in amidst the lingering smoke and talk in a very relaxed manner.

After Liu Zhenyun opened the door, he never closed it again.

One reason was that they thought maybe someone else would come back to look for them, and the other was that they wanted to get rid of the smell of smoke.

The small gap in the window is of little use.

"Old classmate, would you like me to pour you a cup of tea?" Liu Zhenyun asked with a smile.

"Do you have hot water here?"

"No, but there is a kettle, you can make it yourself."

Chi Zijian curled his lips and said, "Forget it then."

"Anyway, I asked." Liu Zhenyun sat back on the bed with a smile.

Chi Zijian moved closer to the window and watched the other side of the crack. (End of this chapter)