I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 296: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Colombia is the fourth largest economy in Latin America (the other three are Brazil, Mexico and Argentina), and it is also one of the six civet countries.

The so-called six civet countries refer to Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Türkiye and South Africa.

The first letters of these six countries strung together form CIVETS (Civet), so they are collectively called the Six Civet Countries.

This thing is actually a new economic concept hyped up by global investors and economists, similar to the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) mentioned in the past.

Simply put, economists believe that economic power will shift from developed countries to these emerging markets in the future, so they will be good places for future investment, thereby suggesting that investors should put their money in those countries.

Kitagawa Hide was not sure whether Colombia was a good place to invest, but after getting off the plane in Aracataca, he and Yumeko immediately confirmed that this was a great place to grow tropical fruits!
The streets and alleys are full of vendors selling all kinds of tropical fruits, and the cries of hawkers are heard one after another, which seems out of place with the towering Gothic church not far away.

"Honey~ Look, the pineapples and bananas here are so big~" Mengzi, with a slightly protruding belly, happily walked around the commercial street. Her cute oriental appearance attracted the attention of many local people.

"Haha, then let's buy some food." Kitagawa Hide followed closely behind, with two personal bodyguards from Kinoshita's driver team behind him.

In order to protect the interests of its farmers, Japan has banned the domestic sales of foreign fruits. This has also led to very expensive prices for fruits in Japan. This is why there is a saying that "Japanese people can't afford watermelons, so they go crazy eating watermelons after traveling to neighboring countries."

Of course, the real situation is definitely not that exaggerated, but Japanese fruits are really expensive. Watermelon sold by slices, the kind that is not cut very flat and still has the watermelon rind, costs 199 yen per slice, which is equivalent to 19.9 yuan, which is almost enough for half a bowl of ramen.

In Aracataca, a whole watermelon costs 2600 Colombian pesos, which is about 97 yen.

Kitagawa Hide and his friend were picking fruits while chatting with the uncle selling them.

When the fruit uncle heard that the two people came from the far East, he asked some strange things out of curiosity.

Kitagawa Hideya learned many local anecdotes about Colombia and Aracataca from the fruit man.

"Haha, if you had come a month earlier, you could have caught up with the 'Mountain People's' 'Ascension Day of Our Lord', which would have been much more lively than it is now!"

Seeing that Mengzi particularly loved watermelons, the fruit uncle picked out two big ones and sold them to them at a discount.

"'Mountain people'? 'The Ascension Day of Our Lord'?" Mengzi asked curiously while biting into the juicy watermelon.

The fruit man nodded and gave a brief explanation.

The so-called "Ascension Day of Our Lord" is the "Ascension Day of Jesus" in Christianity. It is the follow-up to the Easter celebration. It is used to celebrate the ascension of Jesus on the 40th day after his resurrection. It is now mostly used as a "mountain climbing celebration" and so on.

The "mountain people" that the fruit man refers to actually refer to the citizens of Bogota, the capital of Colombia.

The people of Aracataca call themselves "shore people" because "shore people" are open-minded and "mountain people" are conservative. The citizens of Bogota are deeply influenced by Christianity and it is still an era when women are not allowed to leave the house.

The people in poor towns are open-minded, while those in rich cities are conservative. The poor wander around happily, while the rich stay at home, frowning.
Colombia's unique customs and social reality full of contradictions and ironies opened Kitagawa Hide's eyes.

No wonder Marquez, who was born in this country, could write such a magical realism masterpiece as "One Hundred Years of Solitude"!

"Ah, so you two are the distinguished guests of the Buendía family. Madam, please forgive my rudeness just now! These fruits are given to you for free!"

The fruit uncle, who was laughing and joking just now, suddenly became a different person after seeing the tourist season tickets handed over by Kitagawa Xiu. He jumped up from the ground, wiped his hands vigorously on his apron, and then handed the tourist season tickets back to them respectfully.

"Buendía family?" Kitagawa Hide was confused again.

He could not quite understand the Colombian language on the tourist season ticket, but the English part was easy to understand. It should be a tourist season ticket sold in limited quantities by a large travel agency, the kind that integrates hotel accommodation, catering and entertainment.

Hearing the name, the surrounding vendors gathered around curiously.

More and more people came, and everyone talked at once. Kitagawa Xiu barely pieced together the origin of this tourist season ticket from the complicated information.

The Buendía family was the super family that founded the town of Aracataca.

The first generation head of the family, José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Úrsula, came from an Indian village far away from the coast.

After coming here, they built and operated businesses, and developed industries, turning this uninhabited area into the bustling commercial town it is today. It can be said that all the residents of the town now work for the Buendía family and rely on their industries for their livelihood.

Five years ago, the current patriarch of the Buendía family, Ochron Buendía, went to the capital Bogota to develop. Now he is the richest man in Bogota and a fruit tycoon in Colombia.

In order to make his family business more prosperous, Okalón invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build a luxury five-star hotel. After the hotel was established, he issued 100 sets of limited edition tourist season tickets to celebrities from all over the world (mainly Latin America), inviting them to travel to Colombia, in order to increase the popularity of his own hotel industry.

Locals all know that anyone who can get the Buendía family's travel season ticket is either rich or noble, and is probably famous all over the world.

Kitagawa Hide didn't expect that Oddsong had sent such a precious gift. He didn't know what to say for a moment. In the end, he and Yumeko could only look at each other and decide to go to France to express their gratitude after returning home!

Aracataca is a small town, and the news that a distinguished guest with a season ticket had arrived spread quickly throughout the town.

Not long after Kitagawa Hide and his companion left the fruit stand, a local patrol police car came running over and loudly asked them to get in.

The enthusiastic police used a patrol car to lead the way and escorted Kitagawa Hide and his party to the Buendia Mansion in the town.

Nowadays, most members of the Buendía family have gone to settle in developed countries such as the United States, and those who remain in their hometown of Aracataca are some prestigious elders in the family.

Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko were greeted by an old man who called himself Osorno Buendia.

The old man has gray hair but his eyes are bright. He said he participated in World War II when he was young. He is almost 100 years old this year.

"I've also heard of Mr. Kitagawa's novels!" Osorno Buendía ordered the maid to help them clean the VIP room, while he kept talking to Kitagawa Hide, who was almost seventy years younger than him.

This was not because he was deliberately being polite to Kitagawa Hide, but because he had actually read some of the novels written by Kitagawa Hide.

The Buendía family’s business has expanded to the United States. As descendants of Indians, their company in the western United States is doing quite well.

Their current middle-aged generation has had a lot of collaborations with the Autry family. After Gene Autry's album "South of the Border, West of the Sun" became popular again, Kitagawa Hide's novel of the same name was also published in large quantities in the western United States, but the results were mediocre.

Osorno's children brought back this popular pure literature novel from there, and after reading it, he became interested in Kitagawa Hide.

Of course, at Osono's age, he is no longer interested in these romantic things.

Of all Kitagawa Hide's books, his favorites are The Strange Birds and Killing the Grand Master, which are about World War II. Especially the latter, which talks about the Chinese War during World War II. When Osorno served in the US Army, he went to support the war zone there, so he is very familiar with the details in Kitagawa Hide's books. Kitagawa Hide really didn't expect that he could see fanatical book fans in Colombia, which is 14 time zones away. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry for a while.

"Mr. Kitagawa, are you coming to Aracataca this time, besides for your honeymoon, to collect materials for your new book?"

The two chatted for a while, and after listening to Kitagawa Hide's words, the elderly Osono was shocked.

He has been following "Remembrance of Things Past" and "The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland", and these two books seem to be not finished yet. How come the young man in front of him has already started a new book?

"I have this idea. Haha, I am a person who can't sit still. If there is a suitable topic, I can't wait to start writing."

Kitagawa Hide has been observing the Buendía Mansion.

Although Marquez is no longer in this world, it seems that the prototype family of the novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" still exists, and it seems to be the Buendía family, the powerful family in this small town.

All of a sudden, everything related to "One Hundred Years of Solitude" came flooding into my mind.

Unfortunately, in his previous life, when he was a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, he mainly studied Japanese literature. Although he had some knowledge of these foreign literatures, he was not as familiar with them as Japanese literature.

"Remembrance of Things Past" is his personal favorite, so he remembered a lot of it and it was effortless for him to write it.

However, the more famous "One Hundred Years of Solitude", which won Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, is less familiar and requires careful recollection.

But when it comes to plagiarism, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a masterpiece that cannot be avoided.

Thinking that there was a high probability that he would miss the Nobel Prize in Literature this time, and now that he had become the "number one in the world" in the Japanese literary world, if he wanted to go further, the Nobel Prize was an award that he had to strive for.

In addition, Kitagawa Hide himself also wanted to gradually expand his influence in the world literary scene, so a novel that could become famous all over the world was essential.

After deciding to title his new book "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Kitagawa Hide took the initiative to ask about the history of the Buendía family, and also learned some of Osorno's personal experiences and anecdotes.

When Osorno heard that Mr. Kitagawa intended to write about the Buendía family, he immediately became excited. He kept chatting with him until late at night. He could not hold on any longer and went back to his room to rest with the help of his maid.

When Kitagawa Hide returned to the room, he immediately saw the brand new computer and typewriter on the table. It seemed that Osorno really wanted him to present the Buendía family to the world in the form of a novel.

"Honey, you're back?" The pregnant Yumeko still looked like a full-fledged wife. She helped Kitagawa Hide take his coat and change his shoes, then went to make tea and snacks. She even wanted to rub his shoulders and back to relieve the stress of the day.

Kitagawa Hide held Yumeko in his arms to stop her from doing these trivial things. While chatting about the itinerary for the next few days, he briefly told her the idea he had just come up with.

Their honeymoon was also a field trip for Kitagawa Hide - Mengzi was not opposed to such a honeymoon life at all, and was looking forward to it before it started!

Because she is also his die-hard fan, especially after she gets to know his writing situation better, she often becomes the first reader to urge him for updates.

"Remembrance of Things Past" was written very smoothly and quickly, and "The End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland" was also completed. Based on her understanding of Kitagawa Hide, she knew that he would definitely not be idle.

I just didn’t expect that Kitagawa Hide’s new idea would come so quickly, and it’s something extremely unpopular and niche!

“The book takes a Latin American indigenous family as the starting point, and reflects the development history of this country and even all Latin American countries over hundreds of years through the rise and fall of the family.
It sounds like a very grand worldview and subject matter."

If she hadn't read about how Kitagawa Hide wrote "Remembrance of Things Past", it would have been hard for Yumeko to believe that a Japanese writer could get involved in foreign literature.

The amount of knowledge, time and energy required for this is simply inestimable.

"Do you think it's bad?" Kitagawa Hide pays great attention to the feedback from people around him.

Because they are closest to him, most familiar with him, and "a bystander sees more clearly than a participant", sometimes their opinions are most likely to enlighten Kitagawa Hide.

After all, this parallel world is not the original world. If you take many things for granted, you will definitely suffer a great loss.

The views of a "native" like Yumeko on the novel are more valuable than those of Kitagawa Hide.

"It's not that it's bad, it's just that it feels very, very difficult to write. At least "Remembrance of Things Past" only describes the life experience of the protagonist, but the one you're talking about now, dear, is it about an entire family?"

Mengzi tilted her head and thought for a moment, then spoke seriously.

But after saying this, she hugged Beichuan Xiu expectantly and affirmatively added: "But I think you can do it!"

"Why?" Kitagawa Hide himself was not very sure.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a representative and pioneering work of magical realism, but its writing style is obscure and difficult to understand, and the plot is a bit lengthy. In fact, it is very difficult to read. It is a typical masterpiece that is "very famous, but few people have actually read it."

This kind of masterpiece is particularly prone to sudden death.

“Because when you first changed your track and subject matter, you wrote No Longer Human, and no one was optimistic about it, but it was very successful.

After that, I changed my track and wrote "The Strange-Bird Chronicle" and "Killing Commendatore". Everyone also felt that war literature was difficult to write and there were many problems to overcome.

But you overcame it by searching for information, studying it, and trying and failing.

Later, I wrote "Remembrance of Things Past", "The End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland".
My dear, you are a writer who can do things that others cannot do!

So I think you can!"

As Kitagawa Hide's bedmate, Yumeko never hesitates to praise him. It can be said that from the very beginning, she has been wholeheartedly supporting the man she loves.

"I understand. I will try seriously and strive to write another excellent work!" Kitagawa Hide was in a good mood and hugged Yumeko and kissed her.

Plagiarism is often not as easy as he imagined. Along the way, Kitagawa Hide sometimes thought of simply copying and using it without adapting to the changes in the readers of this world, and without considering how to improve his literary literacy step by step to match his current status and strength.

But after thinking about it, he still wanted to give it a try.

Since he started his graduate studies at the University of Tokyo, his dream has been to become a writer.

Now that he is getting closer to his dream, Kitagawa Hide doesn't want to give up.

With Mengzi's encouragement, he was full of confidence and felt that some of the difficulties he would encounter when writing "One Hundred Years of Solitude" did not seem so troublesome!
(End of this chapter)