Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 292 Second Channel

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 Yanda Library?"

"Yes."

"Or was it my father-in-law who helped arrange it?"

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

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

Shen Congwen smiled as he listened, "It is somewhat of fate."

In the eyes of many intellectuals, neither of them had received formal education. They both enriched their knowledge in the Yan University Library 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. This was also the reason why Shen Congwen asked Lin Chaoyang about his work.

He praised again, "To be honest, I have seldom read novels in recent years. Zeng Qi said she would bring you to my house, so I spent two days cramming your novels. Unfortunately, the time was too short, so I only glanced over them. They are very well written. The one that impressed me the most was "Little Shoes", which was fresh, meaningful and unconventional."

"You're too kind." Lin Chaoyang said modestly.

Wang Zengqi said: "The style of Little Shoes is similar to your work. I read the article in Yenching Literature the other day. Chaoyang has done a deep study of your work and has mastered it thoroughly."

Shen Congwen looked at him and said, "You are already over 60 years old, how come you still know how to flatter others? If someone writes good novels, does that mean they must have learned from me?"

Wang Zengqi was not flattering on purpose, but today he brought Lin Chaoyang to visit and he didn't want to let the topic become dull, so he said a few more words.

Lin Chaoyang came to Wang Zengqi's rescue and said, "Old Wang is right. Your work has indeed given me a lot of inspiration."

"I've also seen some of your works in the past two years. Your style is quite different from mine."

Lin Chaoyang smiled and said, "That's because I don't just look at your work!"

His tone was humorous, and Shen Congwen couldn't help but laugh out loud, praising him: "Great! Learning from many schools of thought, integrating hundreds of schools of thought, all articles in the world are just plagiarism!"

After talking about Lin Chaoyang's creation for a while, the topic turned back to life.

Last May, Shen Congwen returned to his hometown in western Hunan. The matter was arranged by Shen Congwen's cousin Huang Yongyu. On May 5, Shen Congwen and his wife returned to Fenghuang accompanied by their cousin Huang Yongyu and his wife and their good friend Huang Miaozi and his wife.

After traveling for half my life, I experienced the people, things and scenery of my hometown, and then went to Zhangjiajie for a trip. I didn’t return until the end of the month with great satisfaction.

The short trip back home brought 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 come at a great time!"

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

On the way back, Wang Zengqi said to Lin Chaoyang with deep feeling: "You and the teacher do have a lot in common. Fortunately, the times are different now."

Wang Zengqi's words contained both indignation for his teacher and gratitude for the passage of time. He looked at the young Lin Chaoyang, and for some reason an idea popped up in his mind.

In fact, this is also a kind of inheritance.

Guangzhou, Gaudi Street.

Because Guangzhou is relatively close to Hong Kong and Macao, its clothing styles have always been at the forefront of the times.

After the reform and opening up, Gaodi Street, with the support of favorable policies, became a well-known clothing wholesale distribution center in South China.

At this time in 82, 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. After getting off the train with Xiao Cao, he went straight to Gaodi Street.

Gaodi Street Industrial Products Market was established in October 80. It is the first industrial products market in Guangzhou and gathers the earliest batch of self-employed individuals in Guangzhou.

They built simple stalls with bamboo and iron frames and sold the latest fashions in clothing, shoes, hats, and small sundries.

In the past two years, Gaudi Street has become increasingly famous, with stalls set up on both sides of the street, filling up the entire street.

Compared to the old-fashioned clothes that require cloth coupons in department stores at this time, the clothes on Gaudi Street are cheap and fashionable, and are very popular with customers.

Du Feng has opened a clothing stall in Xiushui for two months. This is his third time to 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 and at least eight hundred foreign merchants coming to purchase goods every day.

In addition, there are some outsiders who come here on business trips or tourism. They have heard of the fame of Gaudi Street and come to bring some clothes for their relatives and friends.

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

Du Feng took Xiao Cao into Gaodi Street. Instead of going directly to the two stalls where they had purchased goods before, they walked around Gaodi Street twice to see if there were any new styles of clothing.

After walking around for a long time, the two finally arrived at a stall that they were familiar with. Du Feng spoke to the boss in stilted Cantonese.

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

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

"Yes, of course."

……

After spending a whole morning on Gaodi Street, the goods had almost been delivered. Du Feng and Xiao Cao each carried two large bags of clothing and walked with difficulty to a snack stand. They put the packages under their feet and ordered a serving of pork trotter rice each.

After finishing their meal, the two took a bus to a guesthouse two kilometers away. In fact, there was a guesthouse near Gaodi Street, as well as a small private hotel, but Du Feng didn't dare to stay there.

The manager of the guesthouse he visited was his eldest brother's comrade-in-arms. They were old friends, so he could feel at ease staying there.

After staying here for one night, the next day Du Feng asked Xiao Cao to stay in the guesthouse to look after the goods, while he took a bus to Gangkou Town in Huizhou.

Since the reform and opening up, Gangkou Town has become an important economic town in Guangdong, filled with electronic watches, tape recorders and televisions from Hong Kong.

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

As for the tape recorder and television, he had not considered them. The cost of stocking those things was too high. With his current strength, the risk was too great and he could not afford it.

After successfully importing 100 electronic watches from Gangkou Town, Du Feng returned to Guangzhou.

After entering the guesthouse, he saw Xiao Cao actually reading a book, "Where did you get this book?"

"I bought it outside while eating. It's the new book by writer Lin."

Xiao Cao had a low level of education and had no habit of reading. However, when "The Wreath under the Mountain" was published in 79, it triggered a reading craze among soldiers throughout the army, and he became a loyal reader of Lin Chaoyang.

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

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

He was bored and took out the book that Xiao Cao had just read. The cover was simple and had the words "The Chess Master" written on it.

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

He opened the novel and took a look. He was familiar with the content and there was nothing wrong with it, so he didn't take it seriously.

The next day, I took the train back to Beijing. After a few days of busy business, Xiao Cao suddenly came over.

"Q!"

"what happened?"

"Look at my books." Xiao Cao took out two books, one was the "Chess Master" he bought in Guangzhou, and the other was also titled "Chess Master", but the covers were completely different.

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

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

The two looked at the two books in front of them, unable to figure out what was going on. Du Feng simply took the books and ran to Lin Chaoyang's house.

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

After entering the house, 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 did you publish two different editions of this book?"

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

However, there is no concept of genuine or pirated products in China today. According to the current term in the publishing industry, this type of book should come from secondary channels.

After the reform and opening up, the domestic book publishing industry has gradually broken the publishing pattern of "only one People's Publishing House in a province". From 80 to this year, more than 300 publishing institutions have been established across the country in two years.

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

However, the publishing industry has been booming unprecedentedly in the past two years. As the only sales channel for the book industry, Xinhua Bookstore has also felt tremendous pressure.

Due to limited business level and in order to ensure business safety, we had to adopt the approach of purchasing small quantities and adding more frequently. We did not dare to report the order numbers for some books if we were not sure.

As a result, some popular books and magazines are in short supply, and readers have nothing to read.

Then, some smart people came up with an idea, which was to send money to publishers and conduct mail order. As a result, the pressure on the mail order business of many publishers increased sharply, and they were overwhelmed.

This also prompted some people in society to smell the opportunity to make money by operating their own books, so they spontaneously went to publishers to buy some books at the listed price, and then sold them in downtown areas, adding 5% to 10% to the price of each book.

The emergence of this book retail model surprised and delighted publishing houses, and many publishing houses even spontaneously set up this type of book sales company.

As time goes by, three models of domestic book distribution channels have gradually formed.

The first is the main distribution channel based on the Xinhua Bookstore system; the second is the social distribution channel run by publishing houses themselves; and the third is the private channel composed of collective and individual booksellers.

The latter two are called secondary channels.

During the development of the secondary channel, booksellers continued to evolve. Some smart people were not satisfied with following the publishing houses and began to collude with editors.

Books that are obviously non-compliant are quickly reviewed and published, and even approved manuscripts are secretly rewritten during the printing process to make them best-sellers.

Some booksellers will try to find a way through the printing process. The contract between the publishing house and the printing factory is for 10,000 copies. The booksellers may secretly collude with the printing factory and ask it to print 20,000 copies. Then they do not need to share the profits of the extra 10,000 copies 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 continued to flow into the mainland.

Led by martial arts novels, the works of Jin Guliang and others only needed to change traditional Chinese characters into simplified Chinese and change vertical layout into horizontal layout before they could be printed and distributed as books. The prices were very high, but there were still readers willing to pay for them. These were the earliest pirated books.

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

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

"Xiao Cao bought it from a small stall when he went to Guangdong to buy supplies."

(End of this chapter)