Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 389 Unexpected Victim

"How ridiculous!" In Xin Dongfang's office in Yanjing, Chairman Yu Minghong slammed the "Harvest" in his hand onto the table with a loud noise, scaring the executives in front of him.

As an education and training company listed in both New York and Hong Kong, its stock price plummeted by nearly 8 percentage points in just two days after Zhang Chao's "The Last Lesson" was released, which is one of the largest drops since its listing in 2006.

No one would have thought that just when the literary world was still immersed in the new experience brought by the narrative techniques of "The Last Lesson", the stock market took the lead in reacting, giving Lao Yu a little "cultural shock".

Although Lao Yu read the entire novel with great patience and knew that Zhang Chao did not mention anyone by name, he still could not "forgive" Zhang Chao for throwing "dirty water" on the education and training industry.

The various methods used by "Zhang Chao" in the novel against parents and students after his fall not only broke the bottom line of morality, but also made him lose the qualifications to be a human being.

One by one, each and every incident not only hits the chest of every reader, but also hits the hearts of professionals like Lao Yu.

This "Zhang Chao" who is in charge of education and training, what kind of beastly behavior he does!
Lao Yu is very confident that these behaviors will absolutely...definitely...not exist in "Xin Dongfang", whether now or in the future.

In the impression of outsiders, Xin Dongfang is mainly engaged in IELTS and TOEFL training for studying abroad. After all, their most famous teacher in recent years, Lao Luo, teaches TOEFL.

But in fact, as early as a few years ago, the K12 courses covering primary school students to high school students have been an important business segment of Xin Dongfang, contributing a lot of revenue.

Although the protagonist "Zhang Chao" in Zhang Chao's "The Last Lesson" is an "individual business owner", he clearly mentioned that when he first arrived in Shenzhen, he worked part-time in a "large teaching institution" and learned a lot of "skills" to deal with parents and students.

The industry generally believes that the only one who can become a "large-scale teaching supplementary institution" is Xin Dongfang.

According to past experience, the artistic achievements of Zhang Chao's novels are another matter, but the power of public opinion can be described in eight words: "We can fight when we come, and we can win when we fight."

His first published novel, "Better Days," sparked a nationwide discussion on "school violence" and eventually led to relevant legislation.

The later "Dwelling Narrowness" once again proved that it is okay for Zhang Chao not to touch realistic themes, but once he does, it will definitely create thunder and lightning.

So before the literary world could react, the media defined "The Last Lesson" as a novel about "anti-education anxiety" and pointed the finger at Xin Dongfang.

The first to launch the attack was the China Education News, with an article titled "Beware of educational and training institutions selling anxiety and catalyzing industry chaos caused by internal circulation" appearing on the "hot search" column just launched on Weibo.

[Recently, the short story "The Last Lesson" by writer Zhang Chao has caused a stir in the literary world. This work, which is set against the backdrop of the educational ecology of the next decade, exposes the distorted picture of the disorderly expansion of the education and training industry with a cold brushstroke: institutions selling anxiety, teachers losing their moral integrity, and capital chasing profits leading to safety accidents.

Although the plot is fictional, its accurate analysis of the chaos in education and training surprisingly overlaps with the real-life industry problems. When education becomes a commodity and classrooms become a business, we have to ask: Are teaching and training institutions helping people grow, or are they catalyzing a vicious cycle of internal competition? 】

An education expert immediately followed up and pointed out in an interview with a TV reporter: "The education and training giants have formed a complete business model of 'anxiety-pay-more anxiety', the essence of which is to catalyze education into an artificially created scarcity game."

The TV station also interviewed a senior teacher with a mosaic on his face. He said, "The company's training only teaches sales techniques and never mentions educational philosophy. Here, the standard of a good teacher is to get students to renew their subscription."

Lao Luo, who had a falling out with Xin Dongfang, did not miss this opportunity. After several years, "Lao Luo's Quotations" was updated again:

[All parents should give Zhang Chao a kowtow! Before "The Last Lesson" became a big hit, who knew that this industry could be run like this? Now, the whole of China has seen it clearly. Otherwise, why do we say that art comes from life, but life is even more shameless? ]

The vigorous wave of public opinion seems to be able to bring down "Xin Dongfang".

Faced with this "sudden disaster", Old Yu couldn't really say or do anything to Zhang Chao.

A writer writes novels. What is a novel? A fictional narrative literary genre!

Even what he writes is not what is happening now, but what will happen five or even ten years later.

The sword of the previous dynasty could not kill the officials of this dynasty, but this club traveled through time and space, swung from the future, and hit Lao Yu hard on the back of his head.

In a hurry, "Xin Dongfang" could only release a bland statement:

[The plots described in Mr. Zhang Chao's short story "The Last Lesson", such as "institutions selling anxiety, teachers losing their morals, and running schools in violation of regulations", are purely literary fiction and have nothing to do with Xin Dongfang's actual operations.

Our company always strictly abides by national laws and regulations. All course content, teacher qualifications, and school locations have been reviewed by the education authorities and are subject to regular safety inspections.

Extreme cases in the novel, such as "locking the door to make up lessons and causing fire" and "inducing students to take psychotropic drugs", are malicious stigmatization of the education and training industry. Our company has initiated legal proceedings and reserves the right to hold those who spread false information accountable. 】

Almost everyone laughed when they saw the statement.

"Reserve the right to pursue the responsibility of those who spread false information." Who should be held accountable? Zhang Chao? Or China Education News? Even if Xin Dongfang had more courage, these two would not dare to sue.

Then sue Lao Luo? Lao Luo probably wants to be sued by "Xin Dongfang" so that he can use this opportunity to create momentum for himself.

After all, it has been several years since "Lao Luo's Quotations" became popular, and the operation of "Niu Blog" has also come to an end. Lao Luo is also looking for an opportunity to return to the center of public opinion.

Amid the uproar, the literary community, which should have been the one to "take action" on Zhang Chaoxin's novel, was generally hesitant.

It’s not that they dare not criticize or are embarrassed to praise the novel, but their instinct to seek profit and avoid harm makes them smell the uneasy atmosphere in it.

When evaluating "The Last Lesson", we cannot avoid the education and training industry and "education anxiety". After all, "Xin Dongfang" is a listed company. If it can't deal with Zhang Chao, can't it deal with a few literary critics?

Therefore, the general attitude is to "wait and see" the direction of public opinion.

"Xin Dongfang" also put in a lot of effort and spent a lot of public relations funds to try to cool down the discussion about "The Last Lesson", especially in traditional media - after all, in 2008, the authorities still paid more attention to public opinion feedback from newspapers and TV stations.

This was something Zhang Chao himself had not expected. When he wrote the novel, he did not consider "Xin Dongfang" to be a "big villain", but objectively this effect was produced.

But he didn't regret it. After all, there were so many nonsense things that happened to these big organizations later, and he was just exposed in advance. The heat caused by literary works only lasts for a limited time, and it will disappear in a year or two at most. At that time, education and training will develop as they should, and in the end, the ugly things in his novels will still be staged in reality.

However, the fact that traditional media remain inactive does not mean that online discussions will die down - objectively speaking, both the government and media public relations are still exploring how to guide online public opinion in this era.

However, the hot topics that netizens pay attention to are different from those of other people. After all, people who are keen on online communication at this time are generally young, and they have not yet reached the stage of worrying about their children's academic performance.

The description of people's daily life in the next ten years in "The Last Lesson" has become the focus of attention.

People are particularly interested in "microblog messaging" which can solve most of their daily needs in one stop. It was hard for people in 2008 to imagine why a mobile phone or an app could have such great appeal.

However, to the surprise of most people, although readers agree with Zhang Chao's criticism of the "education and training industry creating educational anxiety", they do not agree with Zhang Chao's predictions about future life, and even generally believe that Zhang Chao's ideas are unrealistic and extremely absurd.

[I think it is not realistic to be able to video chat anytime and anywhere. How much data would that require? The news is now saying that 3G networks will be popularized in the future, and the selling point is video calls. Did Zhang Chao take money from China Mobile?]

[Now you have to sit in front of the computer to use QQ video, but in the novel you can turn on the camera anytime and anywhere? He is rich, so of course he doesn’t know that the data traffic fee is more expensive than gold bars! ]

[Yes, the pixel of the mobile phone camera is only 30, and even the words on the blackboard are blurry. ]

[Zhang Chao probably has never taught before. Which parent has the time to keep an eye on a "parent group"? I think it's too expensive to send a text message on my PHS! ]

[Slider is the way to go! In novels, full-screen phones are as thin as a card? Motorola V3 is already thin enough, and if it is thinner, the battery won’t be able to support it. ]

[SB touch screen, can't type blindly, even dogs don't use it! ]

【Full touch screen mobile phone is definitely anti-human design! My BlackBerry 8700 physical keyboard can reply to emails in seconds. In novels, "typing on glass" is not afraid of accidental touches?】

[Zhang Chao is bragging too much, right? In ten years, mobile phones will be able to scan faces to take the subway? Now Nokia N95 is the best phone! The stupid iPhone doesn't even have copy and paste, it's just a big toy. ]

[Mobile payment is a joke. I just want to ask Zhang Chao, where do you plug the bank's USB key? Install a USB port on the back of the phone? Besides, where is the driver? ]

[Alipay can only transfer money via computer now. Mobile phones are stuck even on WAP pages, so how can you pay with it? ]

[Alarmist! Will the country tolerate "mobile payment" and not even use paper money? The RMB is a symbol of national sovereignty. The central bank has just issued the fifth set of RMB. How dare the novel say that it will be invalid in ten years? This author needs to take a good ideological and political class! ]

[The only reliable thing is "check the mortgage numbers in the elevator" - housing prices have indeed started to rise in recent years, but it is outrageous to write mortgages into a horror movie in novels! How high can housing prices go? 20,000 or 30,000 per square meter is the highest, and that's for high-end residential properties! ]

[Isn’t the most ridiculous word “volume”? I admit that Zhang Chao used this word very vividly, but it describes the future too horribly! “Volume” will only be an isolated phenomenon and will never become the mainstream of society! ]

[It's a pity that he's a young man and doesn't know how to play games. The most ridiculous thing is "students play Nintendo handhelds in class"! Nintendo NDS needs to be cracked by burning cards. Will there be handhelds with high-definition screens in ten years? I bet that PSP will still dominate the market in 2018! ]

[After watching "The Last Lesson", I felt a chill down my spine! I am already annoyed enough writing my daily report via email. If there is a "Weibo messaging", won't I receive work messages from the team leader in the middle of the night?]

[In the novel, a cram school locked the door and burned students to death? Now Olympiad classes are held in the Children's Palace. Zhang Chao thinks too darkly about education and training! We parents save money to enroll in classes for our children's future, so why would we force our children to take "smart drugs"? This author has a dark mentality! ]

[The only thing worth being vigilant about is the "chaos in education and training"! The novel predicts that institutions will expand wildly, and I believe this. Now the tuition fee in Huangzhuang, Haidian is 150 yuan per hour, and it may really become an arms race in ten years. ]

……

This was the first time that Zhang Chao's work received such a large-scale "negative reviews" from ordinary readers, which surprised many people who followed him.

Some even think that this is the starting point when the "halo" on Zhang Chao's head begins to fade.

……

"Now many netizens think that Zhang Chao's 'prediction' is ridiculous. What do you think?" At the book signing event for "The Three-Body Problem II: The Dark Forest", the first question Liu Cixin encountered when he was interviewed by the media was about Zhang Chao.

But he was not surprised, after all, the discussion sparked by "The Last Lesson" is a hot topic recently.

In the small circle of "science fiction fans", some people even compare this novel with his "Rural Teacher" - after all, the protagonists are both teachers. It's just that the teacher in Zhang Chao's novel goes to destruction, while the teacher in Liu Cixin's novel prevents destruction.

After the publication of the two volumes of "The Three-Body Problem", he has completely left behind his former peers Wang Jinkang and He Xi, and has become the undisputed "leader" of Chinese science fiction.

This time, Zhang Chao's "The Last Lesson" also involves topics related to "future", "technology" and "fantasy", and it is so controversial, so many people want to hear Liu Cixin's opinion, and he is also prepared for this.

After a brief thought, Liu told the reporter: "It's not that the predictions about the future made in The Last Lesson are absurd, but we cannot accept that the lifestyle changes he talked about are so close to us and so tight.

This will cause people to be instinctively alert - from this point of view, I think the facts may be exactly the opposite of what netizens feel. The future he predicted is not only not absurd, but has a great chance of being realized. It's just that the way it is realized may be different from what he imagined.

For example, he envisions that the mobile phone in ten years will be a complete, thin piece of glass that can be unlocked with just one glance. I think this is unlikely to be realized. But the form of the mobile phone may evolve in that direction.

In fact, what is more noteworthy is Zhang Chao’s description of the changes in people’s ideas and concepts in the next ten years…”

With the heated discussion on the Internet and the participation of Liu Cixin, "The Last Lesson" has had a huge impact in non-literary fields in a way that surprised everyone.

There is a rumor that after reading "The Last Lesson", Penguin's CEO Ma bought nearly a thousand copies of the current issue of "Harvest" overnight and distributed them to the company's technical staff and middle-level managers.

The same thing happened at Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou. Everyone had a copy of Harvest in their hands. Some read it with sad faces, while others read it with smiles on their faces. It was no longer uncommon to see such a thing in the company building.

The literary world is even more confused. Is "The Last Lesson" still a novel?

(End of this chapter)