I wrote novels in the Republic of China

Shopkeeper Hong received some education in his early years, but like most people, he did not do very well.

He knew common characters and could understand the government decrees written in classical Chinese, but he did not like reading the Four Books and Five Classics and only liked reading novels.

In the past, when he read novels, he always had to read a lot of words before he could get into the story. For some novels, he even listened to the storytelling first before he was willing to read them patiently.

Sang Jingyun's novel is different.

He didn't know how to describe it. Anyway, he only read the beginning and was immediately captured, eager to know the sequel.

Shopkeeper Hong read carefully, and after finishing, he felt a little disappointed: "That's all?"

Sang Jingyun said: "I have been feeling unwell these days, so I haven't written much."

Upon hearing this, Shopkeeper Hong immediately said, "You've written so much in just a few days. You've written a lot. If it were me, I wouldn't even be able to write a few hundred words. But you wrote so beautifully that I couldn't help but want to know the sequel."

Sang Jingyun smiled and said, "Thank you, Grandpa Hong, for the compliment."

Shopkeeper Hong asked again, "Are you going to submit this novel to a newspaper?"

Sang Jingyun nodded: "Yes. Grandpa Hong, I heard that your youngest son is a newspaper reporter? Can you ask him to help me submit the article?"

"Of course!" Shopkeeper Hong was very happy and agreed immediately.

He intended to bring Sang Jingyun and his younger son together, so naturally he hoped that Sang Jingyun would ask his younger son for help.

"When my Wenxiang went to the concession, he took the comic book you and Ayue made with him. He said he would give the comic book to his friend for publication. He will come back in a couple of days after he gets the money. You can show him your story then."

"Grandpa Hong, thank you so much! You helped me again." Sang Jingyun expressed his gratitude again and again.

Shopkeeper Hong smiled and said, "I see you wrote this in pencil and the paper you used is not good. How about this, I'll give you a fountain pen and some paper."

The fountain pen that Manager Hong was talking about was a dip pen. At that time, all absorbent pens had to be imported and were very expensive.

In fact, most ordinary people use brushes. People who are used to using brushes can write very fast with a brush.

But Sang Jingyun was not used to using a brush.

"Grandpa Hong, I do need paper and pen, but I can't ask you to give them to me. Just think of it as borrowing them from me," Sang Jingyun said seriously, "I'll give you money when I have it."

Paper and pens are not cheap these days, so she couldn't take Manager Hong's things for free.

After considering it, Manager Hong agreed.

If Sang Jingyun was with his youngest son, he would definitely not accept the money.

If Sang Jingyun and his youngest son didn't like each other, he still had to collect the money for paper and pens.

Sang Jingyun talked to Manager Hong for a while and then went to help someone write a letter.

My family is really short of money now, so I have to write letters first to earn some living expenses.

As for submission, Hong Yongxiang will probably be back in some time.

Sang Jingyun thought that Hong Yongxiang would take several days to come back, but he didn't expect that he would come back at noon that day.

At that time, Sang Jingying had already gone to take the enamel class exam, while Sang Jingyun and Sang Jingxiong had just finished their morning work.

After Sang Jingying left, Sang Jingxiong was lazy from time to time and went to the toilet three times. This reminded Sang Jingyun of the elementary school students who didn't want to do their homework when he was watching short videos in his previous life.

Sang Jingyun was not angry when he saw this. For one thing, Sang Jingxiong was too young, only ten years old. In modern times, that age would be one where parents wouldn't dare let him leave the neighborhood alone to play. It was normal for him to be restless.

Secondly, she and Sang Jingxiong did not develop any feelings for each other.

People generally don't get angry when other people's children are naughty and play tricks on others.

She was only a little angry when Sang Jingxiong suddenly bumped into her. Normally, when Sang Jingxiong got angry at home, she chose to ignore him most of the time because it did not affect her interests.

But Sang Jingxiong is her brother in this body after all. If he gets into trouble in the future, she will be implicated, so she still has to take care of him.

Because the school was unreliable, she did not allow Sang Jingxiong to go. Now she asked Sang Jingxiong to come to the county town to write letters every day to let Sang Jingxiong know that money is not so easy to come by.

Thinking of this, Sang Jingyun looked at Sang Jingxiong: "I wrote twelve letters this morning, and you only wrote eight. You are not even as good as me."

"I just didn't write it carefully!" Sang Jingxiong was annoyed: "And you are older than me!"

Sang Jingyun uttered a light “huh”.

Seeing that Sang Jingyun looked down on him, Sang Jingxiong was furious: "Just wait, I will definitely write more than you this afternoon!"

Hong Wenxiang hurried over and saw this scene, and found it somewhat amusing.

When Sang Jingxiong saw Hong Wenxiang coming in from outside, he stood up straight and greeted him with a smile: "Hello, Uncle Hong."

"Hello." Hong Yongxiang smiled at him and looked at Sang Jingyun: "You are Miss Sang who wrote "Three Strikes on the White Bone Demon"?"

"I'm Sang Jingyun, hello Mr. Hong." Sang Jingyun stood up and greeted him, looking at Hong Yongxiang.

Hong Yongxiang is very tall and has a square face and a big nose like Manager Hong. He is not handsome, but in this era, his decent appearance is liked by many people.

Logically, Sang Jingyun should call him uncle just like Sang Jingxiong, but since Hong Yongxiang looked young, she didn't call him that, but called him "Mr. Hong" instead.

Hong Yongxiang said, "I just happened to be looking for you to talk about the comic book issue."

Shopkeeper Hong had already seen his youngest son. He stopped Hong Xu who wanted to rush up to talk to his uncle and said with a smile, "Yes, you two should have a good talk. When you are done, Jingying should be back. It's a good time for us to have lunch together."

After saying that, Shopkeeper Hong gave Hong Yongxiang a look.

Hong Yongxiang could guess what his father meant and felt helpless.

Sang Jingyun is a little thin, and his height and build are similar to Hong Yue.

He would only treat a little girl like this as a junior and really had no interest in her.

But his father would not force him. Hong Yongxiang pretended not to see his father's eyes and told Sang Jingyun about Fei Zhongxu's idea of ​​publishing a complete set of books.

Sang Jingyun saw Sang Jingxiong eating peanuts at Shopkeeper Hong's counter. He was quite far away from them and probably couldn't hear what was said here, so he asked, "How is the royalty calculated?"

Hong Yongxiang said: "If your writing is accepted, I will give you two yuan per thousand words."

What Sang Jingyun wrote was not an original story, but a re-description of the story of "Journey to the West" in simple vernacular.

Fei Zhongxu originally intended to pay one yuan per thousand words, but he argued hard and helped Sang Jingyun get two yuan per thousand words.

When Sang Jingyun learned that he would be paid two yuan for every thousand words, he immediately said, "I'm willing to write a whole book!"

According to Hong Yongxiang, when they make the comic strip, they don't need to write out exactly what Tang Seng and his disciples encountered, they can simplify it appropriately.

This set of books should be kept within eighty volumes, with each volume having about twenty pages.

The book she wrote before, "The Three Strikes on the White Bone Demon", is just one of these books.

The workload was not too heavy. She wrote the story of "The Three Strikes on the White Bone Demon" very quickly, in just one hour.

Two silver dollars an hour, this speed of making money is much better than writing letters for others.

In his previous life, Sang Jingyun had read some novels and materials about the Republic of China, and knew that during the Republic of China, the value of the dollar had been depreciating, not to mention the banknotes, which had no credit at all. The current Beiyang government said that paper money and silver dollars were exchanged one-to-one, but because of the serious fiscal deficit and the lack of cash in banks, it simply issued a suspension order in the first half of this year, ordering the Bank of China and the Communications Bank to stop cashing and paying cash.

At that time, some people queued up all night just to exchange their one-yuan and two-yuan banknotes for silver dollars, but the bank doors were closed and they refused to exchange them, which caused many tragedies.

It is now the early years of the Republic of China, and silver dollars are still very valuable. Sang Jingyun has looked at the income of editors during the Republic of China. In the early years of the Republic of China, a bookstore recruited editors with a monthly salary of 20 yuan. Ten years later, the bookstore recruited editors with a monthly salary of 50 yuan.

Two yuan per thousand words, which means that if she wrote a thousand words, she could earn enough to pay one month's rent for the house she rented.

If she writes 10,000 words, she can earn a month's salary as a book editor.

This is definitely a high salary!

In his previous life, Sang Jingyun was a left-behind child.

Her parents gave her enough living expenses, but when she was young, the money went to her grandparents.

Although her grandparents did not keep the money for themselves, people of their age were frugal by nature and were unwilling to give her pocket money. Even if she asked for money to buy books, she would be interrogated for a long time.

Over time, she couldn't stand being without money.

She is short of money now, so she must write this comic strip.

"As long as you are willing to write. Find time to write ten volumes first. Once the manuscripts are approved, I will give you the royalties immediately." Seeing Sang Jingyun's excitement, Hong Yongxiang knew that she was short of money.

"Thank you, Mr. Hong! Mr. Hong, can you help me keep it a secret that the manuscript fee is two yuan per thousand words? You know my father's situation. If he knew that I made a lot of money, he would definitely want to go to the opium den again."

"Okay." Hong Yongxiang agreed immediately.

Sang Jingyun thanked him again.

Hong Yongxiang then asked: "How long will it take you to write the text for ten volumes? Will one month be enough?"

Sang Jingyun was stunned after hearing this.

There are not many words in a comic book. One volume has twenty pages, and the words required are only about a thousand. Ten volumes only have ten thousand words.

How could this take a month? In her previous life, she wrote online articles, sometimes writing 10,000 words a day.

But if you think about it carefully, except for online writers, most people really can't write that much every day.

Well, some authors who serialize novels in newspapers in this era also write a lot of words every day.

Twenty years later, Ni Kuang, who was born in Shanghai and later known as one of the "Four Talents of Hong Kong", was able to handwrite tens of thousands of words every day. It is said that at most, he wrote 20,000 words a day.

Of the more than 400 martial arts films published by Shaw Brothers at that time, more than 260 were created by him.

But that is an exception. Most people write articles very slowly.

Sang Jingyun said: "Mr. Hong, if it is ten volumes, I can finish them in just five days."

Hong Yongxiang was a little surprised, then said: "Today is the 18th, so I'll come again on the 24th."

"Okay." Sang Jingyun agreed.

Because Hong Yongxiang gave him a very high fee for the manuscript, Sang Jingyun was in a good mood and his pale face even regained color.

She treated Hong Yongxiang as her financial sponsor, and after the conversation, she invited Hong Yongxiang to dinner and even took the initiative to move a stool for Hong Yongxiang.

It was also at this time that she remembered the martial arts novel she had written.

It was getting late, so she might as well have dinner first. After she was full, she would give the martial arts novel to Hong Yongxiang.

The servants of the Hong family had already brought lunch, and Sang Jingying had also returned, so everyone gathered together to eat.

They were enjoying their meal, but not far away, a woman wearing a big straw hat was very angry.

This woman is Mrs. Zhang.

When she went to ask for rent that day, Sang Jingyun was very rude to her and said he would go to the county town to publicize what their Zhang family had done.

She was very panicked at the time, and after returning home, she became more and more afraid, fearing that Sang Jingyun would give up and talk nonsense outside, ruining the Zhang family's reputation.

She was worried for several days and even asked her servants to come to Hongxing Paper House to watch over the Sang family. She was relieved when she saw that Sang Jingyun did not come to the county town and the other members of the Sang family did not say anything.

But today, Sang Jingyun came to the county town.

Mrs. Zhang changed into clothes that she didn't wear on weekdays, put on a big straw hat, and hurried over to see how Sang Jingyun was doing.

When she looked up, she saw Sang Jingyun and the youngest son of the Hong family chatting animatedly.

Sometimes she was angry, thinking that Sang Jingyun was unfair to her son, and sometimes she was happy - if Sang Jingyun married into the Hong family, she would no longer have to worry about her son getting involved with Sang Jingyun.

The county town of Shanghai was very busy, with many people coming and going, and there were people waiting outside the shops to write letters.

Therefore, Sang Jingyun did not see Mrs. Zhang, and she had no idea what Mrs. Zhang was thinking.

If she knew what Mrs. Zhang was thinking, she would probably be in tears and laughter. Neither she nor the original owner of this body had ever thought of marrying Zhang Zhuangmao.

After dinner, Hong Yongxiang planned to go home and talk to Hong Yue.

Seeing this, Sang Jingyun quickly handed him the first 10,000 words of his martial arts novel and said, "Mr. Hong, I have also written a novel. I would like you to take a look at it and recommend a suitable place to submit it."

She originally planned to submit her article to the New Novel Newspaper, but that might not be the right choice.

When it comes to submission, Hong Yongxiang knows more than she does, so she wants to ask him for advice on where it would be more appropriate to submit.

When Hong Yongxiang comes back next time, she will have more manuscripts in her hands and will ask Hong Yongxiang to help her submit them.

"I'll take a look." Hong Yongxiang took the manuscript and left in a hurry.

After visiting his home, he had to rush back to the concession.

Sang Jingyun watched Hong Yongxiang go away. He felt much more relaxed and couldn't stop smiling.

Her writing career has finally begun!

When she has money, she can buy some delicious food and daily necessities.

She wanted a bar of soap very much.

In the village where she lives, villagers use either hibiscus leaf extract or wood ash to wash their hair, take baths, and do laundry.

She could accept the former, but her family didn't have it, and she didn't want to use the latter.

Therefore, she used to use plain water when taking a bath and washing her hair, which made her very uncomfortable and she felt that her body was not clean.

It is always much more convenient to have a piece of soap.

She saw the locally produced Guben soap for sale in the county town, and she was determined to buy a piece when she had money.

(End of this chapter)