Exciting 1979!

Chapter 451: The Dragon Ball is Released, and Xunzong Collapses
Although this novel doesn't need translation, the editor still needs to revise the manuscript, and the selection of an illustrator is also very important. It's estimated that we won't be able to see Wei Ming's second English novel this year.

Melinda sighed. Couldn't she just write a pure novel? Why make trouble for herself? But this story is truly amazing!
She thought back to the first time she took Wei Ming to visit the British Museum; it seemed that he already had this idea back then.

~
In addition to replying to Wei Hong and asking her to mail Melinda her new work, Wei Ming also sent back some photos of himself on set to Xiao Hong.

There are personal photos or group photos, as well as beautiful natural scenery of Ya'an, and a precious scene of a wild giant panda mother with her cub that was once captured.

Wei Ming was very willing to record these things, and since the crew had two cameras, he would also have Chen Kaige film behind-the-scenes footage of the "Shepherd's Class" crew while he was filming.

Even the behind-the-scenes footage was shot using imported film stock, which was a deliberate effort to train Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who might even be able to make a documentary in the future.

It feels so good to be able to spend your own money however you want, and even get it out of the store. Wei Ming absolutely loves the "co-op" mode.

However, Lizhi sent him imported film from Hong Kong, all for Hong Kong dollars. Wei Ming still hopes to make a trip to Cannes next year, sell the overseas copyrights for a good price, and then invest the money in the Hong Kong stock market and real estate market to buy at the bottom.

When Wei Hong saw the photos her brother sent, she wondered what the point was of showing them to her. Shouldn't he have sent them to Amin instead?

So she selected a few and sent them to Ah Min in Hong Kong. By the time they arrived in Hong Kong, it was already November.

~
When the weekend came, Vivian Chow finally had time to have a meal with her new friend Anita Mui.

She now enjoys socializing with friends who are older than her because she hopes to keep up with Amin's way of thinking and not seem too naive.

Although there were only two of them, they still requested a private room to avoid being recognized by fans.

Of course, the main problem was that Vivian Chow had this issue, while Anita Mui was in a better position; the champion's popularity was not as high as that of the contestants who withdrew from the competition.

Last month, the two artists released their albums almost simultaneously. Vivian Chow's album was her first full album, which included all of Wei Ming's old songs except for "My Favorite". Among the new songs was "I Like You", a collaboration between Hui and Huang, which was just as popular as "My Favorite".

It's been about a month since its release, and sales have reached 18 copies, heading straight for quadruple platinum. And this is just the sales in Hong Kong. Since the album also includes Mandarin songs, it has performed well in Taiwan as well, and sales may even be higher in Taiwan.

This result has actually surpassed the personal bests of Tam Yung-lun and Cheung Kwok-yung, and is heading straight for the records of Paula Tsui and Jenny Tseng.

The mentality of Vivian Chow's fans is that they can hardly see Vivian on TV or in other events, so they can only express their love by buying her albums, and the album covers feature her beautiful photos.

Ah Min is quite obedient to her mother and rarely appears in public, unlike Anita Mui, who is a full-time singer. Being able to have dinner with Ah Min today is a rare treat amidst her busy schedule.

To be honest, it's impossible for Anita Mui not to envy Amin's achievements. She also collaborated with Hui and Wong, who wrote a song for her called "Heart Debt," which was the theme song for the popular TV series "The Prodigal Son of Hong Kong." However, this mini album with only six songs did not even reach the gold record level (25000).

The gap is just too big.

Of course, if she sang "I Like You" for herself, she certainly wouldn't sing it as well as Amin. Anita Mui felt that she still needed to find her own style and positioning.

"Wow, this is delicious!" Anita Mui exclaimed after taking a sip of the drink that Ah Min brought her.

Amin laughed and said, "This is the QQneinei Delicious Tea that my mom just made."

Anita Mui was completely confused; she had just heard something.

Amin laughed and said, "Actually, it was Amin who named me, so you don't need to worry about it."

Anita Mui was somewhat envious of Ah Min's relationship with her boyfriend, unlike herself, whose relationship with her boyfriend had become increasingly distant after she became famous, and they hardly contacted each other anymore.

"Can I buy this at Holiland?" Anita Mui asked.

"It's not available right now, but you should still drink less of it. It's high in sugar and can make you gain weight easily," Amin reminded her, taking a sip.

She only drinks occasionally, and she worked very hard to get to her current figure, so she doesn't want to go back to being chubby An.

She enjoyed the feeling of Ah Ming stroking her slender legs.

While drinking milk tea and eating, the two chatted about their upcoming work plans.

"Are you planning to release another album?" Anita Mui asked with a smile. "Next time, I'd better avoid releasing one at the same time as you, otherwise it would look too bad."

Vivian Chow: "Probably not. My most important task right now is to get a grade in my final exams that will satisfy my mom. Otherwise, I can forget about doing any shows."

She still hopes to participate in the Top Ten Chinese Gold Songs and Top Ten Jade Solid Gold Songs Awards. If she can win an honor, it will be an honor for both her and Amin.

Anita Mui's eyes were full of envy. What a wonderful mother she had! Her mother only asked her how much money she had earned and whether she had brought it all home to help support the family.

"Actually, I'm learning it now. My company asked me to learn some Japanese, but it's too difficult to learn."

"Japanese? I know a little bit," Amin said seriously. She had listened to many Japanese songs. "Does Huaxing want you to develop your career in Japan?"

“Maybe that’s the idea, after all, the market there is so big, who wouldn’t want to be Teresa Teng?” Anita Mui said. The European and American markets are unthinkable now, since there are no successful precedents, but Teresa Teng has already paved the way in Japan.

However, Teresa Teng's dazzling achievements in Japan at this time seemed insignificant compared to what she would achieve a few years later.

Anita Mui added, "Moreover, the company is already preparing my new album, and it seems that this time they plan to cover mature Japanese songs."

Hong Kong's music scene boasts a wealth of talented lyricists, but its composers are clearly lagging behind, both in quantity and quality.

At this point, importing music from the booming Japanese music scene became a lazy but unavoidable approach.

Li Xiaotian thought that Japan's decades of musical accumulation should be able to defeat Amin's backer, Amin.

Moreover, this time Huaxing has set its sights on the classic work "Red Doubt" by the retired Momoe Yamaguchi, which is also the theme song of "Blood Doubt".

Anita Mui's new album may consist of more than half old Japanese songs.

After returning home, Zhou Huimin received a package from Wei Hong and saw her letter.

In her letter, Sister Hong said, "I have already sent your new album over, and my brother has heard it. I'm also sending you a few photos of him. If you have anything you want to give him, just let me know."

Zhou Huimin looked through Wei Ming's photos one by one. Men who work hard are really handsome. Some of these photos were actually taken by Feng Xiaogang, and the shooting angles were quite flattering, with many being taken from a low angle.

Amin thought for a moment and decided to send over the latest issue of "Madman Comics," along with a few nice photos of herself and a copy of the recently popular romance novel "My First Half of Life," written by Yi Shu.

A while ago, Yi Shu highly praised "The Furthest Distance in the World", so Amin bought her new book.

Finally, there's a Rolex watch, because their birthdays are coming up soon.

This issue of "Madman Comics" sent by Amin is of great significance because it is the first issue of a weekly comic.

Starting Monday, November 1st, "Madman Comics" will be officially reorganized into a weekly comic, released every Monday, and the price will be reduced by one yuan during the promotion period.

The event will continue until the Spring Festival!
In other words, we can expect to see five issues of "Madman Comics" this month, whereas normally we only get two!

This news was like a bombshell dropped on the Hong Kong comics industry.

It not only had a huge impact on readers, but also had a tremendous impact on its peers.

In fact, Huang Yulang had already guessed that weekly comics would be the next path Liu Rulong would take, so he wanted to get ahead of Liu Rulong and make Yulang Comics take the lead. To this end, he even spent a lot of money to import Japanese comics to strengthen his own capabilities.

This means that Japanese manga was introduced to Hong Kong a few years earlier than in the original timeline.

But Wong Yuk-long still lost out, because Lau Yu-lung kept confusing Wong Yuk-long, who seemed to be preparing for the Spring Festival redesign.

So Wong Yuk-long planned to revamp the magazine on New Year's Day and launch a major new work, "Chinese Hero," in the revamped magazine.

As it turned out, they proposed it even earlier, and the reorganization took place in November.

This reorganization of "Madman Comics" has resulted in a price reduction without a decrease in quantity or number of pages. In addition, three new comics have been added, and one comic has been completed.

The series that has ended is "Fight Back to School". It's not that the grades are bad, it's just that the comedy comics have taken too long to handle for the main writer, Gan Xiaowen. He used to be able to keep up with updating every two weeks, but updating weekly is really too much for him, so he decided to temporarily end it and relaunch it as a second part after he has accumulated some manuscripts.

The three newly added comics are all quite prestigious.

First, Jin Yong authorized the adaptation of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes," written by Li Zhiqing. Coincidentally, TVB was filming "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" at the time, and the two parties even carried out joint promotion.

Then there's Wei Ming's globally acclaimed sci-fi masterpiece, District 9, with newcomer cartoonist William Shao as the main artist.

Finally, there's "Dragon Ball," created by the two founders of "Madman Comics," Wei Ming as editor-in-chief and Liu Rulong as illustrator.

With the number of pages remaining the same, three new comics were added, but only one was removed. Therefore, the number of pages in each serialized comic was bound to decrease, which inevitably caused dissatisfaction among some readers who felt that the series was over before they had even had a chance to read much of it.

Not enough!

"So exciting! So sharp!" Zheng Yijian, a super comic book fan and die-hard fan of Mango Comics, had just finished reading the serialized content of "Storm Riders".

After a year of serialization, as Ma Wing-shing's personal style gradually took shape, his drawing skills became more and more mature, and the struggle between Feng Yun and Xiong Ba intensified, the comic "Feng Yun" became more and more watchable. This is Zheng Yijian's favorite comic, with "Qin's Moon" only ranking second.

He then went to see "Qin's Moon". The cover of this issue featured Dragon Ball, so he already knew that it was Liu Rulong's new work. Therefore, he couldn't help but worry that Liu Rulong would be distracted and "Qin's Moon" would have a bad ending.

When I opened Qin's Moon, the first thing I glanced at was the main writers, "Liu Rulong & Long Aotian". Wow, two main writers! And where did this Long Aotian come from? Can he carry Qin's Moon?

At first, Ah Long certainly couldn't just give up on "Qin's Moon," the most popular work, so for a considerable period of time, there would be a dual-writer mode until Liangzi could completely gain the readers' recognition.

"Long Aotian" is the new pen name Liangzi has chosen for himself. He used "Liangzi" before. He felt that he should take over "Qin's Moon" and should have a brand new, domineering image.

The name "Liu Rulong" sounds like a pen name, and "Cheng Long" also has the character for "dragon," so he called himself "Long Aotian."

After reading it, Zheng Yijian didn't feel that anything was wrong. If it weren't for the fact that it was written as a dual-authored work, he wouldn't have known that Long Aotian was involved in this update.

In fact, Liang Zi has been involved in "Qin's Moon" since the earlier episodes, so readers have long been accustomed to it.

Aside from the relatively small quantity, this season of "Qin's Moon" is flawless, and the gradually unfolding world setting of the Hundred Schools of Thought in the Warring States period is also captivating.

After finishing reading his two favorite comics, Zheng Yijian solemnly turned to "Dragon Ball," which was the highlight of this issue of the magazine.

The art style is very pleasing, and it feels like Master Lung's skills have improved again. He has a kind of effortless mastery, and Wong Yuk-long is far inferior to him now.

The main character is a child, even younger than Jing Tianming, which made Zheng Yijian doubt whether he was the target audience for this comic. He was already in junior high school and usually listened to Zhou Huimin.

But after watching further, wow, Dragon Ball, kung fu, they took off their pants and used their tails to fish.

Zheng Yijian smiled as he watched, but the first episode only went up to Goku leaving his hometown with Bulma to find the Dragon Balls, which was too short and didn't really give it much of a feel for it. It was a well-made work that gave him some anticipation.

Dragon Ball is definitely the work that Kuangren Comics has invested the most in promoting in its revamped weekly magazine. For example, this week, Kuangren Comics gave up two minutes of advertising space in Millionaire to directly advertise Dragon Ball, claiming it was a sensational release across Asia.

This "all of Asia" actually refers to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

The comic book series "Madman" will be published in Hong Kong, and it will also be serialized in Taiwan's United Daily News and Tokuma Shoten's "Animage" magazine.

Originally a monthly magazine, it once serialized Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind." In the past six months, thanks to its collaboration with "Madman Comics," it has adapted works such as "Qin's Moon" and "Storm Riders" into Japanese comics, and has even managed to get some of the scraps from the three major weekly shonen manga, resulting in increasingly impressive sales.

Animage really went all out this time, coordinating with the release of Dragon Ball in Japan and even changing its monthly magazine into a bi-monthly publication.

However, since Dragon Ball was just released, it has not yet attracted as much attention as Qin's Moon and Storm Riders. Qin's Moon, with its ancient Chinese style, is still the most popular Chinese comic in Japan.

The young cartoonist Akira Toriyama was a loyal reader of "Qin's Moon" and he greatly admired Liu Rulong's drawing skills.

Today, he rarely went out. The first thing he did was watch a movie, the Chinese film "Shaolin Temple," which is currently very popular in Japan. It is said to have many beautiful Chinese scenes.

Seeing it today, it truly lives up to its reputation—beautiful scenery, wonderful people, and a wonderful story.

The film "Shaolin Temple" was funded by Japanese capital during its production, so it was quite normal for it to be released in Japan. The promotion was excellent, and the box office was phenomenal, surpassing "Indiana Jones" at the Japanese box office.

The box office record it set for Chinese-language films wouldn't be broken for another twenty years, by "Hero," also starring Li Lianjie.

This year's "Shaolin Temple," the previous "Enter the Dragon," and the upcoming "Project A" all had very similar box office results in Japan, representing the best performances for these three action film masters.

After reading it, Akira Toriyama felt a strong urge to create a kung fu manga.

As he passed by the bookstore, something occurred to him. He went inside and came out shortly after, carrying a copy of "Animage." To his surprise, he discovered that the magazine had been changed to a bi-monthly publication.

After returning home, Akira Toriyama first finished reading the serialized "Qin's Moon". He was more than half a year behind the Hong Kong readers and was unaware of the dual-authorship.

Then I discovered that Liu Rulong has a new work, Dragon Ball? And the main character's name is Son Goku?
Is it Sun Wukong from "Journey to the West"?

He immediately became interested and began to read it with great interest, slapping his thigh from time to time, exclaiming, "Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!"
~
Sichuan, the crew of the TV series "The Shepherd's Class".

Before Zhou Huimin's birthday gift arrived, Xue Jie from Shanghai and Lin Jie from Beijing also sent letters to celebrate his 21st birthday.

It seemed to be a reminder to him that there was only one year left, and that our little Weiwei could get married in just one more year.

I'm already 21 years old, it's quite an age.

In the countryside, there aren't many customs. Grandma specially asked Long Xiaoyang to take her to the film set so she could make a bowl of longevity noodles for her eldest grandson.

Since they were already there, Wei Ming even let his grandmother play a minor role in the movie, which made the old lady quite happy.

While Amin and Amin wished each other a happy birthday from afar, in faraway Moscow, Su Xunzong, who possessed fifteen Soviet medals and eighteen awards, as well as forty-two foreign medals and twenty-nine foreign awards, collapsed.

~
"Suckling~" Mei Wenhua's busy day begins in the morning with feeding the cats and dogs at the Beichizi courtyard.

Next, let's go to Oriental Plaza. With the store manager there, there shouldn't be any major problems.

However, now that Biao's mother has to take care of the child, Xiao Mei also has to keep an eye on things at the upstream garment factory.

That idiot, when he goes to film, his workload increases dramatically!

Although she had more work, Xiaomei still valued her family. At noon, she was going to the mall to buy some snacks for her wife when she saw that the mall was packed with people, apparently because they were having a promotion.

It's a Coca-Cola event.

"Buy a bottle of soda and get a free balloon or a pair of packaged chopsticks!" the salesman shouted enthusiastically, with an enthusiasm unlike that of a typical state-owned enterprise salesman.

Xiaomei often buys Coke to drink, especially in the summer, because it's very refreshing. She drinks less in the winter.

He wrapped his coat tighter around himself, and for the sake of the balloons, he bought a dozen, then led a bunch of colorful balloons home.

"Daddy, Daddy~" Mei Changsu was very happy to see the balloons and crawled over to ask his father for them.

Xiaomei was inspired by Coca-Cola. She realized that some out-of-season clothes that haven't sold yet can also be sold through this kind of promotional activity, instead of having to wait until next year.

He acted immediately and started working on a planning proposal.

Coca-Cola's promotion sparked heated discussions in the newspapers.

The problem isn't with the business model itself, but rather with whether or not Coca-Cola should be sold to ordinary people.

The Yanjing Daily published an article titled "Coca-Cola Doesn't Necessarily Mean Cola," arguing that importing Coca-Cola would be a waste of the country's vast foreign exchange resources given the country's lack of foreign exchange.

The article argues that although Coca-Cola is bottled and produced in Yanjing, the original liquor is imported from abroad at the cost of foreign exchange. It's understandable to sell it to foreigners in China, but selling it to Chinese people... well, it's unnecessary. We Chinese drink Beibingyang (a type of soda) just the same.

Finally, the matter reached the higher authorities, and overnight, all Coca-Cola was removed from store shelves, returning to the days when it could only be purchased with foreign exchange certificates at Friendship Stores, Overseas Chinese Stores, and hotels catering to foreigners.

Xiaomei checked the weather forecast and determined that it wasn't a promotional tactic, so she still held Oriental Plaza's first "off-season discount promotion" event after winter began.

Although profits were lower, there was more cash on hand, less warehousing pressure, and with the surrounding competitors closing in, Xintiandi regained its former glory, even more bustling than before. People couldn't squeeze in and had to set up stalls outside the store. Even Yunyun came to help and resumed her old business.

Mei Culture only regrets that their store is only a little over 200 square meters, the space is still too small.

In conclusion, November's profits reached the highest point since the company opened.

Xiaomei discussed it with Biao's mother, and they decided to give each family a larger share this month.

So in early December, Zhu Lin noticed that the money transferred to her this time was more than usual, and her savings were increasing; she was almost a 12-yuan household.

However, having too much money just means having a string of numbers. She has been living alone for months, and Xiaoxue is not around either. Now she is so desperate that she wants to shamelessly run to Sichuan to find Wei Lang.

Fortunately, she has some self-respect; if she pushes herself too far, she'll at most go to Shanghai to find Xiaoxue.

However, just as she was about to leave, Gong Xue returned and filmed for more than three months, and "Under the Bridge" was completed!

Moreover, Gong Xue told her, "The person you're thinking of should be coming back soon."

“Oh, he said in his last letter that he wouldn’t be able to finish filming this month,” Zhu Lin said.

"You must not be following the recent news."

"I watch it every day."

Gong Xue: "Did you know that the first Mao Dun Literature Prize award ceremony will be held in Yanjing? All the winners will have to attend."

So now the question is, did Xiao Wei win an award?
The inaugural Mao Dun Literature Prize will be awarded at the Great Hall of the People on December 18.

Because of the generous prize money and Mr. Mao Dun's literary status, this award has attracted much attention since its inception.

Wei Ming had already received the invitation at the beginning of the month.

However, the invitation did not explicitly state that it was for award collection; it only invited nominees, and the only way to find out the results was to attend in person.

Damn, they're even creating suspense!
……

(Yesterday's guaranteed minimum)
(End of this chapter)