Xinhua Bookstore took its stock at half the cover price. Their channels were formidable, and they held the upper hand.
The educated-youth cooperatives paid sixty percent of list. Because the magazine was a small-capital, thin-margin business, the cooperatives had almost no costs—it was money for nothing—so of course a bit more was taken from them.
Beijing had a population of 9.19 million. These cooperatives were scattered through the streets and lanes of every district, covering nearly every resident of the city, and even more effective than Xinhua Bookstore. But that did not necessarily turn into readers at any great rate.
People who liked going to bookstores were certainly more likely to buy in the end.
Chen Qi went to Yu Jiajia again and asked what an ad in China Youth Daily would cost. It came to tens of thousands of yuan. He set his jaw and did it anyway, and put a bit more money into World of Wonders.
Zheng Yuanjie's King of Fairy Tales had been founded on only five thousand yuan. Past and Present Legends had taken thirty thousand.
World of Wonders was already extremely lavish.
Chen Jianjun grew busy, getting in touch with salespeople in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, and elsewhere to help his son push the magazine. This one ordered a few hundred copies, that one ordered a few hundred. There were not many at the start. If they sold well, more could be supplied later.
Sunday. A day off.
No one from Lechunfang went out to enjoy themselves. Ji Chunhua and Li Jianqun included, they all gathered in the office, eyes fixed as one on the television.
"Lang Ping! Lang Ping again!"
"China scored! If we beat Japan, we take this Women's Volleyball World Cup!"
It was a delayed broadcast. Everyone rose and fell with Song Shixiong's passionate, soaring commentary, but in truth they were quite at ease, because the papers had already reported the result.
Chen Qi and Liang Xiaosheng sat off to one side, tallying bookstore orders from around the country, glancing at the television now and then.
This was the Women's Volleyball World Cup, held in Japan—the first world title China's three major ball sports had ever won. By the count, across seven matches the Chinese team spiked 1,116 times. Lang Ping alone spiked 407 of them and scored 79 points. "Iron Hammer" made her name then and there.
In the early years of reform and opening up, the country was poor and the people were poor, without the confidence to open their eyes to the world. Sport was one of the most effective ways to raise pride and national spirit.
The gold-above-all mindset lasted for decades. Later ages still cared, but not as people had in the eighties and nineties. We had grown open and tolerant enough to maintain even official respect for the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, while the West itself tore into it—every element cranked to the limit, purely out to sicken people on purpose.
"Spike!"
"Great ball!"
"China won! China takes the championship!"
"Clap, clap, clap!"
No one could help applauding. Every one of them was stirred to the core.
Chen Qi understood. This championship meant a great deal, enough to stand as a marker in history. My People, My Country and Leap had both already portrayed it.
"All right, all right, quiet down!"
He had everyone face him. "Old Liang and I tallied it up. Bookstore orders for World of Wonders, from everywhere, come to a little over thirty thousand copies..."
"What? That few?"
"I thought fifty thousand at the least!"
"Quiet, quiet!"
Seeing they were a little disappointed, Chen Qi smiled. "That's perfectly normal for an inaugural issue. Once the China Youth Daily ad runs, once the magazine is out, follow-up orders will come in. We have to have faith in our own magazine.
"Who's liaising with the printing plant?"
"Me!"
An editor raised a hand.
"Everyone's going to have to work hard for this stretch. We're short of people, with no full-time distribution staff, so we can only pull together. Once we get through this, we'll celebrate properly. The bonuses, at the very least, won't be small!"
It was a short little meeting. Everything was ready. All that remained was for the magazine to come out.
Liang Xiaosheng, though, called him outside and said in a low voice, "Spring Festival falls in January."
"Yes. What about it?"
"What do you think? We're a proper work unit, at least. Are there Spring Festival benefits or not?"
"..."
Chen Qi blinked, then smacked his lips. "There's such a thing as Spring Festival benefits?"
Seeing Liang Xiaosheng about to get anxious, he laughed. "We don't even have a union. Nobody's in charge of that. Run over to Beijing Film Studio and see what they hand out for the Spring Festival. While you're at it, buy a few sets for us. We've got few people anyway."
"That's the only way, then!"
Liang Xiaosheng shook his head. Lately he had been jumping back and forth between regret and no regret. He had no experience managing anything, and all of a sudden he was a leader. Everywhere he looked there were trifles, and everywhere something to fret over.
Set that aside for now.
In the blink of an eye it was December. China Film's fourth-quarter screening conference was held on schedule.
What they screened in the fourth quarter were films set to open in the first quarter of the next year.
Representatives of the provincial film companies gathered in Beijing and asked first about Tai Chi 2. The moment they heard post-production was not finished and it was not on the slate, they were bitterly disappointed.
Tai Chi was still showing. Attendance in some places was still decent, and the countryside went without saying—walking twenty li to the next village to see a movie was a common thing.
To push it further, last year's Romance on Mount Lu was still screening in a few places.
"This one's not bad! Better than yesterday's!"
"How come Shanghai Film Studio is shooting fight films too? How many is this now?"
"Those are called wuxia films! Wuxia films are hugely popular now. Who wants to pick a fight with the audience?"
What was playing was Shanghai Film Studio's Invincible Dual Kicks.
Then the representatives began filling out forms and reporting quantities, and the China Film staff tallied them.
Never mind that in the first half of the year Chen Qi had hammered China Film and left it thoroughly humiliated. So long as they were thick-skinned enough, they were still a monopoly.
"Invincible Dual Kicks, 35mm prints: 308 in all!"
A buzz rose.
Talk broke out below. What they had watched most these past few days was wuxia films.
The studios might have planned it together. Seeing Tai Chi, they had gone green with envy and piled their bets in all at once.
A pity most of them were terrible. No actors worth the name, no action worth the name, not the least bit exciting. The worst of it was padding the fights with opera movements, so the fighting looked just like singing opera.
Come on!
The company representatives watched until they were drowsy. So far only Invincible Dual Kicks and Xi'an Film Studio's Kyoto Ball Heroes were of decent quality.
Prints of Kyoto Ball Heroes had also broken three hundred.
"Take a break. There's one last film... Uh, this is a co-production with a sister unit in Hong Kong. It took three years to get made. It's called The Shaolin Temple, starring Li Lianjie."
Li Lianjie?
At that name, no one was sleepy anymore. They hurried to say, "Put it on now. We don't mind!"
"Put it on, put it on!"
And so The Shaolin Temple showed itself before them for the first time.
In history, The Shaolin Temple had opened in Hong Kong first and on the mainland afterward. Now its limelight had been stolen clean away, and its presence was badly lacking.
But the quality was still very high.
The beautiful mountains and waters, the moving music, and a cast almost identical to Tai Chi's had everyone watching as if entranced.
When they came back to themselves and quietly compared, they could make out a gap.
The Shaolin Temple was excellent in every respect. Only the fight design—each move, though very real and very good to look at, was too empty.
A punch went out, and the audience could not feel the force of it. They even felt it had not touched the other person at all, yet the other cried "ah" and put on the look of a grave injury.
Simply put, it lacked impact.
Tai Chi, a finer piece already before them, had laid heavy stress on that sense of impact. The smack-smack-smack of it was immensely satisfying.
"..."
Everyone had a fair idea how it would go. They filled out the forms and handed them in. The China Film staff took one look and were not surprised.
"The Shaolin Temple, 35mm prints: 410 in all!"
Chapter 256