Writing Can Make Big Money

"Xiao Qi?" "Xiao Qi?" "Mm!" On the wooden bed in the outer room, Chen Qi blearily opened his eyes. Yu Xiuli patted him and said, "Time to get up, shake off the cobwebs!" He sat up, dazed for a moment. After a grueling train ride, he had gotten home late last night and collapsed straight into bed. He had assumed Yu Xiuli was off work, but looking outside, the sun hung high. "Why are you back at midday?" "To make you some lunch, of course. I've got to rush off again in a bit. Your dad and I will both be back late tonight, so you'll have to scrounge up dinner on your own." "What are you two up to?" "Isn't it all because of the Congress of Literary and Art Workers? Our unit is organizing a book fair in response to the congress, and every Xinhua Bookstore in the city is busy to death." Yu Xiuli deftly prepared the meal. To welcome her eldest son back, she had made a point of buying some meat to cook a stir-fry, along with a plate of radish and cabbage and a side of pickled vegetables. Having eaten radish and cabbage on Mount Lu until he wanted to throw up, Chen Qi felt sick at the sight of them. Steamed bun in his left hand, chopsticks in his right, he dug furiously into the meat, grinning. "With a mom around, you'll never starve. Home really is the best." "Was the food on the film crew bad?" "Passable, just big-canteen food. When does your book fair open?" "In a few days. You can go browse if you've got time. People like Ye Shengtao and Bing Xin will all be there, over at the Working People's Cultural Palace. The last time a book fair was held was back in 1957 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. The crowds were so thick people were losing their shoes! This time there'll surely be even more." "Can you just buy whatever you want at the fair? Then I'll check it out. Just so happens I earned some cash..." As he spoke, Chen Qi pulled out a booklet from his bag and tapped it. "Take a look. Your son's got skills—earned another manuscript fee." "Published again? Which magazine?" Pleasantly surprised, Yu Xiuli took a look, only to see the three large characters *Story Session* blazoned across the cover. She clicked her tongue. "I say, son, why didn't you submit to *People's Literature*? Or if not that, *Harvest* or *October* would do! Our bookstore doesn't even care to carry this trashy magazine." "Huh? You know about *Story Session*?" "Is there any magazine in the country we don't know about? If they want distribution outside their province, one route is through Xinhua Bookstore, and the other is through the post office. Early this year *Story Session* wanted to enter Beijing, but the bookstores turned their noses up at it... Let me see what you wrote. Yo~ a martial arts story! "Son, first you wrote romance, now you're writing martial arts. You'll never get into the Writers Association like this. "You have to be profound, you have to criticize the past, capture that release after human nature has been suppressed—you've heard of scar literature, right? That's what the Writers Association loves. You need scars!" "Scars, my foot!" At his mother's sarcastic nagging, Chen Qi rolled his eyes and snatched the magazine back. "I have no ambition to join the Writers Association. I just like writing popular fiction. All right, all right, you hurry on out!" "I'm not finished talking yet!" "Off you go, off you go!" Chen Qi ushered Yu Xiuli out the door and took a fierce bite of his steamed bun. A child with a mother might never starve, but he could certainly be exasperated to death. Everyone looked down on popular fiction—ironic, considering this whole courtyard had once been Zhang Henshui's residence! This was a grand mansion with seven inner courtyards, after all! He finished eating, washed the dishes, and put the leftovers into the dish cupboard. A dish cupboard—probably many people born after the nineties had never even heard of such a thing. It was just a small wooden cabinet specifically used to store bowls, plates, and chopsticks. Don't think this era lacked bridal gifts; the betrothal gifts of these days were serious business! The famous "three wheels and a sound": a bicycle, a wristwatch, a sewing machine, and a radio. On top of that were the "thirty-six legs." But these were meant for setting up a household and daily life, not like the betrothal gifts of later generations. One double bed, one square table, four stools, one large wardrobe, one dressing table, and one food cabinet or dish cupboard—exactly thirty-six legs. Later on, it was upgraded to forty-eight legs, seventy-two legs... one could only say the tradition of marriage ran in a continuous lineage. Of course, if both sides agreed not to ask for betrothal gifts, that was fine too: a thermos, a mirror printed with "The East Is Red," two wedding quilts, and an enamel washbasin with double-happiness characters, and you were married... Chen Qi's back ached from the train ride, so he lounged back on the bed and pulled out his little passbook. He had had over six hundred yuan left previously; *The Cotton Kasaya* had brought in 350 yuan, and combined with the subsidy from Beijing Film Studio, his savings officially breached the one-thousand-yuan milestone. He could proudly call himself a "thousand-yuan household," nothing to be ashamed of at all. That amount of money was roughly what his parents earned in an entire year. He knew that sales of *Story Session* must have surged, because before he left, He Chengwei had eagerly scampered over to see him again, insisting that they stay in close touch and exchange letters once Chen Qi was back in Beijing, and that if Chen Qi ever had time to visit Shanghai, He Chengwei would run out with his shoes backward to welcome him and share a bed to talk the night away, blah blah blah... His attitude was so flattering and his words so sickeningly sweet that it was like putting up a sign saying "no three hundred taels of silver buried here"! *Story Session* sold for twenty-four cents. A hundred thousand copies brought in twenty-four thousand yuan. Later, when it sold millions of copies per issue, that would mean millions in revenue. If it became a monthly publication, the annual turnover would exceed ten million! And then there was *Reader*, which went on to become a publicly traded company in later generations. A single magazine might seem insignificant, but expanded, it became a media conglomerate. "Suddenly I feel total empathy for Zheng Yuanjie..." Although Chen Qi liked *Story Session* and was happy to write for it, over time, he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't get ideas of his own. "The eighties are the golden age of literature. Writing can make big money, and it can build a platform. With my parents at Xinhua Bookstore, it'd be such a waste not to use those resources. Who complains about having too much money?" Muttering a few words to himself, he put away the passbook, drifted off, and fell back asleep. ... In October of that year, the hottest topic in town was not the National Day ball at the Great Hall of the People, but a painting. Beijing Capital International Airport had recently completed its expansion and commissioned several painters to create murals for the terminal waiting lounge. Among them, a mural titled *Water Splashing Festival: Ode to Life* caused an uproar. The painter was named Yuan Yunsheng. Audacious as could be, he had painted several nude Dai maidens. At the time, foreign media exclaimed, "For the first time, the female body has appeared in a Chinese public space, demonstrating true Reform and Opening Up!" Domestically, of course, that didn't fly so easily. Relevant personnel approached Yuan Yunsheng to negotiate: "Could you modify it a bit? At least put a pair of shorts on the girls?" Just as the controversy was boiling over, top central leadership caught wind of it and came in person to see it, remarking, "What's there to argue about? This is perfectly normal artistic expression. Looks fine to me—in fact, we should print more copies and sell them to foreigners." And so it was kept. However, the common folk loved to gawk. Good heavens, getting to look at naked bodies out in the open? People racked their brains trying to sneak in just to catch a glimpse of the nudes. The airport felt it looked unsightly, so they hung a gauze curtain over it, and later put up a wooden partition. It wasn't until the 1990 Asian Games that the complete mural saw the light of day again, and thanks to having been preserved so well, the colors were as vivid as new. In this era, a painting, a book, or an individual business could all signal the direction of the country's political winds. Rumor had it that Henry Fok once said, "When I first invested in the mainland, what worried me most was sudden policy shifts. Every time I came to Beijing, I'd first check whether that painting was still there. If it was, my mind was at ease." ... Speaking of Chen Qi, after staying home for a day, he headed back to Beijing Film Studio. *Romance on Mount Lu* was filming interior scenes on soundstages, proceeding at a steady, unhurried pace while waiting for the Congress of Literary and Art Workers to convene. Gong Xue hadn't returned to her army troupe either, staying at the guesthouse. Two days later, the book fair opened.