Chapter 5 The first part - Mr. Chen's birth year in the near future

This year is my zodiac year, so some strange things should happen, for example, I often move myself to tears, for example, the appearance of Xiaoxi and Fang Caodi one after another makes me feel faintly abnormal. It's been a long time since I've met people like Xiaoxi and Fang Caodi who are completely incompatible with the social atmosphere.Of course, China is so big that there are all kinds of people. In fact, since I first came to the mainland in the mid-1980s, until a few years ago, I still knew such people. After the economy has entered a period of ice and fire, and China's prosperity has officially begun, there are no such out-of-date people in my life circle.

Let me talk about the three types of people I often hang out with: The first category is my cleaning lady. I only hire laid-off female workers who have registered permanent residence in Beijing and whose family members live in Beijing.Now that aunt's daughter has graduated from college and works in a foreign company, so life is not a problem, but she likes to move and work.As she worked, she talked about trivial matters about her daughter and her boyfriend, such as how much it cost her daughter to perm her hair, or her daughter's boyfriend might be transferred to Shanghai.She also told me the Taiwan news she saw on Fujian Southeast Satellite TV.I sat at my desk and watched the computer while listening.Sometimes she annoys me, sometimes I thank her for letting me know about common people.

The second category is journalists from popular media. Most of them are young, but all of them are vigorous. They know everything that is worth knowing about in China, such as who is popular and who is not, which nightclubs are in and which ones are out, which New Year movies are good and which ones are bad, and where to go this year. Traveling is cool, you know that.They have to do various special topics, and whenever they want to find a foreigner to express their opinions, they will probably think of me, a Taiwanese cultural celebrity in Beijing, which is convenient.There are a lot of media in Beijing, and there are always a few reporters who come to me every month. I am also happy to chat with him or them, to know what is popular among young people and what fashion gadgets are there, so that I will not be left behind.

The third category is editors of publishing houses.The simplified Chinese editions of several of my books are selling well, so editors from publishing houses often come to me and want to publish books for me, but I haven’t been able to write a single book in the past few years, so I can only sell some books that have not yet been published in mainland China. One or two of the old works from Taiwan have been repackaged for me and will soon be published in simplified Chinese.Sometimes, they would take me to meet the bosses of the publishing houses. I knew some of them a long time ago. They were nothing before, but now they are the general managers of some publishing group. Talk about the listing of the group.Occasionally, as a figure in Taiwan's cultural circles on the mainland, I have the opportunity to meet some officials from the General Administration of Information, the Ministry of Culture, the Taiwan Affairs Office, and the United Front Work Department.Now, of course, being an official in China is the most remarkable thing. Everyone is very dignified, and no matter what level they speak, they are all very dignified.They treat the Taiwanese as little brothers and only ask you to treat them as big brothers.

I said that I am a figure in Taiwan's cultural circles. You don't have any opinions, do you?Although I was born in Hong Kong and moved to Taiwan with my parents after finishing elementary school in Tiujingling, I really feel that I am a Taiwanese.I loved reading since I was a child, and I aspired to be a writer since I was in high school. My first choice for entering university was the English Department of National Taiwan University, which was taught by Bai Xianyong.In the end, I couldn't get in, so I went to the Journalism Department of Cultural University.In my sophomore year, I wrote a short story "The Spring of Tiaojingling" and won the second place in the short story award of "Central Daily" for the undergraduate group. Let me take the first place.

When I was angry, I imitated Chen Yingzhen's style and wrote a short story "I want to go abroad" that satirizes current affairs. I didn't dare to publish it publicly, but it was circulated among my classmates. Looking for me, trying to win me over, I was both excited and a little scared. I was a student, and my parents worked hard to support me in college. I had to think about my future.This novel was published in Xinsheng Evening News after the ban was lifted, and it has no time limit. Young people don’t understand what I am satirizing. After graduation, I originally wanted to study for a degree in prestigious journalism schools such as Missouri and Columbia in the United States, but I failed to apply. Even if I applied, I could not afford to go without a scholarship.Fortunately, in Tiujingling back then, my mother had been cooking for a local Catholic church for several years. When the priest Ben Naidi visited Taiwan, he found my family.At that time, Bernadette was the director of a Catholic university called St. John’s in the Midwest of the United States. He was in charge of student affairs, so he accepted me into St. John’s M.A. class and gave me a scholarship.I face wheat fields and cows every day, practice English, read novels, my favorite is Raymond Chandler and Dasher Hammett's hard-boiled detective novels, and my thesis is about Charlie Chen and the detective logic of the East and the West , survived for a year and a half, summer vacation endlessly, did not go anywhere, got a degree.

Once I saw Hong Kong’s Ming Pao in the library, saying that there was an overseas Chinese in New York who wanted to run a Chinese-language daily in the United States called “Hua Bao”. Judge, I found him, and he told me to go to work in New York immediately on the phone, and finally arrived in New York. Before that, I just went to the United States. "Huabao" is very small, and you can't buy it outside of New York's Chinatown. After staying for many years, I felt very depressed. I was so bored that I wrote a novel. I wrote "The Last Greyhound in Manhattan". I didn't expect to have this book. The novels of foreign students, I can use for life among the Chinese writers.The novel uses the stream-of-consciousness modernist technique, and I really don’t know how I wrote it back then.Taiwan is also amazing enough that so many people have read this novel.Many people don't know that this novel has sold a total of 100,000 copies in Taiwan over the years, but it's a pity that no one has compiled a total sales list of Taiwanese novels.

Also in New York, Jin Yong, a master of martial arts novels, visited the United States, and I interviewed him for the newspaper.Coinciding with the lifting of the embargo in Taiwan, Jin Yong's name could be published in newspapers, and the interview was reprinted by Taiwan's "United Daily News", with a very high reading rate, and even I became a famous reporter. Jin Yong also liked that interview.He knew that I was born in Hong Kong and could speak Cantonese, so he asked me to go to Hong Kong to work for Ming Pao.I quit my job in the United States and went to Hong Kong to work as an editor for "Ming Pao Monthly" and to write a mainland report for the China edition of "Ming Pao Daily".From the middle of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, I visited many cultural celebrities of the older generation in mainland China, established my network of contacts in the mainland, and experienced some big scenes, which enriched my understanding of the mainland.When Jin Yong retired in 1992, the United Daily News beckoned me to edit the mainland edition.It also happened that my girlfriend in Beijing decided to go abroad and broke up with me in disguise, so I decided to go back to Taiwan.

When I was at the "United Daily News", I started to sort out the manuscripts in my hand and planned to publish a collection of interviews with mainland cultural celebrities. The literati are very old, and some have even passed away. My interview has become a masterpiece, and its value is beyond words.Maybe I was too slow, and I missed the timing of the repairs. After the publication of this "Payment of Salary? Heart: Hundreds of Artists and Literature in Mainland China", the atmosphere in Taiwan has changed. The book even topped the Jinshitang bestseller list at that time It didn't appear, only it was introduced in the scholar's page of "United Daily News", and no one talked about it anymore.After Lee Teng-hui became president, the disputes between provincial ethnic groups intensified. Taiwanese people are concerned about whether there will be war in the Taiwan Strait, rather than mainland culture.

After the book was published, people in the circle regarded me as an expert on China, a school of knowledge, and an expert on mainland issues. That is to say, everyone was not interested in me. I felt resentful, and decided to make others look at me differently. If I could not write a literary masterpiece, I would write a bestseller.At that time, books on the Taiwan Strait War were very popular. I also studied the Nationalist Army and the Communist Army to see what angles I could write about. Later, I found that there were too many follow-up books, so I had to give up. But I learned a trick: if you want to follow the trend, your hands and feet be quick.

I was a little panicked at that time, throwing stones into the forest. I wrote a detective and mystery novel "Thirteen Moons", but it didn't catch on. Someone wrote a philosophy of life and became famous, and I also wrote a philosophy of life, which was unpopular. Management is so hot, I wrote a few office strategies and tips, but it didn't catch on. The philosophy of life and management are indeed my speculative works, and they don't sell well, I think.But I don't think "Thirteen Moons" should be obliterated. "Thirteen Moons" is definitely a masterpiece among Taiwan's original detective novels. It is a pity that Taiwanese readers at that time were used to Japanese mystery novels and Christie's British who is the murderer. The critics don't know how much effort I put into this genre.I may not be a first-rate writer, but I often remember the self-deprecating words of British writer Somerset Maugham: I am the best among second-rate writers. In reality, I didn't even make it to the second rate.I was frustrated for a while with my book being neither a hit nor a hit. Finally, the opportunity came. A foreign country published a book on EQ, and the Taiwan version was a big hit.I combined years of accumulation, from Chinese culture to philosophy of life to management, and wrote the book "Chinese Emotional Intelligence" as quickly as possible. In the middle of the process, I thought about whether it would sell better if I found a cartoonist to cooperate with and publish the comic "China EQ".Sure enough, the book has been on the Jinshitang ranking list for six consecutive weeks, reaching the second place at the highest, and the Chinese version of the original EQ is the first translation book.It is indeed a great satisfaction to see my book placed in the most dazzling position of Eslite and Jinshitang every day. In the next few years, I also compiled a series of Chinese wisdom of this and that, and they all sold well, until Taiwanese readers didn't like the word "Chinese" in the title. So far I have been a journalist, novelist, continental expert, inspirational self-improvement expert, and best-selling author, the last item making the previous titles meaningful.Most people haven't read my books and don't know what I've written. They only know that I'm a best-selling author.In Taiwan in the 1990s, society still respected best-selling authors. Luck comes in bursts, always icing on the cake.After the turn of the millennium, several of my books were published in mainland China. "The Last Greyhound in Manhattan", the title of the book was changed to "A Chinese Student in New York". The book sold well, but I haven't heard of anyone who has read it, but some mainland media described me as a pioneer writer in Taiwan. "Calendar? Mind Cultivation" is divided into three volumes, called "Literary Credentials", "Artistic Credentials", and "Thinking Credentials". The sales were average, but it was rated as one of the outstanding book design works of the year by "New Weekly". In addition, "Chinese EQ" and the series of this wisdom and that wisdom are also authorized to be published in mainland China, and the royalties for the genuine version are not much, but the pirated version at the street stalls should sell well. I am also well-known in mainland China. In 2004, Chen Shui-bian was re-elected as president. The mainland edition of "United Daily News" reduced its space. The newspaper also wanted to reduce manpower and encourage employees to retire early.I decided to retire, received a pension, and moved to Beijing. When I first arrived in Beijing, I felt a sense of urgency. I was diligent in writing, writing about Taiwan and Hong Kong culture for mainland newspapers, and writing about Beijing and Shanghai for Taiwan and Hong Kong newspapers. The former has more media, while the latter is hot in Beijing and Shanghai.Most importantly, I did not forget to publish the "Beijing In-depth Cultural Travel Guide" in the three places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait before the Beijing Olympics.Interestingly, the book did not sell well in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but it sold well in the mainland, and there were many media reports.A director of the General Administration of Information, who is familiar with Taiwan's cultural circles, took the initiative to operate for me, won a second prize in the national cultural book category, and appeared on CCTV's reading program, and I was finally recognized by the system. Now, I ask nothing of myself but one thing: to write a good novel, mine, mine.In this era when there is no first-rate, I want to prove that I am the best of the second-rate.I turned down all invitations to write articles in books, newspapers and periodicals, and focused on writing my novels. However, I didn't write a single word. living expenses?That's not the point. Well, let me tell you frankly, I really don't have to worry about food or drink.Xi Zhe said that happiness is a little famous but not too famous, a little money but not too rich.I don't live off royalties, and that doesn't add up.It’s like this. When I was working for Ming Pao in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, I planned to marry my girlfriend. I bought a second-hand house of 90 square meters in Taikoo Shing. Later, my girlfriend went to Germany to marry someone. The house I asked the agent to rent it out, and I went back to Taipei.After that, when the lease was changed every year, I realized that the house price and rent had doubled and doubled. When I sold it before the return of 1997, the increase was almost ten times.I can't earn the money for this house by working part-time all my life.Later, during the Asian financial turmoil, the Taiwan dollar was depreciated. Fortunately, my money remained intact in the Hong Kong bank.I moved to Beijing in 2004. A few months before the policy stated that foreigners, including people from Taiwan and Hong Kong, were not allowed to buy a second house, I bought three houses in Xingfu Second Village, one for self-occupation and two for rent, and the money was exchanged for RMB. deposit bank, Then, the world economy experienced crisis after wave, and only China was thriving. With this little money, I can live a good life. That's right, this still doesn't explain why I haven't been able to write a single word for the past two years. When I arrived in Beijing in 2004, my financial situation was already very good, but I struggled to write.I really stopped writing because I completely lost the feeling of writing. It was more than two years ago after the official discourse said that the world economy had entered a period of ice and fire, and China's prosperous age had officially begun.Since then, no matter in Beijing or anywhere in the country, I have seen people living a good life. I feel that my soul is full, my life is extremely happy, and I have a sense of happiness that I have never experienced before.It is this kind of happiness that makes me unable to write anymore.