Lin Chaoyang and others entered the room and exchanged greetings before taking their seats. Shen Congwen looked him up and down first and sighed: "You are so young!"

"You were not very young when you became famous in the literary world." Lin Chaoyang replied with a smile.

Shen Congwen asked again, "I heard that you work at Yanda Library?"

"yes."

"Or did my father-in-law help arrange it?"

The old comrade's question was a bit explicit, but Lin Chaoyang still nodded, "Yes."

Wang Zengqi said from the side: "What I told you before was correct, right? His experience is very similar to yours."

Shen Congwen smiled when he heard this, "It's a bit of a fate."

In the eyes of many intellectuals, neither of them could be considered serious readers. Both of them enriched their knowledge in the Yanda Library, and both made a name for themselves in the literary world at a young age.

Shen Congwen married Zhang Zhaohe, who was born into a wealthy family, and Lin Chaoyang also married Tao Yushu, who came from a scholarly family. Shen Congwen asked Lin Chaoyang about his work, which also originated from this.

He also praised: "I feel ashamed to say that I have rarely read novels in recent years. Zeng Qi said that I would bring you to my home, so I read your novels for two days. Unfortunately, the time was too short, so I only briefly read them. , well written. The one that impressed me most was "Little Shoes", which was fresh, timeless and unconventional."

"You're very grateful." Lin Chaoyang said modestly.

Wang Zengqi said: "The style of "Little Shoes" is very similar to that of your work, teacher. I was reading that article in "Yanjing Literature" that day. Chaoyang has studied your work very deeply and can be said to have a comprehensive understanding of it."

Shen Congwen looked at him and said, "You are already over sixty years old, how can you still learn to flatter others? If someone writes good novels, does it mean they must be imitating me?"

Wang Zengqi didn't mean to flatter him, but he brought Lin Chaoyang to visit today. He always wanted to avoid letting the topic go cold, so he said a few more words.

Lin Chaoyang came to Wang Zengqi's rescue at this time and said: "Old Wang is right, your works have indeed given me a lot of inspiration."

"I've also read some of your works in the past two years, and the style is different from mine."

Lin Chaoyang smiled and said: "That's because I don't just read your works!"

His tone was humorous, and Shen Congwen couldn't help but laugh, and praised: "Great, great! Drawing on the strengths of others, integrating hundreds of schools of thought, this is a great copy of the world's articles!"

After talking about Lin Chaoyang's creation for a while, the topic focused on life again.

In the past May, Shen Congwen returned to his hometown in western Hunan. The matter was initiated by Shen Congwen's cousin Huang Yongyu. On May 8, Shen Congwen and his wife returned to Phoenix accompanied by their cousin Huang Yongyu and his wife and his friends Huang Miaozi and his wife.

After being away for half my life, I got to know the people and scenery of my hometown. I also went to Zhangjiajie for some sightseeing. I didn’t return with great pleasure until the end of the month.

The short trip back to his hometown gave Shen Congwen great comfort, and he always had a smile on his face when talking about it.

After lunch, Lin Chaoyang and his wife said goodbye, and Shen Congwen sent the three of them downstairs.

"Your generation has caught up with a good time!"

After seeing Lin Chaoyang downstairs, Shen Congwen looked at his young face and suddenly sighed again. His words were full of vicissitudes of life, which made people sigh.

On the way back, Wang Zengqi said to Lin Chaoyang with emotion: "You and the teacher do have many similarities. Fortunately, times are different now."

Wang Zengqi's words contained resentment for being a teacher, but also happiness for the change of circumstances. He looked at the young Lin Chaoyang, and for some reason an idea came to his mind.

In fact, this may not be a kind of inheritance.

Guangzhou, Gao Di Street.

Because it is relatively close to Hong Kong and Macau, Guangzhou's clothing styles have always been at the forefront of the times.

After the reform and opening up, Gaodi Street took advantage of the policies and became a well-known clothing wholesale and distribution center in South China.

At this time in 1982, not many small traders from the north came here to purchase goods. Du Feng only heard about the reputation of Gaodi Street when he came here to purchase goods before. He took Xiao Cao and went straight to Gaodi Street after getting off the train. street.

Gaodi Street Industrial Products Market was established in October 1980. It was the first industrial products market in Guangzhou and gathered the earliest batch of self-employed people in Guangzhou.

They used bamboo and iron frames to set up simple stalls, selling the latest fashionable clothing, shoes, hats, and small general merchandise at the time.

In the past two years, Gaudi Street has become increasingly famous. There are stalls setting up stalls on both sides of the street, and the whole small street is packed with people.

Compared with the old-fashioned clothes in department stores today, which require cloth tickets, the clothes on Gaudi Street are cheap and fashionable, and are very popular with customers.

Du Feng has been running a clothing stall in Xiushui for two months, and this is already his third time coming to Gaudi Street to purchase goods.

Gaodi Street is short and narrow, connected to Yanjing Road in the east and Uprising Road in the west. It is now very prosperous, with hundreds of stalls, and as many as eight hundred foreign merchants come to buy goods every day.

In addition, there are some out-of-towners who are here for business or tourism. They have heard about the name of Gaudi Street and come to bring some clothes for their relatives and friends.

As a result, the stalls are densely packed and bustling with people. From morning to night, they are crowded and lively.

Du Feng took Xiao Cao into Gao Di Street. He did not go directly to the two stalls where he had purchased goods before. Instead, he walked around Gao Di Street twice to see if there were any new styles of clothing.

After wandering around for a long time, the two of them came to a stall with a familiar familiarity. Du Feng spoke to the boss in plastic Cantonese.

The stall owner recognized Du Feng at a glance, and said to Du Feng in plastic Mandarin with a painful expression: "Boss Du, you'd better speak Mandarin, I can understand him."

Du Feng smiled nonchalantly and asked, "Do you still have the floral-patterned waist dress from last time?"

"Yes, of course."

…

After spending the whole morning on Gao Di Street, the goods were almost in stock. Du Feng and Xiao Cao each carried two large bags of clothing. They walked hard to a snack stall, stepped on the packages under their feet, and asked for one each. Pig's feet rice.

After finishing their meal, the two got on the bus and went to a guest house two kilometers away.

In fact, there are guest houses and privately owned small hotels near Gaodi Street, but Du Feng did not dare to stay there.

The manager of the guest house where he came is a comrade of his eldest brother. They have an old relationship, so he can feel comfortable staying there.

After staying here for one night, Du Feng asked Xiao Cao to stay at the guest house to guard the goods the next day, while he took a bus to the port town of Huizhou.

Since the reform and opening up, Gangkang Town has become an important political town in Guangdong. It is filled with electronic watches, tape recorders and TV sets from Xiangjiang.

Du Feng recently discovered that electronic watches are quite popular in Yanjing City and wants to buy a batch of them to sell.

As for the tape recorder and television, he had not considered it. The cost of purchasing those items was too high. With his current strength, the risk was too high to make the mistake.

After successfully importing 100 electronic watches from Gangkang Town, Du Feng returned to Guangzhou.

Entering the guest house, he saw Xiao Cao holding a book and reading, "Where did the book come from?"

"I bought it outside when I was having dinner. Writer Lin's new book."

Xiao Cao was not well educated and had no habit of reading. However, in 1979, "Garland Under the Mountain" was published, triggering a reading craze among all soldiers in the army, and he became Lin Chaoyang's loyal reader.

Du Feng listened to Xiao Cao's words and didn't pay much attention. He rested the goods for a while and discussed with Xiao Cao about returning to Yanjing tomorrow and buying train tickets later.

When it was almost time for dinner, Xiao Cao went to buy food, leaving Du Feng alone in the room.

Bored, he took out the book that Xiao Cao was reading just now. It had a simple cover with "The Master of Chess" written on it.

"The Chess Master" is a novel written by his brother-in-law Lin Chaoyang. Du Feng naturally knew it, but when he looked at the cover of the book, he felt something was wrong.

He opened the novel and read it. The content was familiar to him and there was nothing wrong with it, so he didn't take it seriously.

The next day, I took the train back to Beijing and had been busy with business matters for a few days. On this day, Xiao Cao suddenly came over.

"Brother Feng!"

"What's wrong?"

"Look at my book." Xiao Cao took out two books, one was the "Chess Master" he bought in Guangzhou, and the other one also had "Chess Master" written on it, but the covers were completely different.

"What's going on?" Du Feng was puzzled.

Xiao Cao couldn't explain clearly. He accidentally saw someone reading "The Master of Chess" and found that it was different from the book he bought, so he took it to Du Feng to read.

The two of them looked at the two books in front of them and couldn't figure it out. Du Feng simply took the books and ran to Lin Chaoyang's house.

"Hey! Brother-in-law, your yard is quite spacious!"

After entering the door, Du Feng first praised the new yard of Lin Chaoyang's house. After chatting for a while, he took out the two books and said, "Brother-in-law, how come you have two different editions of this book?"

Lin Chaoyang looked at the two books carefully and immediately realized that the one with a simple cover was probably a pirated book.

However, there is still no concept of genuine and pirated copies in China. According to the current terminology in the publishing industry, this kind of book should come from secondary channels.

After the reform and opening up, the domestic book publishing industry gradually broke the publishing pattern of "one province only has one People's Publishing House". From 1980 to this year, more than 300 publishing institutions have been established across the country in two years.

According to current national regulations, all publications must be sold uniformly by Xinhua Bookstore.

In the past two years, the publishing industry has experienced unprecedented prosperity. As the only sales channel in the book industry, Xinhua Bookstore has also felt tremendous pressure.

Due to the limited business level, in order to ensure the safety of operations, we had to take in less and replenish more often. Some books were not accurate and we did not dare to quote the order quantity.

As a result, some popular books and magazines are in short supply and readers have no books to read.

As a result, some smart people came up with a way to send money to publishing houses for mail ordering. This suddenly increased the pressure on many publishing houses' mail order business and made them overwhelmed.

It also prompted some people in the society to smell the opportunity to make money from self-operated books, so they spontaneously went to the publishing house to purchase some books at the fixed price, and then retailed them in the downtown area with a price increase of 5% to 10% for each volume.

The emergence of this book retail model has surprised and delighted publishers, and many publishers have even set up this type of book sales companies on their own initiative.

Over time, domestic book distribution channels have gradually formed three models.

The first is the main distribution channel based on the Xinhua Bookstore system; the second is the social distribution channel where the publishing house handles its own distribution; the third is the private channel formed by collectives and individual booksellers.

The latter two of these are called the second channel.

During the development of the second channel, booksellers continued to evolve, and some smart people were not content with following the publishing house and began to collude with editors.

Books that are obviously non-compliant are quickly reviewed and published, and even approved book manuscripts are privately rewritten during the printing process to make them more popular.
To be continued...