Chapter 229

Grandpa Jiang looked at the banner held up by his granddaughter and grandson-in-law.

He didn't know many words, but he happened to know those few words.

Jiang Ning moved her hand to the left, shaking it like the fairy Zixia shaking a bell: "Ding ding ding ding ding! I wish my beloved grandpa good fortune as vast as the long-flowing water of the East China Sea!" Then she turned to the right: "Live as long as the evergreen pines of the Southern Mountains!"

Grandpa Jiang just smiled like a child.

"Happy, everyone is happy! Everyone is happy!" He kept nodding his head, unable to say anything. He just looked at the hotel box as if he couldn't stop looking.

The box was about 30 to 40 square meters, with a round table inside, some balloons placed around it, and three banners made by Jiang Ning. The words on them were all written by her one by one. When she wrote them, every word was filled with her most sincere blessings to Grandpa Jiang.

There were many people in the box, including Xu Xiuli and her roommates, Jiang Bai's mentor and his roommates. The large round table was full and everyone was seated.

Although Jiang Ning put most of her earnings into the stock market, her continuous income of 40,000 yuan a month from "Wuxia" magazine allowed her to maintain a very comfortable consumption level in her daily life. So today she deliberately did not count the expenses, booked a large private room, and ordered a table full of dishes that Grandpa Jiang had never eaten before.

The dishes in Shanghai are generally sweet, and Grandpa Jiang has never been able to get used to them. Their Linhe Brigade lives by the water, so there is a lot of water vapor and humidity. Although they are not oily, they are very spicy. They produce something similar to yellow pickled peppers locally, which is very spicy.

Grandpa Jiang also likes spicy food, so today’s dishes are mostly Sichuan cuisine. Considering some students who don’t eat spicy food, some non-spicy dishes are interspersed in the middle.

Grandpa Jiang watched the dishes he had never eaten before being served on the table. A waiter came up and explained to Grandpa Jiang how each dish was made. Some of the dishes had stories behind them, which he also explained to Grandpa Jiang.

These were also what Jiang Ning requested. She knew that Grandpa Jiang liked to listen to these. After listening and eating, he could go back and brag to his old friends. That was his pleasure.

For most of his life, a person has been regarded as an old workhorse and an old transparent person in the eyes of others. He has always been the one listening to others bragging while keeping silent. Now in old age, he finally experiences the joy of bragging.

Jiang Ning respected his happiness and tried his best to satisfy it.

Grandpa Jiang was really happy to hear this. Like a little child, he listened to the waiter's explanation attentively and with great interest.

He had no regrets at all that he had not encountered, seen, and eaten these things when he was young. He only felt immense satisfaction and happiness.

It turned out that one day, someone remembered his birthday and his eldest granddaughter was celebrating his birthday!

Grandpa Jiang couldn't stop smiling.

Jiang Ning actually knew that Grandpa Jiang's ideal birthday celebration should be in his hometown, like Grandpa Zhonghua in the old store at the entrance of the next village, with a banquet and all the children and grandchildren gathered together. Everyone knew that he was celebrating his birthday today, and his children, grandchildren and granddaughters all came back in a lively manner. He and Grandma Jiang sat in the upper part of the main hall, and the whole family had a reunion dinner together.

That is the way of celebrating birthdays that all the elderly people in the village yearn for the most, with the filial piety of their children and grandchildren, and their own secret showing off.

Don’t worry, Grandpa, whatever you want will be arranged for you in the future.

Today, Grandpa Jiang drank two glasses of wine, which was a rare occasion. I don’t know if it was because the wine didn’t make him drunk but made him drunk by himself, or what, but when Grandpa Jiang was supported by Tong Jingang and Jiang Bai all the way back, his heart was floating, and he felt so happy that he felt like he was walking on clouds.

When he went home at night, he lay on the bed, his head dizzy, and he unconsciously recalled his life.

Even though I had a father during my childhood, I was not carefree.

My father was a sedan bearer. He served the landlord day and night and carried the landlord's sedan chair.

He is the eldest son in the family and he knew from a young age that he had the responsibility of taking care of the family and his younger brothers and sisters.

In fact, he had an older sister who married a man named Chen Shimei, but was broken off the engagement. She was so upset that she drowned herself along with her child, which ended up helping the other party to be happy.

It seemed as if the first half of his life was filled with endless suffering. That extreme, boundless, hopeless suffering formed a sharp contrast with the extreme sweetness now, making Grandpa Jiang feel dazed for a moment, as if in a dream.

He fell asleep unknowingly, and in his dreams, he no longer dreamed of the black coal basket that weighed on his back and made him unable to straighten his back as a child, and the black mine that he could never climb to the end of. Instead, he dreamed of the locust trees in front of his hometown, the old ox under the locust trees, and a group of old men boasting with smiles on their faces sitting next to them.

After Grandpa Jiang’s birthday, it was already the end of May.

Jiang Ning also sent a gift to He Xiaofang and Xu Xiuli respectively.

Xu Xiuli is fine. She is loved by many people and friendship is a part of her life. But for He Xiaofang, it is all the feelings she has now!

She wore the watch and birthday card Jiang Ning gave her, crying and laughing, and kept telling her roommates: "This is a birthday gift from my best friend, sent from Beijing. She is at Beijing University!"

The watch Jiang Ning gave was not expensive, but it was not cheap either. In the eyes of students of this age, it was considered a small luxury. They all came over and said, "Let me see it, let me see it!"

"It's this brand, and it's a women's mechanical watch. It's so beautiful. Your classmates are so nice to you."

He Xiaofang said proudly: "That's right, isn't it? We were in the same dormitory in high school! She is my best friend!"

When she heard that it was a mechanical watch, He Xiaofang became even happier, because she knew that what Jiang Ning gave Jiang Bai was a mechanical watch. Does this mean that in Ningning's heart, she holds the same position as her brother?

In the evening, Jiang Ning called her and wished her happy birthday. He Xiaofang felt that everything in her life was worth it at this moment.

She was also being missed.

In fact, Producer Li and his team had already brought the "White Snake" crew to Wucheng for filming in late April.

After half a year of governance, the ancient city of Wucheng seems to have regained its vitality.

Secretary Song is a very capable secretary, otherwise Wucheng would not have been upgraded from a county to a city in a few years, and would not have become the leading place in the vicinity in terms of people's livelihood and economy.

With Jiang Ning's help in this life, I started the construction of Wucheng ahead of schedule.

Compared with the previous life when Wucheng was completely moving towards modernization, building high-rise buildings, completely abandoning the old city and becoming a modern city, today's Wucheng in April and May is simply magnificent.

The first thing that Producer Li and his team noticed were the old locust trees that were decades or even hundreds of years old. Clusters of pure white locust flowers hung down from the old locust trees, and the huge tree canopies blocked out the sun, covering the sky on both sides of the road. Only sporadic, mottled points of light shone through the dense leaves and clusters of flowers and fell on the road, forming light spots.

When the spring breeze blows, waves of refreshing fragrance penetrate into people's nostrils, making people feel suddenly relaxed and happy.

What Producer Li and his team saw was the most beautiful season in the entire Wucheng.

The ancient town of Wucheng not only has well-maintained ancient architectural style with white walls and black tiles, but the water in the moat has been managed and the water from the Shahe River has been introduced. Although it is not crystal clear, the green waves formed by the spring breeze reflect the green willow branches sprouting in spring and the wild peach blossoms with unique wildness, as well as the natural wetlands, the ancient moat, and the neat yet messy flower beds beside the moat.

Spring is here, and all kinds of wild flowers, such as forsythia, rose, and clematis, are in full bloom.

What's rare is that Wucheng's sanitary environment is also very good. There are toilets built in ancient style on the roadside. They are not the popular ones now, with long pits separated by brick walls and flushed with water. Instead, they have independent pits and independent flushing tanks, and are supervised and cleaned by "directors". After they came to Wucheng, they finally felt the kindness of this small city.

In this era, the construction of new countryside has just begun, and the toilets in many places are in a terrible condition.

After producer Li and his team finished filming the scenes in Wucheng, they moved on to Wugong Mountain. Jiang Bo naturally wanted to go with them as well, as they had a seven-day holiday during the May Day holiday.

The section about Wugong Mountain and Wucheng is the one with the most gg embedded in it, followed by Yaoba Town.

Yaoba Town is an ancient town with unique and beautiful scenery. Except for one part of the ancient town which is on land, the rest of the town is surrounded by water, the only difference being the depth of the water.

Pearls have been farmed in Yaoba Town for a long time. There is a pearl factory in the town, but it was not large-scale in the past and the sales volume of farmed pearls was not high. They were all circulated to the low-end market. Some of them were irregular in shape and cost a few yuan each. If you come here to wholesale in large quantities, you can get a lower price.

But Jiang Ning opened up a new path for them. Those shells and irregular pearls can be used to cooperate with skin care brands and provide pearl powder raw materials.

The composition of shells is the same as that of pearls. In fact, they can be ground into fine powder and used as pearl powder.

This year, green nylon nets have been erected around the paddy fields surrounding the town, with fat crabs crawling on the nets to bask in the sun.

It is not yet the season to eat crabs. These crabs are not very big because they have been bred for a short time, and it is far from the season to eat them.

But some crayfish can be served on the table.

So when producer Li and his team came here, they ate the freshest local delicacies, such as chopped pepper fish head, pickled fish, grilled fish, snow vegetable and thorn fish, which were just caught from the river, local delicacies with "fish" as the main feature, and this year's freshly baked crayfish.

After the meal, I took them on a peng boat to visit the local beautiful scenery.

During this trip, Producer Li and his team can be described as "eating, drinking, playing and taking pictures".

In order to properly entertain the "White Snake" crew from CCTV, Wucheng's leadership team headed by Secretary Song and Yaoba Town Mayor Jiang brought out the best of Wucheng and demonstrated the best style and public security.

It’s not true that Wucheng is a place where no one picks up things on the streets now, but it is much safer than other places where thieves are everywhere and evil forces are entrenched.

This ancient town is really suitable for filming the quaint plot of "The Legend of White Snake". In addition, with the one-stop food, accommodation and service arranged by the local government, Producer Li stayed here for more than half a month. He took pictures of various scenes. Some scenes were originally scheduled to be filmed in other ancient towns. Because he stayed here for too long, the food and drinks were too comfortable, and the scenery was too beautiful, he simply moved to Wucheng and Yaoba Town for filming.

It was not until early June when the lotus flowers began to bloom that they finally left Wucheng at the invitation of Jiang Guotai and his children, took a bus to Shuibu Town, and then took a boat from Shuibu Town to Linhe Brigade.

Today's Linhe Brigade has really changed its appearance.

During the tea-picking season when he was recruiting local tea pickers, he was also busy with other things. First, he built a rafting spot at the foot of the mountain in Shijian Township that he had contracted. It is now in the safety inspection stage, and he only needs to take a short break in all the dangerous places along the way before he can arrange for kayaking. He will be able to open it for free locally by the end of June, and then start selling tickets for trial use in the surrounding areas during the summer vacation. Because it is still in the publicity stage, according to Jiang Ning's plan, he will not think about making money in the first year. It will be free for all, or a symbolic ticket price of 0.9 yuan or 9.9 yuan will be charged to attract popularity. People in surrounding towns must first know that there is such a place to visit here.

Then there is the farmhouse restaurant in Jiangjia Village.

It is almost universally recognized that the best cook in Jiangjia Village is Aunt Jiang.

It just so happened that Uncle Jiang's house was very big, and if there were tourists coming to eat there, Jiang Guotai suggested that Jiang Hongjun and Jiang Hongbing hang a restaurant sign on the front door of their house to make it convenient for tourists to come and eat.

As for the accommodation that Producer Li and his team had arranged, they naturally discussed it with Jiang's father and borrowed his house, which is also the best renovated house in the village.

It just so happened that his house had many rooms, which could accommodate most of the people. Those who could not stay had to stay at Jiang Hongjun and Jiang Hongbing's houses.

When arranging accommodation for people, Jiang Guotai discovered that his own house also needed to be expanded.

His house now is a small two-story house, but it is an old-style two-story house built many years ago. There are not many rooms and the house type is no longer fashionable. It is okay for an old couple to live in, but if Jiangjia Village is to be developed, such a house will definitely not be suitable. If it is really developed into a tourist attraction in the future, I am afraid that the extra rooms in every household will be used as a hotel to accommodate tourists, which is what Jiang Ning mentioned, a homestay.

The more beautiful the layout of the house, the more abundant the flowers, the cleaner the house, and the better the washing environment, the more popular it will be among tourists.

From this point of view alone, Uncle Jiang's mother's house must be the most popular.

The people in Jiangjia Village finally got a close look at how the TV series was filmed.

Jiang Bo was busy with his schedule and couldn't take time off, so all his shots were concentrated.

In fact, up to this point, the TV series "Legend of White Snake" has actually reached the end of filming, and the entire TV series is basically in the editing and production stage. Here, only the final scenes of the blooming lotus flowers need to be taken, and some scenes about the lotus flowers and lotus leaves need to be re-shot. These can all be accomplished through post-production editing.

It was not until June 20th that Producer Li and his team left Jiangjia Village. When they left, everyone took away many cans of beautifully packaged Wugongshan Mingqian tea, all of which were hand-roasted by experienced tea artists with perfect heating conditions.

Producer Li and his colleagues tasted the tea themselves and also read the inspection certificates from an authoritative organization in the provincial capital. They knew that the Wugong tea from Wugong Mountain was indeed good, so they agreed to help promote it.

The villagers of Jiangjia Village gave them so much tea, and they knew what it meant. Since he wanted to promote and boost the local economy by filming a TV series, they would naturally do their best to promote and support it.

So when he returned to the capital, he gave "Wu Gong Tea" to his relatives, friends and leaders, and promoted the wonderfulness of this "Wu Gong Tea".

'Wugong Tea' is really good. Although there is still a certain gap compared with the top tribute tea drunk by top bosses, the gap is already very small. 'Wugong Tea' itself, whether in terms of color, taste, or nutrient content, is a top-grade tea.

The leaders above all drank "Wugong Tea", so naturally the people below also asked what kind of tea it was and started to follow suit.

This kind of thing always becomes popular from top to bottom.

In order to release the film during the summer vacation, Director Li transferred most of the staff of CCTV's logistics and editing team to the "White Snake" crew, in an effort to start broadcasting the film on CCTV on the first day of summer vacation at a rate of two episodes a day, two episodes in the morning and a rerun in the afternoon.

With the huge success of Mango TV's self-produced drama "Little Swallow" last year and the huge hit of another satellite TV station's "The King's Guard" in the second half of the year, more and more satellite TV stations have begun to join in the production of their own dramas.

From the hit of "Yong Dynasty" in January, to the explosion of "Eyes Unbreakable" in March, to the massacre of the second part of "Little Swallow" at the end of April, the entire first half of 1999 was in a state of fierce competition, with one hit drama after another being released, and the audiences who watched it can be said to be thrilled.

Among them, "Eyes Unbreakable" and the second season of "Little Swallow" were the most popular, and they can be said to have accounted for most of the ratings in the first half of this year.

During the summer vacation, the TV rights of these two dramas were bought by other satellite TV stations and a new round of rebroadcasting began.

Fortunately, the initial impact of these two dramas has long passed.

CCTV is CCTV after all, and the replay ratings of any TV series are far beyond what CCTV can compare to. It can be said that CCTV is the number one in this era, except for the impact of Mango TV when "Little Swallow" was just released, its overall ratings have never come down, not to mention that "Legend of the White Snake" is a big IP with a huge readership and audience group. Although there is no concept of IP these days, the meaning is actually the same. With the support of CCTV, this TV series, as soon as it was released, dominated the summer vacation season, killing other TV series and making it impossible for them to stand out.

It can be said that the entire summer vacation this year was dominated by "Legend of the White Snake".

This also made the Shahe specialties such as "Wugong Mountain", "Wugong Tea", Wucheng, and Gorgon Cake that appeared in "The Legend of White Snake" be implanted in the minds of the audience.

Especially the people below, seeing that the leaders above were all drinking this Wugong tea, they believed that if the leaders liked it, the subordinates would like it even more, so many people went to inquire about the origin of this "Wugong tea", and naturally they found out about the "Wugong Mountain" mentioned in "The Legend of White Snake".

So, Linhe Brigade welcomed the first batch of tourists and tea merchants.

The publishing house had already signed an agreement with Jiang Ning for more prints, and had given her the money to invest in the stock market early on, just waiting for the release of "Legend of the White Snake". Although she had to wait from the beginning of the year until summer vacation, CCTV never disappoints. With the hot release of the summer TV series "White Snake", all major bookstores, which are the most popular among students in this era and the best place to go during the summer vacation, also sold out "The Years I Was the White Snake". "White Snake" surpassed the sales of "The Song Dynasty" and "The Imperial Guards" in one fell swoop, and surpassed them in sales to reach the tens of millions in one fell swoop.

With the popularity of "White Snake" and the hot sales of physical books, the first two books of Jiang Ning's new serialized work "The Years I Driving Mechas in the Interstellar Space" have also been published. However, the sales volume is far from that of Ning Meng's previous books. More male readers like it, and the number of female readers who bought it is less this time.

Because the book "Star Trek" contains a lot of science fiction elements, it is very difficult to film "Star Trek" with the current level of special effects in China. So even though many people are envious of the TV series ratings and movie box office of Lemon's first three books, they did not rush to buy the TV series and movie copyrights of the book. Instead, they purchased the works of several other popular writers.

The fame of these writers in this era is no less than that of Ning Meng. Compared with StarCraft's works, the works of these writers not only have a large number of readers and high sales, but are also more suitable for adaptation into movies and TV series.

However, the animation copyright and children's drama copyright of "Star Trek" were once again bought by CCTV.

As always the price is not high.

During the summer vacation, students are on vacation. The children's drama based on "The Legend of White Snake" has started filming this summer. The animated version is also in production and should be available on the market soon.

But at the same time, Ning Meng's overseas traditional Chinese copyrights of "The Song Dynasty", "White Snake Cultivation", "Jinyiwei", and "Star Mecha" have all been contacted with publishing houses, hoping to sign the overseas traditional Chinese copyrights of these books, most of which are copyrights from Southeast Asian countries.

To Jiang Ning's surprise, the film and television rights to the book "Starcraft" were spotted by a famous film company in the United States, which wanted to make it into a science fiction movie.

At the beginning, the other party's attitude was quite arrogant. I thought that as long as I paid money, the other party would sell it. After all, it was using beautiful currency, and it might be a small author in the Flower-Growing Country, and I might have never seen so much money in my life.

The publishing house also strongly recommended selling it, so that Jiang Ning's works would not only go abroad and become popular in Southeast Asia, but would also be directly promoted to the world and become well-known in fields all over the world.

But Jiang Ning was not short of money, and the other party's arrogant attitude made her very unhappy, so she refused directly.

This took the publisher by surprise.

The current domestic atmosphere is that people have an inferiority complex and a flattering mentality towards these large foreign companies. When they receive a call from such a large company wanting to buy the film and television rights of Jiang Ning's book at a "high price", they are ecstatic. They are not happy about the 20% share of the film and television rights, but that once Jiang Ning's book is made into a movie by such a large company, the English version of Jiang Ning's book overseas may also sell like hot cakes.

Although they have not opened up the book market abroad, they can cooperate with others, which can be regarded as a successful opening up of the European market. This is a win-win-win result for their publishing house, Jiang Ning's interests and popularity, and the film and television companies in the United States.

The publishing house really couldn't understand why Jiang Ning didn't agree.

Jiang Ning was deep in thought as he looked at his past drafts.

She said that she never expected that her work, in this day and age, would be noticed by large foreign companies and that they would be interested in her film and television copyrights.

Regardless of whether others were really interested in the film and television rights to her works, she quickly retrieved all her previous drafts from Wang Yong, on the grounds that there were new plots that conflicted with the previous ones and needed to be revised.

Wang Yong didn't understand why Jiang Ning, who had never suggested any revisions, suddenly asked for revisions. But after four years of working together, Wang Yong trusted Jiang Ning very much. She said there was a new plot, so there was a new plot. She had no doubts about anything, so she returned all the previous manuscripts and prepared to accept the new manuscript that she had revised.

So for a whole week, Jiang Ning stayed in the rental house to modify and delete some content of the manuscript, and then checked to make sure there were no problems. He then sent the deleted and modified manuscript to Wang Yong.

Jiang Ning's writing is full of personal opinions, and is very secretive and cautious. Some of his writing is very exaggerated, which always makes laymen feel happy while experts frown.

All of her writing serves the main plot, so the first thing is to ensure the plot itself and the rhythm are good, so that she can secretly implant what she wants to implant in the work. Therefore, these things rarely appear in the early stage, and appear more frequently in the middle and late stages.

Currently, two volumes of "Star Mecha" have been published, each volume has 150,000 words, and the two volumes have 300,000 words in total. In Jiang Ning's planned long novel "Star Mecha", it can be said that it has just begun, and many plots have not yet been released.

The next issue will only have 20,000 words, which is actually very easy to edit. We can just cut some of the content and move some of it forward from the later parts, and the problem will be solved. Because we have manuscripts on hand, there will be no gaps in the magazine.

During this period, famous technology companies in later generations had actually begun to accept international orders and cooperate with many countries.

Jiang Ning has the cheat of rebirth. His current achievements are actually nothing compared to the real geniuses and heroes. In this world, there will always be real heroes and geniuses that people look up to. They are the ones who truly influence an era.

Jiang Ning thought about it, and packaged up and mailed many of her previous drafts that contained personal opinions to the email address published by this technology company. She even wrote many of the things she knew about future technology in more detail. In addition, she studied science in this life and has completed all the courses for her junior year. There are many things that she only had a vague understanding of from hearsay in her previous life, but she knows more in this life.

Regardless of whether it helped them or not, at least she had done her little bit.

Jiang Ning had thought that they would never have any more dealings with the American film company that had been rejected by him before, but he did not expect that the other company really wanted the film rights to this book. Not only did they remove the person who had come to discuss the copyright and transfer him to another place, the top executive of the film company also personally brought his assistant and bodyguard to the Flower Country to find Jiang Ning.