Chapter 60: Wenqu Dayun Nian Mu Jinyin Wants to Try Writing Something

"What...are you doing...hiccup!"

Lu Da stumbled drunkenly to the entrance of the pen and ink shop. Seeing several familiar faces, he hiccuped as he asked, "What's going on?" One of the people who recognized Lu Da glanced at him, knowing he had just returned from a tavern, and, not wanting to cause trouble, briefly explained the cause and effect of the great flourishing of literature.

Drunk and with impaired thinking, Lu Da was in a daze, but he understood that they were buying paper and pens. Although he didn't know what they were for, he still took out the remaining money from his pocket and asked for some as if to join in.

As luck would have it, he won money gambling today, drank two bowls of wine, bought a plate of fennel beans, and had exactly four copper coins left, enough to exchange for a notebook and a pencil.

"I'm back! Where is everyone? Are they dead?!"

Lu Da kicked open the door, clutching something. Mu Wanxia shrank into the corner, afraid of attracting the man's attention. He would beat his family members when he was drunk, and she hadn't managed to avoid it last time; her hand was still covered in bruises.

"Snoring—"

Lu Da shouted a few times, then, finding it uninteresting, tossed the paper and pen onto the table, lay down on the bed, and began snoring loudly. The woman waited quietly for a while, making sure Lu Da was sound asleep, before quietly climbing out to continue her needlework.

"Mother, I'm going back... Why is he back so early today?"

Mu Jinyin came in carrying a basket, and frowned the moment he saw Lu Da. Ever since he became addicted to gambling, he usually wouldn't go home before dark. Why was he here today...?

"Keep this safe."

The woman quietly handed the pencil and notebook to her daughter. Pearl was intelligent and capable. If Lu Da hadn't been dismissed and lost his motivation to work, her daughter would have been a primary school graduate. There would be no need for her to sell needles and thread to supplement the family income.

"Has he gone mad today?"

While pondering how much the brand-new notebook and pen could fetch, Mu Jinyin asked in a low voice that Lu Da would bring back a few things when he returned, usually just a few soybeans, half a handful of wild vegetables, and two sheets of straw paper. But he would keep even these things to himself, and if he saw the mother and daughter eating or using them, he would beat them severely.

Fortunately, once they fall asleep, they usually don't remember what they took, so they are used to keeping their things safe and eating them secretly when Lu Da is not around. Mu Wanxia felt uneasy, but Mu Jinyin was very self-righteous - all the money in the house was earned by them, and it would be a huge loss to exchange such a small amount of things!

"Lu Jinyin".

The woman frowned as she looked at her daughter, Mu Jinyin's face even more somber than her mother's.

"My surname is Mu, not Lu!"

When Lu Da became obsessed with gambling and tried to sell her to a brothel, she stopped being surnamed Lu!

"Keep your things safe."

Seeing her daughter's eyes redden, the woman felt a pang of regret. She tried to comfort her daughter a few times, but to no avail. After thinking for a moment, she finally relented.

"If the family you marry is willing to support me, I will go with you."

Mu Wanxia used to feel that she couldn't be a burden to her daughter, but now she thinks that she is in good health and can help with laundry, cooking and taking care of the child. The man should be willing to have an old woman who doesn't cost him any wages.

"It's a promise!"

Mu Jinyin quickly made a pinky promise with Mu Wanxia, ​​so excited she almost jumped for joy. She had always wanted her mother to come with her, but her mother said there was no reason for a son-in-law to support his mother-in-law. Now she finally understood.

"Wait a while longer, then when my period comes, I'll find a son-in-law and quietly leave."

Mu Jinyin described the future to her mother with sparkling eyes. After a while, she went out to cook, and then she saw her girlfriends coming over.

"Today my dad bought my brother a notebook and a pencil, saying that the God of Literature has arrived this year, and that my brother should write things and publish them in the newspaper to earn silver dollars."

The darkening sky concealed his expression; Mu Jinyin was completely unaware that the straw he used to start a fire was burning his hands, his mind filled with his girlfriends' words.

He wrote, delivered newspapers, and earned silver dollars.

This was something Mu Jinyin had never imagined. When she was born, Lu Da had just been promoted to steward and specially bought a piece of cloth to make a schoolbag for her, saying that her older sister should set a good example and be a female student. However, before she was old enough to go to school, the schoolbag was sent to the pawnshop to be exchanged for money, which Lu Da gambled away in one day.

But Mu Jinyin still wanted to learn to read, so when choosing a job to supplement her family's income, she became one of the very few female newspaper girls. Whenever she met a kind customer, she would ask them to teach her a word. Over the years, she managed to learn all the common characters and could understand the stories in the newspapers. But she never thought that she had anything to do with those printed words.

"My dad said my brother would definitely bring honor to the family, but what man would call Miss Qiu and Mao Mao Rabbit? If you ask me, even if the God of Literature were to choose someone, he would only choose a girl..."

The young woman's chatter ignited a fire in Mu Jinyin's heart. Nothing in the world is as good as having it herself. If she could earn money, even if the man changed his mind later, she could still support her mother on her own.

As long as you have enough money.

So many people have bought notebooks and pens, it will be difficult for her to sell them. We live in a new era now. If there really is a God of Literature, it should fall on a woman!

She wanted to give it a try.

...

Business acumen is always keen. A newly opened stationery shop used a fortune teller to spread the word that the God of Literature was flourishing, which helped the business gain a foothold. The shopkeeper, who ran a stationery business, cursed the woman for being treacherous and cunning, but in private, he found various fortune tellers to spread the word.

In just a few days, everyone in Shanghai knew that the literary scene had flourished in the past two years. As long as there was someone literate in the family, no matter how tight their finances were, they would squeeze out four copper coins to buy a notebook and a pencil so that the family could try to write something.

Failure only costs four copper coins, and unused notebooks and pencils can be given to others. Success, however, brings in at least one silver dollar. A three-fold profit is enough to make people risk their lives. One silver dollar can be exchanged for one hundred and twenty-eight copper coins, which is more than thirty times the return, enough to drive people crazy!

This artificially created trend should have been fleeting, but when a girl named Mu Jinyin actually published a short article in the newspaper, and the people in her courtyard saw the shiny silver coin with their own eyes, and then the news spread, everyone went crazy!

Write, submit articles, and earn silver dollars!

Amid the nationwide writing craze, editors in Shanghai were constantly busy opening mail and working on manuscripts. They even sharpened their paper cutters several times, managing to find a few gems from the vast ocean of writing. Once these works were published, the idea of ​​a flourishing literary scene directly contradicted the gradually emerging trend from top to bottom and began to spread to the upper echelons.

Meanwhile, a magazine that printed four times the amount of the article about Bai Yuzan also took advantage of this trend, turning its supply from more than enough to a situation where copies were hard to come by.

If you want to publish an article, you need to know what kind of article can be printed. Ordinary people who have extra money but no proper books do not trust their own judgment. The first thing they think of is the five works that are recognized by fortune tellers and shamans. But after searching, they find that the best and most cost-effective one is Bai Yuzan's magazine.

Newspapers publishing Miao Wuni's story were cheap, but they only published a tiny amount each time, like squeezing toothpaste, and they were still being serialized. Buying one only cost a few copper coins, and it would become expensive if you bought it several times. Although the stories of the brother and sister and the gold-patterned bowl were short, they were not cheap because they were completed. A single story was equivalent to half of the novel "The Story of the Golden Hairpin." As for the biography of Ding Xian... it was too long and too expensive. I couldn't afford it.

As for the white jade hairpin, although at first glance it seems to be sold as a bundled item, requiring you to buy the entire magazine to buy this story, the other articles in the magazine are not without merit. The key is that it is widely available, and you can buy it anywhere with just a little effort, without having to worry about price gouging.

Moreover, let's think about it differently: buying a magazine for an article might seem like a waste of money, but if we consider the white hairpin as a separate entity, buying this story would give us a large portion of the other articles in the magazine, wouldn't that be a great deal?

...

"Boss, do you have gold? Do you have the book 'The Story of the Hairpin'? The one with the story about the white jade hairpin?"

The woman stared longingly at the newsstand, her hair still covered in tiny cotton fibers.

"You're talking about Jinchai Xu, aren't you?"

The boss hadn't quite understood at first, but the keyword "white jade hairpin" was used to pinpoint the exact location.

"It's sold out a long time ago. This book sells out very quickly; it was out of stock a few days ago."

Hearing this, the woman could only leave in disappointment.

"Are you relieved now?"

Her friend looked at Kong Fengming with a smile and insisted that he treat her to a meal—she and Kong Fengming had run around to almost half of Shanghai's bookstores and newsstands to check on the sales of Jinchai Xu, and they were starving.

"Sure, I just found a Sichuan restaurant a couple of days ago that makes excellent Sichuan-style boiled beef."

With the psychological pressure gone, Kong Fengming readily agreed. The cow was slaughtered at dawn, and the tendons and membranes were removed from the 20% fat and 80% lean parts. The slices were then rolled in Shaoxing rice wine, then dipped in a salt and sugar syrup mixed with chicken head rice powder. After being cooked in the pot, it didn't need any dipping sauce; just a sprinkle of white pepper was enough to eat it. Kong Fengming personally felt that it suited his taste better than the hot pot in Beijing.

She's living a good life now, and she can even compare what tastes good.

When Kong Fengming was in the Kong family, the food she ate not only had little meat, but it was also bland and the portions were small. Every time she saw the servants feeding the golden tigers that the family kept, she wished she could be a cat. She was hungry for as long as she lived in the Kong family, just because of that bullshit slim waist that made it easier to get married!

"Let's go!"

Knowing that Kong Fengming would never let his mouth suffer, his friend swallowed hard as he got into the rickshaw, and the two disappeared around the corner.

...

Yao Xiaoyu didn't actually expect Bai Yuzan to sell particularly well. The main reason was that the story was too satirical. Many people who imitated it would spontaneously boycott it after identifying with it. Who knew that a great literary event would turn Bai Yuzan into a pig in the wind.

That's good too. The wider this article spreads, the more people who would otherwise never have heard of it may have their fate turned in a better direction.

Anhui, Weijiashan.

The man carrying a book box dismounted, covered in dust, handed the agreed-upon money to the coachman, and arranged to be picked up in seven days. He then entered the courtyard, distributed the gifts he had brought to his family, and mysteriously said that he had read a very interesting article and planned to read it to his parents under the tree the next day.

My parents were very happy. The tree is where the elderly chat. It is a great honor to have a child with them, not to mention reading stories to them. Their youngest son's visit will make them proud from the moment they arrive until the end of the year!

What is the name of the article?

Grandpa Wei asked with some curiosity.

"White jade hairpin".

The man answered with a smile, then, recalling what he had seen upon alighting from the carriage, he spoke up:

"The one on the right is..."

Old Mrs. Wei sighed.

"Their husband went up the mountain to collect firewood, caught a cold and didn't make it. He was buried a few days ago."