Chapter 247: Director Shen signed up?
Back in Upstate, I took a day off.
On the afternoon of July 8, I wanted to invite Chairman Song to dinner, so I first asked Xi Ruoqin to come. When I answered the phone, she said she was on a business trip to Guangzhou.
President Song was alone, and so was I. We had almost no mutual friends in Upstate. Oh, and there was Mingbai, too. But Mingbai said he couldn't come to dinner. He had guests from his hometown coming over.
How do two people eat together?
I thought about it, called Chen Xiaoxia, and said, "Xiaoxia, including you, please help me find three female comrades, preferably with a literary interest, to accompany my guests tonight, okay?
Chen Xiaoxia said, "That's great! Several girls in our public relations department have been wanting me to bring them to visit you for a long time."
After everything was settled, I called Chairman Song. After the call went through, I said, "I'm back from my business trip. I'd like to treat you to dinner tonight. You can bring three people."
"Okay. I'll leave at 5pm then, and we can take a taxi."
After making an appointment with President Song, I asked Chen Xiaoxia to book a private room and agreed to start dinner at 6 o'clock.
At half past five, I went to the restaurant to wait.
After sitting there for more than ten minutes, I saw President Song come in with two men and one woman. He held my hand, looked at me for a long time, and said, "You've gained some weight, and your energy and blood are much better."
After a few pleasantries, President Song introduced us to each other. The tall man, like President Song, was the president of a prose society in a prefecture-level city. His surname was Zhang, and he was in his forties. The other two were young men and women, the man's surname was Liu, and the woman's surname was Deng.
After a while, Chen Xiaoxia came in with two girls. One of them was Xiaotian and the other was surnamed Ye.
I asked, "Xiaotian, did Minister Chen recruit you from Mr. Xiao?"
She smiled and said, "Well, I'm here to report today."
I said, "Everyone, please take your seats."
When these strangers gathered together, I stood up and said, "I will introduce the two presidents, and everyone else can introduce yourselves.
I introduced President Song and President Zhang, and then everyone stood up one by one and introduced themselves.
Everyone was a little reserved during the dinner, and Chen Xiaoxia came up behind me and said her colleagues wanted to see a magic trick. I played a trick called "listen" to liven up the atmosphere.
After dinner, I invited President Song and others to sit in my room.
Chen Xiaoxia said, "Then I'll be a waitress."
Once we were in the room, Chen Xiaoxia helped me boil water for tea, washed some fruit, and brought it over. We all sat around and chatted.
President Song said, "After attending several classes, I became more and more discouraged."
Chen Xiaoxia, who also loves literature, said with a smile, "We don't even have the chance to attend the lectures. Why do you seem so discouraged the more you listen?"
President Song said, "It was mainly because I attended Professor Cao's lecture yesterday afternoon. He studies online novels. He asked us prose writers to guess how much the highest-earning online novel writers make in a year."
We were all wrong. Professor Cao said that Tang Jia San Shao earns over 100 million yuan a year, and there are four online writers in our province who earn over 40 million yuan a year. We all fainted.
The room erupted in laughter.
Chairman Zhang continued, "I've read online novels, too. They lack logic and simply rub people's intelligence into the ground."
Two other writers, one male and one female, also spoke up, saying, "They can write after graduating from elementary school. I don't know where they have so many readers."
I laughed heartily and said, "I'm not very talented, but I know a little bit about everything. Online novels are profitable because they have a 'long tail effect.'
Like a peacock spreading its tail, it spreads its wings to reveal a particularly large one. Besides making money online, they can also make a small profit by publishing physical books, a small profit by adapting them into TV series, a small profit by adapting them into comics, and the most profitable is by adapting them into games.
Just kidding, if you write good novels, you can make money just by lying down, just like a fallen woman.
Everyone laughed, except the young female writer, who blushed. Chen Xiaoxia not only blushed but also stared at me.
President Zhang asked, "Why can they make money even though they are not good at writing?"
I said, "This depends on the course of history. Tang poetry, Song lyrics, Yuan opera, Ming and Qing novels. Each literary genre has reached a peak that can never be reached again. Later, even the niche genre of essays was conquered by Mr. Shu Ren."
It's like our literature climbed Mount Tai, reached the peak, and then kept sliding down. You pure literature writers just slide slower, while online writers slide faster.
The reason why "Slide Faster" is so popular among readers is because of the emergence of television and the Internet.
Now, we don’t have to read a book to understand Europe and America, the TV pictures are directly vivid.
Nowadays, we don’t have that much time to read a paper book because our time has become fragmented.
Now that we know enough about the past, we are full of fantasies about the future of the world.
Online novels just happen to satisfy people's recreational needs, and reading on mobile phones and other terminals has basically eliminated the existence of paper books."
After listening to me, everyone said that my analysis was quite correct.
At this time, the male writer surnamed Liu said, "President Song, President Zhang is relatively old and doesn't accept online novels. I would like to write, especially after attending a class by Professor Cao, which really got me excited."
Teacher Wan, I heard that you can tell fortunes with words. Could you help me with that?
I shook my head and said, "This is something that can be accomplished by those who have the will."
He said, "I just wanted to go all out. If others can write well, why can't I? So, when I return, I plan to write full-time."
It made it difficult for me to answer him.
President Song said, "Teacher Wan is quite accurate in fortune-telling. Tell him a word and let him tell you."
Writer Liu said, "Just test the word 'write'."
I still shook my head and said, "No fortune telling tonight."
He was a little disappointed.
President Song said: "We two old comrades still insist on creating pure literature. For example, Shanhong often rewards me."
I said, "It's as he should be. Ma Weidu spent 20,000 yuan to buy someone else's bamboo basket, and everyone said he got a loss.
Teacher Ma said, if you don’t buy it and he doesn’t buy it either, people will no longer be interested in making such excellent works, and this unique skill will be lost.
I rewarded President Song’s article because he wrote well. If I don’t support him, he will lose interest.”
Chen Xiaoxia said: "I have one too. Please pay attention to it and ask Teacher Wan to reward me. My articles are also well written."
Everyone started chatting about other things. Then Mingbai called and told me the news: Director Shen had decided to run for the position. He had seen it on the department's website.
I walked into the study and said to Bai Ming, "It's the same thing I told you last time. Don't get involved in any discussions. If anything happens, call me immediately."
He said, "I should have asked you to do a fortune telling. You support him, right?"
I said, “I’ll tell you later.”
After leaving the study, President Song saw that I was busy and stood up to say goodbye. I sat on the sofa, feeling depressed.
The character "Yang" is very bad. I told him that the bosses under him would do bad things. Why did he still get involved?
Fame and fortune, fame and fortune, are too great a temptation for a person.
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