Backtracking to the Age of Literature and Art

Chapter 640 Crazy (seeking a monthly pass)

Since the reason why Wang Xiaobo did not agree to sign the contract was related to housing, and now that Ruan Xiaohu's housing has basically been resolved, his problem will naturally be resolved.

"After going back this time, I'll take you to find Lao Wu and make an appointment with him," Bi Feiyu said.

Wang Xiaobo didn't refuse this time, nodded and said, "Okay, I've already taken a look at it. There is a good location on the fourth floor. It's right above Yu Hua's house, and it's not far from Mo Yan's house."

Hearing Wang Xiaobo talking about the location of the house, Yu Dong and the others looked at each other and laughed. Wang Xiaobo sometimes thinks very differently from ordinary people. , but this time it seemed extremely realistic.

Before the contract was signed, he had already taken care of the house.

Yu Hua and Mo Yan gave thumbs up almost at the same time.

Mo Yan joked with a smile, "Xiaobo is called planning for a rainy day."

……

Yu Dong's first stop for this autograph session was not New York, which was voted No.1, but Chicago, the third largest city.

At [-]:[-] p.m. local time on August [-], Yu Dong and the others came out of the Chicago airport and went to the Klein Sun Hotel, a five-star hotel located north of Michigan Avenue known as the Magnificent Mile, surrounded by luxury stores and hotels.

Needless to say, the name of Michigan Avenue, as soon as they entered Michigan Avenue, they saw an old water tower that looked like a castle.

Now Michigan Avenue is very lively, the road is bustling with people's heads of various colors everywhere.

Every August, Michigan Avenue is very lively, because at this time, various activities will be held here, fashion shows, food events, concerts... and the most attractive shopping carnival for consumers.

And Yu Dong and the others will make their first stop in Chicago, not only because of the bustling Michigan Avenue in August, but also because Amazon Bookstore opened the first physical bookstore in Michigan.

As Amazon's first bookstore, both Amazon and Deep Space have devoted a lot of effort, and it took a year and a half from site selection to decoration.

The renovation of the bookstore was completed last month, but it has not been opened for a long time, so that Dong and the others came to warm up the bookstore.

The car had just passed the "old water tower", when Yu Haiguo suddenly pointed out the window and shouted, "Mom, there are Chinese characters."

Chen Hong was still discussing the architectural style of the "Old Water Tower" with Fu Jing next to her. When she heard her son calling, she turned her head and looked out the window, and Fu Jing followed her to look out.

A huge poster was posted on the outer wall of a shop on the side of the road. There were two very prominent Chinese characters on the poster on the blue background: old books.

Next to "Old Books", there is a line of numbers: 40000000.

Seeing the Chinese characters on it, Fu Jing laughed, "It's true."

Others also looked at it one after another. The poster was so conspicuous that they could still see it clearly after the car had traveled a long way.

Wang Xiaobo said, "This should be the Amazon Bookstore."

Bi Feiyu nodded, "Probably, these two words are big enough."

Mo Yan said with emotion, "Not only is the word big, but the string of zeros behind it is also long enough."

Yu Hua smiled, "This poster can still be used when the sales volume of "Old Book" reaches [-] million in the future, just add a zero after it."

"Tsk tsk, [-] million, you really dare to think about it. But these two words seem familiar."

"If you are not familiar with Chinese characters, it will be bad."

"No, I mean this style."

Green, who was in charge of welcoming them this time, first signaled the driver to slow down, then smiled and said to Yu Hua and the others: "The teachers guessed right, this is Amazon's first bookstore, and these two words are also based on YU The scale of the handwriting is magnified, so Teacher Yu Hua will feel familiar."

Yu Hua suddenly said: "Let me just say, just look at the familiarity of these two characters. It turned out to be the handwriting of Yuanwai, but most people here don't know Chinese characters. Will it be discounted in publicity and promotion? I see that under these two Chinese characters There is no English translation either."

Green pushed his glasses and explained: "When designing this poster, someone did raise this issue at the meeting. We also discussed it seriously, and finally came to the conclusion that it is not possible. First of all, the two Chinese characters of old book It can be said that it has become the two words most familiar to the American people, because they can be seen in many places this year. Secondly, this can also arouse the curiosity of others. Of course, the reason why we came to this conclusion is not only It was a discussion out of thin air, but also an experiment.”

"Is this still possible for experiments?" Chen Hong asked curiously while hugging Yu Haiguo.

Green nodded: "Well, we tried to release this poster on Amazon's official website first, and the feedback we got exceeded our imagination. After browsing the photos, [-]% of people asked about the two posters on the photo. The meaning of Chinese characters."

"Ten percent doesn't seem like much."

"There are already a lot, and there are not many people who speak on the shopping website. This ratio has completely exceeded our expectations."

"In that case, it's true." Wang Xiaobo nodded.

Green smiled and continued: "In addition, some time ago, Amazon's official website also held an event called Vocabulary Popularity Survey Voting in Various Languages. 'Old book' has not only become the most familiar vocabulary for Americans, but also has far more votes. surpassed the most popular words in other languages ​​such as Spanish and French."

In fact, there are still some things that Green did not say. Amazon’s voting activity this time is not fair. Only five words were selected for each language to vote for netizens.

In terms of Chinese characters, except for "old books", other words are not competitive. When almost all voters voted for Chinese characters, they voted for the familiar "old books".

In other languages, the few words provided by Amazon are not hot words, and the popularity is almost the same, so the votes will be scattered.

In addition, Amazon has been promoting "used books" for a period of time, and Amazon users know more about "used books". The combination of these factors has created the result of "used books".

But ordinary netizens don't know, they only know that the result is that "old book" has not only become the most familiar Chinese character for Americans, but also the most familiar foreign language vocabulary for Americans.

People like to follow suit, whether they have read "Jishu" or not, seeing that the two Chinese characters "Jishu" are recognized by so many people, naturally they are not far behind, and want to know these two characters, So during this period of time, the word "old book" has become more popular in the United States, and people can hear people discussing it everywhere.

……

When Yu Dong and the others drove past the Amazon bookstore, there was a boy and a girl standing side by side looking up at the huge poster on the outside wall of the bookstore.

"Jessica, do you know what these two Chinese characters mean?" Hassen asked with a smile.

"Hardison, please don't test me with questions that my grandma already knows the answer to."

Hardison said with a smile: "Recently, I am actually learning Chinese, and the teacher also taught us these two characters. He also told me that the two Chinese characters on this poster were written by YU himself...Of course, what I mean Yes, after YU wrote it, others enlarged his writing."

Jessica glanced at Hardison, and felt that his explanation in the second half of the sentence was nonsensical. No one really thought that such a large character would be written by YU himself.

In fact, Los Angeles is also a stop of YU's signing tour this time, and the second stop after Chicago is Los Angeles, but Jessica and Hardison still flew two to three thousand kilometers to Chicago, except that they wanted to meet YU sooner. In addition, I also want to see Amazon, the first offline bookstore.

Opening the bookstore next to the old water tower, and on such a large scale, I have to say that Amazon is indeed very bold.

It is not easy to make money opening a bookstore of this size on Michigan Avenue, where land is at a premium and surrounded by luxury stores and high-end hotels.

However, it can be seen that Amazon does not intend to operate this bookstore as a general bookstore.For Amazon, this physical store is more like a means of publicity. It can be said to be unique on Michigan Avenue. The huge poster can be seen from a long distance. When people mention the old water tower in the future, there is a high probability that it will also mention it. One sentence Amazon Bookstore.

In addition, after the Amazon bookstore came out, a lot of activity announcements in the bookstore were also released one after another.

YU’s signing event is a good start, and Amazon Bookstore will hold various activities in the future, and the signing events of George Martin, Rowling, Mark Levi, and Oates have already been confirmed.

Speaking of Mark Levy, I have to mention one thing.

Although Mark Levy is not very well-known in the United States, his novel "If It's True" became popular all over the country as soon as it was published in France. top of the list.

In just a few months, "If This Is True" has sold the copyrights of more than a dozen countries, and Spielberg also spent 220 million US dollars to buy the film and television adaptation rights of this movie. It was made into a movie.

A few days ago, when Spielberg was chatting with Jimmy, he also talked about this book and Yu Dong by the way. Spielberg expressed his sincere admiration for Dong's vision.

From George Martin to Rowling, and then from Rowling to Mark Levy, as long as people who are valued by YU seem to have succeeded, and they are not ordinary successes.

Mark Levy has just come out now, and his grades are very good at the beginning, and it is hard to say later, but the grades of Rowling and George Martin are real. In the book market in the past few years, the existence of these two people can be compared There are only a handful of them.

Of course, Yu Dong who dug out the two of them was one of them, and he was also the one standing at the top.

Jessica looked at the old water tower next to it, then looked in the direction of the bookstore, and then said to Hardison, "Let's take a stroll around before the autograph session starts today."

Hardison nodded heavily, then took out a map from his backpack, and gestured on it with his hand: "I have already studied it, we are now at this location, starting from here and heading south..."

……

Yu Dong and the others arrived at the hotel, took a short rest, and then went to a nearby restaurant to have a meal together.

After eating, a group of people wandered casually on Michigan Avenue.

The Michigan Avenue under the night is very lively. There are shops next to each other, and tourists shuttle through it. Everyone is enjoying the excitement and prosperity under the neon lights.

Different from others, Yu Dong and the others didn't pay much attention to the row upon row of buildings and the dazzling array of products in the window, but paid more attention to all kinds of tourists.They didn't do it deliberately, but it's an occupational disease. After writing novels for a long time, they always want to observe and study people involuntarily.

People's behaviors, people's motives, people's laughter and joys and sorrows, all of these may appear in their works inadvertently.

Walking and walking, they came to the bottom of the old tower.

Compared with the daytime, there are not many people under the old tower at night, and the activities are more abundant. When Yu Dong and the others arrived, they heard the sound of a saxophone. They thought it was a street artist performing, but after listening for a while, everyone felt Something's wrong, this saxophone is really unflattering, it's not even as good as Feng Ming's dog barking.

Several people followed the sound and looked closer. It turned out that an old white man was practicing saxophone, and there was a score in front of him.

Yu Dong and the others listened for a while, but couldn't accept it, so they continued to walk forward.

After walking past the old water tower, we arrived at the Amazon Bookstore, which has not yet officially opened.

Although the bookstore is not open, the facade is brightly lit, and the posters on the outer wall are also illuminated, which can be seen from far away at night.

Yu Dong and the others stood outside the glass wall and looked inside for a while, but they didn't see anything special, just like an ordinary bookstore.

Walking around the glass exterior wall to the door, everyone was surprised to find two young people sitting on the steps.

These two young men were probably in their early 20s, wearing peaked caps at night, and were bowing their heads to say something.

Sensing that someone was approaching, the two young men moved a little closer to the door, as if someone was trying to steal something from them.

Wang Xiaobo glanced at the lock on the door, stepped forward and asked, "Hello, are you waiting for the bookstore to open? But we heard that the bookstore will not open until tomorrow."

One of the young men raised his head, glanced at the lower half of Wang Xiaobo's face along the brim of his peaked cap, and said, "We know the door won't open until tomorrow, but we want to get the first autograph, so we line up here."

Wang Xiaobo first grinned in surprise, and then asked with a smile: "Are you worried that we will take your place?"

The young man smiled shyly, "Yeah."

Bi Feiyu, who was standing in the back, translated the conversation between Wang Xiaobo and the young man to Yu Hua and the others, and then Yu Hua said in shock, "Tsk tsk, these two people are really good, it's only nine o'clock, and they need at least Stay here for ten hours. And in the middle of the night, aren't you sleepy?"

　After typing, I looked at the time in the lower right corner. It was already June [-]th. I don’t know if anyone who is reading this book has taken the college entrance examination.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)