Back to 80: My literary life.

Chapter 688 Waiting for the Rice to Cook
"Big Breasts and Wide Hips"!
This is one of Mo Yan's representative works and also a very controversial work.

Since it was sent directly to Su Bin, let him make his own judgment.

After Yu Hua returned to Yenching, he quickly mailed the manuscript of "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood".

Fang Minghua sat in the study, drinking tea and watching attentively.

Before coming to this era, Fang Minghua had read this novel.

This is a touching story with mixed feelings of sadness and joy.

The story begins in the 20s. The protagonist Xu Sanguan is a young worker in a silk factory in the city. He is ambitious at work and responsible for his family. In order to solve the difficulties in life, he sold blood eleven times and overcame one difficulty after another in his life.

He overcame the storms and waves that fate imposed on him, but when he grew old and knew that no one wanted his blood anymore, his spirit collapsed.

His last book, To Live, sometimes makes people feel like he is the Chinese Beckett, who can never escape the tragic inevitability of unfortunate sacrifice.
In comparison, the core of "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" has more bright colors of hope.

This book is good overall, but it still has some shortcomings. The dialogues in the book are a bit long-winded. Perhaps in order to restore the way of speaking at that time, Fang Minghua feels that it can be more refined.

So I picked up a pencil and started to revise the parts of the manuscript that I thought were imperfect.

Use pencil - not pen. These are just personal opinions. It is up to the author to decide whether to adopt them or not.

Now, my identity is just a friend instead of the editor-in-chief of a magazine.

"Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" has only about 17 words in total. Fang Minghua spent three days reading it carefully, annotating and revising the parts he thought were inappropriate, and then sent it back to Yu Hua, with a letter attached saying that after the revisions, it could be sent directly to Shengshi Books.

Shengshi Books has been quite busy recently, publishing several books in succession. The first is the Chinese version of "Too Late", a novel by a British writer that was shortlisted for the best novel.

Although this novel did not win a major award in the end, its inclusion in the shortlist has proven its literary value. Moreover, it won last year's Booker Prize in the UK, which is also a major selling point for its promotion.

There is also Mo Yan's "Big Breasts and Wide Hips".

This book was very controversial within Shengshi Books, and Su Bin found it difficult to make a decision. In the end, he called Fang Minghua to seek her opinion and decided to publish it.

I also followed his advice: don't be too ostentatious in promoting this book, and refer to "Wasted City" and "The Golden Age".

Don't expect this book to bring huge economic benefits to the company all at once. Once you get the publishing rights, you can take it slow and steady.

Yu Hua also sent his revised version of "Xu Sanguan Selling Blood" and Jia Pingwa's "White Night". In addition, Lu Yao also sent his second novel "Collapse", which was finally published after five years of hard work.

This is a novel about officialdom, which is very consistent with the current trend of realistic novel writing popular in the literary world. This is also a book that Shengshi Books is focusing on promoting this year.

There is also Fang Minghua's "The Convenience Store of Sorrow".

The book began to be prepared for publication in December last year and was finally launched on the market in March this year.

This book is not listed in Shengshi Books' Rag Tiger Classic Series - instead, it has opened up a new series - "Rag Tiger Youth Literature".

This is another sub-brand under the Rag Tiger series - it is a natural extension of "Rag Tiger" into youth literature, and its main readers are college and high school students.

"Rag Tiger Youth Literature" pursues taste, but does not want to make it something that is too highbrow and unpopular. Fang Minghua's "The Convenience Store of Sorrow" is the opening work of the series.

This time, no seminar was held. Fang Minghua simply signed books and promoted the work at universities in the cities of Xijing and Yanjing.

Finally I can take a break.
The second day after returning from Yanjing was Friday, Fang Minghua called Bai Miao and Jia Pingwa and made an appointment with him to go fishing in Feng River, as he had recently become addicted to this entertainment.

But daughter-in-law Song Tangtang was a little unhappy when she heard this when she came home from work.

It's not that I'm against him fishing, but there are some things that haven't been completed yet. "Minghua, the TV series script hasn't been found yet." Song Tangtang muttered.

"Don't be anxious. You were exhausted last year. Take a good rest." Fang Minghua said with a smile.

"Hmph, that's just an excuse!" Song Tangtang was dissatisfied.

"I said it's not appropriate to film your novel Skywalker now, and you said it's a bit early to film Liu Jing's Parents' Love, so why don't you write me a script and film it!"

At the beginning of the year, Song Tangtang wanted to recommend Fang Minghua's "Skywalker" or "Parents' Love" but Fang Minghua rejected it after repeated consideration.

Now is not the time, wait a little longer.

Period dramas like "Parents' Love" can still arouse nostalgia among audiences even after several years.

These are not needed for the time being in the 1990s.

After hearing his wife bring this up, Fang Minghua immediately said, "Don't worry! After I finish fishing tomorrow, I will definitely write you a script that will absolutely satisfy you!"

"Really?" Song Tangtang stared at Fang Minghua with her beautiful eyes.

He suspected that this was just something her husband had blurted out.

"Really!" Fang Minghua looked confident.

In fact, he really hadn't thought it through.

Although I have several scripts in mind that would be very popular in the future, I always feel that now is not the right time.

"The Legend of Zhen Huan"?
"Story of Yanxi Palace"?
"My Fair Princess"?
The first two books both have female protagonists, which are not suitable for the tastes of today's audiences. The copyright of the latter novel is still in the hands of Qiong Yao.

Never mind, in order to be able to fish peacefully tomorrow, I’ll just promise my wife first!
Seeing her husband like this, Song Tangtang didn't know what to say.

To be honest, my husband has been very busy lately. He is hosting the Chinese Literature Award and recently went to Yenching University to sign and sell books. We can’t let him get too tired.

However, Shengshi Film and Television is now at the stage of waiting for the rice to cook!
It turned out that Song Tangtang followed her husband's advice and Shengshi Film and Television suspended film shooting this year to focus on the TV drama market.

Indeed, Song Tangtang has also tasted success in the TV drama market.

Although the company was established six years ago and has produced nearly ten films, most of them have high artistic value, and have won many awards, whether domestic Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Awards or foreign awards.

Not to mention the great director Zhang Yimou, even the emerging director Wang Quanan, who made two films adapted from Fang Minghua's novels, "The Weaving Girl" and "The Piano in a Factory", have won numerous awards.

In particular, "The Piano in a Factory" has won the "Best International Film Award" at the Miami International Film Festival and the "Art Exploration Award" at the Yanjing University Student Film Festival, and is now preparing to participate in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic - this is also one of the international A-class film festivals, held in July every year.

What is even more admirable is that the film did quite well at the box office - it grossed 850 million RMB, recovering the investment cost of 320 million RMB and even making a slight profit.

Wang Xiaoshuai's "Extreme Cold" won the International Film Critics Association Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, but this is a low-budget film with an investment of less than 80 yuan so the box office is negligible.

But in terms of the profits made by all the movies, it is not as good as that of a TV series "In the Name of People"!

Just after the TV series became a hit on CCTV, Song Tangtang, on behalf of Shengshi Film and Television, signed a second round of broadcasting agreements with five provincial TV stations including Yanjing and Guangdong Province, and sold them at a price of 20 per episode, making a profit of 4500 million in one go!
And he also participated in this year's Feitian Awards for TV Dramas!

There are also the three TV series "Desire", "Ordinary World" and "Yenjing People in New York" that were filmed earlier. Some TV stations are still broadcasting them. There are profits from broadcasting, which is incomparable to movies.

So I'm anxious.

(End of this chapter)