Literary Master 1983

Chapter 133 Final Exam

Kobayashi took the manuscript to Japan and showed it to the president of Iwanami Shoko.

“This is a novel written by Yu Che.”

The president, Toru Midorikawa, is a scholar-publisher who graduated from the Department of English and American Literature. He is proficient in editing and publishing and has a keen eye.

He obviously found it incredible: "I asked you to go to China, and I was prepared for you to stay for half a year or a year, but I didn't expect you to come back in just a week."

Xiao Lin said: "Yu Qie was annoyed by my constant urging him to submit his manuscript, so he wrote a short story to get it done, but after reading it, I thought it was better."

Midorikawa Toru weighed the manuscript roughly, and it was not light. He was holding the first draft in Japanese after translation, which he looked down upon.

"Bring me Yu Qie's original manuscript."

Xiaolin opened a folder and gave him the manuscript. Midorikawa Toru didn't understand Chinese, but he also weighed it and was even more surprised:

"Even if it's a short story, it's still a 40,000-50,000-word novel. Chinese is a very concise and concentrated language, and the same content can be written in far fewer words than in English. You mean, Yu Qie wrote so many words in just three or four days?"

In Midorikawa Toru's career, he has never met such a person.

After he finished reading the Japanese manuscript, he was completely shocked: this was a complete story. Although it was written in the Chinese background, the metaphors in it could be applied to the entire East Asia.

Moreover, the fox is also a very popular image in Japan, perhaps even more popular than in China.

This is such a great novel!

Midorikawa Toru immediately finalized the publication of the novel and sent the contract to Yu Qie.

In Japan, apart from light novels, the publishing process of orthodox novels is relatively complicated, requiring cooperation among authors, editors, designers, printers, binders, bookstores, etc. Books also need to be publicized and promoted in order to attract readers' attention.

The fastest time for a book is two to three months, and books from foreign countries may take another one or two months.

"Happy Hunting" is a short novel, and the time has been shortened to two months, with a tentative production schedule of 30,000 copies.

Midorikawa Toru also learned the lesson from his predecessor, Yamamoto Minoru:

Lu Xun's novels were published in Japan several times, but the first two times did not cause much response. Most people would think that Lu Xun was not popular in Japan. However, the Japanese businessman Yamamoto Minoru, who was in charge of publishing, judged that this was because the binding was not exquisite enough and there were not enough commercial advertisements.

The result was indeed so. After increasing the investment, Lu Xun's novels became an instant hit. The seven-volume Japanese edition of "The Complete Works of Lu Xun" was published one year earlier than the "Complete Works of Lu Xun" published in mainland China.

Yu Qi's novels are intended to imitate the path that Lu Xun once took.

Member Xiao Lin also said: "Yu Qie is a very noble person. He neither accepts gifts nor money. I stayed with him for two days, and sometimes he even treated me to a meal."

"Is it really?"

Xiao Lin nodded heavily: "It's true! He is a noble man and he won't bow down for a few pieces of silver."

Midorikawa Toru's thoughts were different from those of ordinary people: "This shows that you are not welcome by him. You should not go to China in the future."

"Ah? Then who will contact Yu Qie in the future? Who will come to him to urge him to submit the manuscript?"

"Next time we will ask a beautiful lady to come to Yu Qili to urge him to submit his manuscript. Kenjiro, how can a person not have weaknesses?"

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Yu Qie has been taking exams for two whole weeks since he returned to Yanjing.

The Economics Department of Yanda University was now full of talented people and masters, many of whom later directly or indirectly influenced the economic direction of this country.

Yanda was also the first university in China to introduce Western economics and econometrics, which resulted in Yu Qie's review content being limited to text, and basically mathematical in nature. The Department of Economics was divided into fast and slow classes, and Yu Qie was in the fast class, and the content he tested was even more difficult.

In short, after two weeks, Yu Qie rushed to the examination room.

The easiest subject was English, because the examiner was Wang Qiang, who stayed at the school to teach. He didn't care about anyone when he was grading. He would just peel off the seal that covered the names, and give full marks if he saw Yu Qie's name.

He is boys helping boys.

When Wang Qiang was a student, Yu Minhong often copied his homework, and then Wang Qiang got a good grade and Yu Minhong got an excellent grade.

The most troublesome subject was econometrics. There was a big econometric question and I was so dizzy calculating the cotangent that I finally made up an answer.

Department head Hu Daiguang, who was grading his paper, called Yu Qie to his office and said, "How can I grade you? You didn't answer one question correctly."

Shit, I miscalculated.

Hu Daiguang asked him: "Do you have any opinion on your trip to Japan? Give me your economic point of view."

Yu Qie said: "I feel that Japan and Southeast Asia have similarities. I call this the 'East Asian model'. The two main points are: the first is a very high investment rate, which is first supported by a high savings rate or a high inflow of foreign capital..."

"What about the second point?"

"The second point is that foreign trade occupies a very important position, with a high proportion of imports and exports."

Hu Daiguang rubbed his hands, temporarily satisfied with Yu Qie's answer.

"So what do you think we can learn?"

"We have similar natural endowments, and we can learn from them. What's different is that Japan has invested a lot of capital in industrial upgrading, while Southeast Asia has not. We should learn from Japan."

"anything else?"

"Japan also had capital controls for a long time, but when I left, the Ministry of Finance, which is responsible for formulating industrial policy, decided to relax these controls."

The Plaza Accord signed in history was not only about the appreciation of the Japanese yen, but also about a series of other matters. For example, the Americans ordered the Japanese to buy American cars and sell fewer Japanese cars, and set a quota.

Hu Daiguang concluded: "Industrial investment and capital control, these are what you can see, but why did Japan give up when you left?"

"The external cause was the pressure from the United States, and the internal cause was that the Ministry of Finance believed that they could reap the exchange rate dividend of the yen through the appreciation of the yen, while continuing to lower industrial costs at the same time."

To put it bluntly, it just wants to make the Japanese people suffer even more.

Hu Daiguang was very satisfied with Yu Qie's answer. In his opinion, as an economic man, Yu Qie did not mention things like "nationality" anymore, but analyzed it from a different angle.

This is good.

He said: "Many people in our Yanda University are well-versed in both Chinese and Western studies. They study Marxism-Leninism, Western economics, and can write poetry. A few years ago, a professor named He Xiaofeng wrote an article saying that our current economy only counts material production, not the service industry, and underestimates GDP..."

"——Many people opposed him, and the faculty also disagreed, calling him a capitalist running dog. Then, after He Xiaofeng learned Marxism, he believed that only counting material production was 'fetishism', which made the faculty members who studied Marxism speechless and afraid to speak out."

"What do I mean by saying this? I think it's good to do more things - even though your math level is not high, but those of us with high math level have neither gone to Japan nor will go to Thailand. It's useless to have the skills to slay dragons!"

"So, I gave you a passing grade, but I still hope you can pay more attention to your finances. You have such talent, if you don't make more use of your influence, you will regret it in the future."

Hu Daiguang can be said to have good intentions towards Yu Qie.

(End of this chapter)