Literary Master 1983

Chapter 180: Reunion

Yu Qie and Han Li looked at each other, and Han Li raised his eyebrows at him:
You guessed it right, it’s from our mainland.

Iced lemon tea is a drink that is especially popular among manual laborers in Hong Kong because it is refreshing in summer and can replenish salt. The man from Tianjin said, "Do you think I don't want to? It's 40 degrees in the container!"

He took out the wrinkled salary bag, the brown paper was stained with dark lines by sweat, "I sent an extra fifty dollars home this month..."

Yu Qi understood, oh, it turns out that he went south to work and earn money.

Then, the woman suddenly spoke in Cantonese: "How many hand creams can I buy for fifty dollars? My hands are stained with paint and it itches terribly. I may not get compensation if they rot."

Then he changed the subject and became very gentle: "You should speak Cantonese like me. If you can't speak Cantonese, you will always be a porter! Last month, a tea restaurant was recruiting people. I went to the interview with a few people. The boss heard someone say 'Lei Hou' sounded like 'deaf monkey' and laughed so hard that the barbecued pork shook on the chopping board!"

The man said helplessly: "I know I should learn Cantonese, but I can't. You said Hong Kong is full of gold! Is it really like that?"

The woman persuaded him: "As long as you learn Cantonese, a little English, and a skill, everything will be fine, and we can gain a foothold in Hong Kong."

"When will that happen? That's too difficult, really too difficult..."

The couple left while arguing.

Yu Qi thought, isn’t this the plot in “Sweet Honey”?
The men and women from the mainland who came to Hong Kong to work hard spent all their youth, and finally, more than ten years later, discovered that they would have lived a good life even if they had not come here. It seemed like everything was in vain. This is where all the absurdity of the world lies.

Han Li said: "Teacher Yu, guess whether the two of them can achieve the right result?"

I will do this!

"The woman speaks Cantonese and has apparently been hired as a waitress, but the man refuses to learn and keeps doing hard labor. Of course, there will be problems if this continues."

"You guessed right!" Han Li sighed deeply, "I have seen many such things in the years since I came to Hong Kong. Women seem to have one more choice, and they can get married, but men can only try their best, and in the end they are all bruised and battered. It is better for them to just make do with what they had back then."

Yu Qie deeply agrees: "She is young and doesn't know that the gift given by fate has already been secretly marked with a price."

"Stefan Zweig!" Peng Yan said excitedly, "This is his famous quote from The Queen of the Broken Head! Teacher Yu, you are indeed a writer."

This Peng Yan has a wide range of knowledge!

Being interrupted by the couple, the interview time with Xinhua News Agency was running out, so they just asked a few more questions and ended it.

Yu Qie went back to the hotel to write the novel "Sweet Honey". He finished the beginning in one afternoon. The story structure of "Sweet Honey" is quite similar to "A Way Out". Both span major events of several decades and end with a difficult question:

Should I stay or leave?

Neither the hero nor the heroine ended up settling in Hong Kong. After the mainland's economy developed, the heroine became a tour guide for mainland tourists to visit New York, while the hero became a chef and made chicken chop rice for many years. In the end, the two met again on the streets of a foreign country, with Teresa Teng's song "Sweet Honey" around them.

This represents the common emotional connection among Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and in Hong Kong and Macao.

Wang Meng, the current administrative goat of the Writers Association, has always believed that the shortcoming of Yu Qi's novels is that they are "too big, and the characters are too legendary and too awesome." Finally, he can write a few stories about the displacement of small characters.

The movie of the same name is one of the top ten best films of the year and a milestone in the history of Chinese films. The various images and foreshadowings are mind-blowing, and the script is extremely well-written.

The only bug is that the "Teresa Teng singing voice" in the film is not appropriate to use at this time in the novel. Cha Liangyong himself and the martial arts novel may be able to replace this image, but Yu Qie does not want to do so.

There are also some elements involving gray and black, and Yu Qiequan has changed them all to wealthy Chinese businessmen.

Finally, he chose Su Shi's "Water Melody" as a substitute for the Mid-Autumn Festival spent together, and the title of the novel naturally became "Reunion".

After the novel was published, the delegation and several comrades who had met at Xinhua Society read it one after another. Female comrade Peng Yan burst into tears after reading it: "Your story talks about reunion, but in fact they reunited at the last moment. The big things in it... the mainland economy is booming, relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong have eased, and everyone is free to visit relatives and friends... It represents your good wishes for the future."

Historically, it was Peng Yan who became friends with Teresa Teng herself, and after reporting and obtaining permission, she invited Teresa Teng to perform in mainland China.

Unfortunately, it was not completed due to various reasons.

Han Li was stunned after reading it. He must have remembered the mainland couple at that time.

"Just because you saw a quarrel in a tea restaurant, you wrote a novel? And it's so good and complete?"

He was so excited: "How much meaning is there in this? Xiaojun always brought Tianjin Mahua, and Li Qiao failed to sell Yangcheng rice cakes, which shows that mainland immigrants have poor cultural digestion in Hong Kong."

"The word 'love' does not appear in the entire novel, but it uses Su Shi's 'Water Melody', a poem that travels through time and space, to pour out all the emotions!"

He gave a thumbs up and said, "Well written!"

Yu Qie sent it to Zhang Shouren of October magazine by fax. The old man spent the whole day reading it, wrote a review report seriously, and then held a vote in the novel group, and it was passed unanimously.

After that, Qingpiaopiao sent two words to Yu Qie: "Send it!"

There were also smart people who realized that Cha Liangyong might be suitable for writing novels. If Yu Qie wrote a novel praising Cha Liangyong in it, why would Cha Liangyong keep pestering him?
"No."

That’s Yu Qie’s answer.

"why not?"

"Am I not a flatterer who writes soft articles?"

"What is soft article? What is flattery?"

It seems that Zha Liangyong's fans are indeed everywhere. The news spread widely, and eventually Zha Liangyong himself knew about it. He lost his appetite for a while, and Wen Ruian put pressure on him again: "You missed the opportunity to go down in history."

Cha Liangyong wanted to say, "I have already gone down in history", but not all of Yu Qie's novels are outstanding.

However, this was too wild and did not fit his idea.

Wen Ruian saw through it and continued to put pressure on him: "Mr. Cha, people have several opportunities to go down in history. Some opportunities are given by heaven, and some opportunities are earned by oneself... But there is no difference between the two pieces of gold."

Cha Liangyong lost his appetite and tried a series of health-preserving activities, such as playing Go and drinking tea, but none of them helped him improve his physical and mental health.

In the TVB studio, Cha Liangyong stood in front of Yu Qie to participate in this episode of "Happy Tonight". The two of them each received a notice fee of 3,000 Hong Kong dollars, which was equivalent to a month's salary for Hong Kong people at that time.

He asked Yu Qie in the backstage: "Yu Qie...that rumor?"

"What rumor?" Yu Qie asked with a smile.

Cha Liangyong suffered a loss in silence, but the show had already started.

"Good evening, everyone! Today we have two writers - Cha Liangyong, who writes about chivalry, and Yu Qie, a mainland writer who records Southeast Asia with his pen! What do you think of the Kowloon Walled City, a 'no man's land'? Is it a scar on Chinese culture, or a fertile ground for barbarism?"

"More specifically, what are the traditions and modernities of Chinese culture...what ideas can we come up with?"

(End of this chapter)