Exciting 1979!

Chapter 135: The Battle for Wei Ming! (Guaranteed 1 update!)

"How many?"

"Eight, eight hundred thousand!"

In Shanghai, at the editorial office of Harvest, Li Xiaolin is discussing the first print circulation of the latest issue of People's Literature with other editors, and everyone is surprised.

80, not only surpassing the highest circulation of Harvest, but also breaking the record of People's Literature. How can they be so confident?!

There are many reasons for the confidence of People's Literature. First of all, it is a monthly magazine, each issue is small in size and the unit price is low, only 40 cents.

Bimonthly and quarterly magazines such as "Harvest" and "Contemporary" basically started at the same time and are more challenging to readers' pockets, so "People's Literature" is more likely to achieve high sales.

Then there is the quality of this issue, with two masterpieces of reform literature, one of which is the sequel to "Director Qiao" which caused a huge sensation last year, and Wei Ming's animal series received unanimous praise from the editorial department.

Moreover, during the first printing, the songs in the novel were suddenly recorded and began to be widely circulated through the central and Yanjing radio stations.

With such an advantage, 80 is just their bottom line.

An editor asked: "Xiaolin, do you think the circulation of People's Literature will exceed one million?"

The first literary magazine to reach a circulation of one million?
This title is enough for People's Literature to be proud of for decades.

Just as I was thinking about it, Editor Kong came back with a stack of magazines, shouting as he walked, "I bought it!"

The editors immediately gathered around him. This was the issue of "People's Literature" that he had bought on behalf of several editors, including Li Xiaolin.

After getting the magazine, Li Xiaolin started reading it immediately. Some people read "The Sequel to Director Qiao" first, but she read Wei Ming's "The Sheep Class" first.

The story begins with a group of undisciplined rural primary school students, the so-called "sheep-herding class". Several vivid images of naughty children are created at the beginning, but what impressed Li Xiaolin more were the principal and his son, the village chief, a very subversive father and son, but thinking about that crazy era, they seemed very normal.

Then the male protagonist, music professor Mr. Zhong, appeared. This image is eye-catching. He looks like a very optimistic person.

Although the injuries on his body showed how much hardship he had endured, and although he once asked the question "Where is spring?", he always treated people with a smile, and his attitude of finding joy in adversity was even more admirable.

For example, when he first appeared on the stage, the place where he lived was leaking everywhere because of the rain. He placed bowls and pots to collect the water. When the rain stopped, the water did not pour out, but instead adjusted the sound according to the depth of the water in the containers, making these pots and bowls into musical instruments. He then improvised a song with chopsticks and secretly recorded the melody he had just created.

Wei Ming obviously really understands music. His description is very detailed, as if there is really a beautiful melody floating out of the text.

Li Xiaolin suddenly realized that the title of the first chapter was "Where is Spring". He seemed to have heard a song with this name recently, a nursery rhyme sung by a little girl.

She continued reading and found out that in order to avoid hard labor, Teacher Zhong and the principal hit it off and took over the shepherd class which initially had only three students.

At the beginning, Mr. Zhong did not give himself any sense of mission as an educator. What he thought at that time was, these three cannot run away too!

So, being playful by nature, he tried his best to coax the three primary school students around. After returning home, they began to spread the word about how good Teacher Zhong was. As a result, more and more students came, and the following story unfolded naturally.

The second chapter is called "The Little Girl Picking Mushrooms". Li Xiaolin was surprised. How could it be another nursery rhyme that he had heard before?

Could it be that Wei Ming listened to these songs and came up with the idea to write such a story about a music teacher and elementary school students?
As I continued reading, I discovered that the "Little Girl Picking Mushrooms" was actually created by the male protagonist, Teacher Zhong, for a female classmate who had dropped out of school.

Since there is no mark as a "quote" here, it can only be the original lyrics written by the author Wei Ming!

Li Xiaolin continued reading and found that the two songs in the chapters, "Little Grass" and "Planting the Sun", were actually created by the protagonist of the novel!
Now Li Xiaolin can basically confirm that the songs he heard recently were all composed by Wei Ming, and should be the by-products of his special creation for writing novels.

But the by-products are so powerful!
How many surprises does this young man have in store!

The key is to write beautifully. For many people, including Li Xiaolin, music is dispensable, but for Mr. Zhong, music is indispensable in his life.

So in addition to using bowls and pots to simulate percussion instruments, he would also make bone flutes out of animal leg bones and play "Farewell" for his students. When spring came, he would make a whistle for each student out of the bark of weeping willow branches, and would take his students into the wild to listen to the music of nature.

The vivid and interesting description even made Li Xiaolin begin to waver. It seemed that music was really interesting, but they had never been exposed to interesting music. In their lives, music mainly played an educational role.

Although the story is light-hearted, Wei Ming has not forgotten that this is a piece of scar literature. Under the light-hearted and restrained main story, there are also hidden plots such as the reason why Teacher Zhong was demoted for protecting the ancient music scores, and his good friend Teacher Yu who committed suicide because he could not bear the humiliation, and his wife divorced him with the children in order to draw a clear line with him. These dark plots are cleverly interspersed in the story, making people want to cry while laughing.

Very clever! So clever!
Li Xiaolin once again applauded Wei Ming's superb narrative skills. Some editors looked at her and smiled tacitly, obviously they were also watching "The Shepherd Class".

After reading "The Sequel to Director Qiao", some editors praised Jiang Zilong's sophisticated writing style and quickly opened "The Shepherd Class".

It was not until the last chapter of the story that Teacher Zhong finally had the day when his reputation was restored. He took his students to walk in the spring fields, looking at the smiling children. He finally got the answer to the question in the first chapter: "Where is spring?"

"In the fields of hope!" But Teacher Zhong had to leave after all. He left his most precious kindness and attitude towards life to these children. He should have gone on the road alone, but in the end he couldn't help himself and took away a fatherless and motherless orphan, Chenpi. From then on, he was no longer alone.

Li Xiaolin wiped away the tears of happiness and satisfaction at the end.

"That's great, really!"

She felt that Wei Ming had reached a new peak after "The Shepherd".

Compared with his vigorous and fresh debut work "The Story of Two Donkeys", his later works "The Horse Herder" and "The Shepherd Class" already have some masterly style. He should have no rivals in the field of novellas.

It’s a pity that these two articles are from "Contemporary" and "People's Literature". No wonder "People's Literature" had the confidence to print 80 copies in the first print run. This one article alone would be enough!

After other editors finished reading, everyone immediately started a heated discussion about "The Sheep Class". Few people discussed "Director Qiao" and no one discussed "Chen Huansheng". No one had seen the third novel yet.

In addition, many people mentioned several songs they had heard recently. Some people explicitly stated that the lyricist and composer of the song "In the Fields of Hope" was Wei Ming, and some even turned on the radio to listen to the replay.

"In the Fields of Hope" and "Where is Spring" are also the most widely spread and highest replay rates among Wei Ming's five songs.

One is simple and easy to learn, the other is profound.

Lao Kong, who was sitting opposite Li Xiaolin, said regretfully, "It would be better if this manuscript was given to our Harvest. Maybe the March issue could create a new record."

Others simply suggested to Li Xiaolin: "Hurry up and contact Wei Ming. You must get his next novel! If it's too late, I guess he'll have to start with October or Flower City."

Li Xiaolin thought it made sense. Why should he be so reserved at this time? Wei Ming's quality was so stable that he was simply a booster for circulation.

She called the South Gate of Peking University directly and told him that if Wei Ming could finish writing it this month, she would let him jump the queue in March!

Yenching, Peking University.

The young man who answered the phone looked at Zhang Dening in front of him and gave a helpless bitter smile.

"Oh, Editor Li from Harvest, right? Our Brother Ming is not here and hasn't come back to work yet. Okay, you tell me and I'll remember..."

He took out a notebook, which contained several pages of information about the people and events who had called Wei Ming.

After hanging up the phone, Zhang Dening asked with a smile: "Xiao Duan, there have been a lot of people calling Wei Ming recently, right?"

The gatekeeper Xiao Duan smiled and said, "Sister Zhang, you saw it too. I received two calls from Brother Ming in a short while."

The previous one was "Flower City" in Guangzhou.

Zhang Dening said, "Can you put me at the front and tell him to call Yenching Literature and Art first when he comes back?"

"No problem, we are all from Peking University."

"Haha, you boy, you have a future!"

Not long after Zhang Dening left, Biaozi, with gauze on his head, and Xiaomei, with her arm in a shackle, came back from patrol.

Xiao Duan hurriedly said, "You two stay, there is another letter from Brother Ming."

"Letters from readers, right? Give them to us."

Now these letters are mainly from readers of "The Shepherd", but after all, it has been more than a month, and the number of letters per day has been greatly reduced, but the second-hand cabinet that Wei Ming bought is already full, and now all these letters have to be placed on his bed.

"It may not be a letter from a reader. It's from Hong Kong, and there are two letters." Xiao Duan handed the letter over.

Biaozi and Xiaomei were immediately cheered up. Before they left, Brother Ming had told them that if there were any letters from Hong Kong, they must keep them properly.

So the letter that Zhu Lin had sent from Yunnan was put together with letters from ordinary readers, but these two letters were properly kept.

However, the two were still very curious and read the envelope thoroughly.

There were two letters. One seemed to be written by a girl with soft handwriting, and the name of the girl was "Amin".

The other one seemed to be written by an old man, with very strong handwriting, and his name was "Old Ghost"...

(End of this chapter)