Training the Heavens

Chapter 40 Germination
There are some rules to being a plagiarist. Fantasy works are fine, but realistic works must be consistent with your identity. Gao Jialin is just a college student who has just arrived in Shanghai from a rural area in northern Shaanxi. It would definitely be inappropriate for him to plagiarize "White Deer Plain" and "I and the Altar of Earth".

So Gao Jialin decided to choose suitable works based on his own situation and the current literary trends.

Nowadays, the literary field can be said to be flourishing. Scar literature, reform literature, and root-seeking literature are very popular, and excellent works are also born from time to time in other genres. Gao Jialin is not very interested in the three popular genres. He would rather write something positive.

When it comes to being positive, university life is the best topic. In today's university campuses, teachers have just emerged from the torrent and are eager to seize every opportunity to make up for the wasted years. Students study hard and discuss national affairs. This vibrant and flourishing scene is truly intoxicating. Unfortunately, there are not many articles that have recorded these so far, which is a pity.

Gao Jialin thought for a long time but couldn't come up with any classic literary works about university life. The most famous of them, "Wei Yang Ge", was written by a writer on the island and tells the story of the Southwest Associated University period.

Are readers not interested in university life? Obviously not, so what lies before Gao Jialin is a large amount of virgin land that has not yet been cultivated. It would be a waste if he did not come up with a few hoes.

So this article was written. He planned to use Gao Shuangxing from the TV series as the protagonist, and mix in some of Song Yunhui's college days in "The Great River", to write a novella reflecting the contemporary college students.

This article will be based on the theme of praising youth, so Gao Jialin originally wanted to name it "Long Live Youth". Before he started writing, he remembered that Wang Meng had already used this name. This work was written in the 1950s and tells the passionate youth life of the senior girls in Beijing No. 7 Girls' Middle School.

If "Long Live Youth" doesn't work, then he can only change to another one. Coincidentally, Gao Jialin heard the song "Young Friends Come to Meet" written by Zhang Meitong, composed by Gu Jianfen, and sung by Ren Yan on the school radio that day.

The line in the lyrics, "To whom does this beautiful springtime belong? To me, to you, and to our new generation of the 1980s," deeply attracted him. He felt that the lyrics of the song perfectly reflected the theme he wanted to express in the novel.

So I decided to use "Young Friends Come to Meet" as the name of this novel.

The protagonist of the novel is Sun Shaoping, who was born into a poor peasant family in northern Shaanxi. Gao Jialin directly borrowed the setting of "Ordinary World" and just moved the time a little bit later.

There is no need to be afraid of being scolded by Lu Yao, because I am now living in the world of Lu Yao's works. In this world, there is naturally no writer with the pen name Lu Yao.

At the beginning of the story, Sun Shaoping and his father Sun Yuhou were working in the fields at the village entrance. Suddenly, they heard villagers shouting that the postman had come to deliver the university admission letter, and Sun Shaoping had been admitted to a university in Shanghai!

In this clip, Gao Jialin copied the chapter "The Goose Father" from Zhiniao Village's "Rebirth of the God-level Scholar". This chapter is really well written, vividly depicting the joy of a dull and honest country father when he heard that his child was admitted to university.

A good article requires a striking opening, and the old father's goose-like running gait will surely impress the editor. Later, Sun Shaoping, with the money collected by the villagers of Sunjia Village, first rode a donkey cart, then a regular bus and finally a train, all the way from his village in northern Shaanxi to the bustling city of Shanghai.

The gully-ridden and fragmented Loess Plateau, the Guanzhong Plain with lush crops, the turbulent Yellow River, the Jiangnan region with its small bridges and flowing water, and the bustling Shanghai flashed by the car window one after another like movie scenes. The change of scenery also hinted that Sun Shaoping's life was about to enter a new stage.

When Sun Shaoping came to Shanghai College, he met many new classmates. Zhong Yuemin from Beijing was born in a high-ranking official family and was an idealist; Song Yunhui from Anyun Province was only sixteen years old and was a genius; Yu Shanqing from the same province as Song Yunhui was quite mercenary; Zhou Bingyi from the Northeast was old-fashioned and expressionless; Qi Tongwei from Handong Province was a handsome man.
On the girls' side, Tian Xiaoxia is free and easy, like a boy, and her dream is to become a journalist; Zhou Xiaobai comes from a wealthy family and has a bit of the pampered air of a young lady; Zhou Rong loves poetry and yearns for a rich spiritual world.
Character creation is crucial to a good novel. Gao Jialin has chosen several characters with distinct characteristics, which makes the novel half successful.

What follows is the various things that happened to them in college. At the beginning, Sun Shaoping, who came from a poor family, had narrow horizons, and couldn't even speak Mandarin well, was very inferior and had many misunderstandings and conflicts with these classmates with very different personalities.

Sun Shaoping slowly grew up in these conflicts and gradually adapted to college life. Zhong Yuemin, Tian Xiaoxia and others also discovered the bright spots in Sun Shaoping, and they gradually became friends.

At the end of the novel, Sun Shaoping and his friends including Zhong Yuemin, Tian Xiaoxia, Song Yunhui, Qi Tongwei and others were listening to the school radio on the playground and sang the song "Young Friends Come to Meet".

Gao Jialin spent more than a week to complete this novella of more than 80,000 words. He carefully copied the manuscript and sent it by registered mail to Zhang Lifeng in Beijing, asking him to help correct it.

Half a month later, Gao Jialin received a reply from Zhang Lifeng, in which he praised the novel highly. "Jialin, your progress has impressed me. I never thought you could produce such a good work in just one month!"

"This novel has distinct characters and vividly depicts the spiritual outlook of contemporary college students. The protagonist, Sun Shaoping, has grown up and is worthy of publication!"

"Considering that this novel describes the life of Shanghai university students, I recommend you submit to these magazines. First, Jinling's Youth. Founded in 1979, its mission is 'Young people write, young people read, serving contemporary youth, paving the way for unknowns, cultivating new literary talent, and inspiring people with excellent works.'"

"And there's your Shanghai-based magazine, 'Mengya,' which is the first original literary magazine for young people in China. Mr. Ba once wrote a congratulatory message for them: 'Any beautiful flower, any towering tree grows from a bud.' You are now a bud in the literary world, so it's fitting that you contribute to 'Mengya.'"

". "Youth Literature" . "Shanghai Literature"." Zhang Lifeng recommended a lot of magazines to Gao Jialin and attached the mailing address.

After looking through the list of magazines, Gao Jialin chose "Mengya" without hesitation because it was closer.

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(End of this chapter)