50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 427: Three Books Written for One Visit
"Well then, sir, I'll head out now."

"Okay, Comrade Zhiwei, thank you for your contribution today. I will recommend you for commendation if things go well in the future."

The leader's words had a hidden meaning. On the surface, he was thanking him for proposing the "food plan," but his real thought was to thank him for finding so many ears.

"Sir, it's my job, it's what I do." He belonged to the military officer rank, so finding ears was exactly what he was doing.

After leaving the leader's office, Sun Zhiwei greeted his new colleagues along the way before entering his own small office.

His official position is now Second Secretary, responsible for cultural exchange work, but Moscow is not very friendly right now, so this job has been difficult to carry out.

The topic he chose in the leader's office just now wasn't random; using food as a bridge to open up communication channels is a viable approach that will work in many parts of the world in later generations.

It's not just about food; many traditional cultures serve as effective bridges for communication between different regions.

Just like Mr. Mei's visit to the United States in 1930, which became a successful case of "Peking Opera diplomacy" between China and the United States.

When Mr. Mei decided to go to M, he did not set off immediately, but made preparations for it several years in advance.

Beyond fundraising, his think tank also compiled a 60,000-70,000-word book, "The Organization of Chinese Opera," before the trip to help people in the US understand Peking Opera in advance.
The book provides a detailed introduction to eight aspects of Peking Opera: singing and dialogue, movements, costumes, helmets, beards, facial makeup, stage props, and music.

Then they compiled a biography of Mr. Mei.

It includes Mr. Mei's family background, the origin and status of Peking Opera female roles, Mr. Mei's creations and his status in Chinese opera, and Mr. Mei's international exchanges and influence.

The book contains over 4 words and includes many photographs and paintings.

In addition, Mr. Mei's visiting team specially wrote more than one hundred articles to be sent to various newspapers for publicity, and also wrote dozens of speeches for Mr. Mei to receive journalists.

These books and writings played a significant role in promoting Mr. Mei's visit to M.

However, compared to words, pictures and photographs are more likely to give the public a direct and intuitive experience.

In Sun Zhiwei's view, this is because people in the United States have a low level of education and may not be able to understand written texts. Therefore, it is necessary to provide more picture books to make it easier for them to understand the profound art of Peking Opera.

Even if you can't understand the text, you can surely understand the pictures, right? Mr. Mei is really going all out for these foreign barbarians.

For this purpose, they also wrote a book specifically about Peking Opera, titled "An Overview of Chinese Opera Art".

The book contains nearly two hundred scrolls and more than 1,900 illustrations.

These illustrations comprehensively depict aspects of Chinese opera, including theaters, costumes, headwear, beards, facial makeup, props, weapons, musical instruments, and dance movements.

In particular, the "Body Movement Dance Manual" is the most distinctive part of the entire manual.

To help audiences in Country M accept the singing style of Chinese opera, the team even transcribed the songs for the upcoming performances into musical notation.

Let foreigners read the sheet music first, and let them try playing it on some Western instruments. As they gradually become familiar with and accustomed to it, it will naturally be easier for them to listen to.

Mr. Mei and his team put a lot of thought into arranging the performances during his visit to M.

In the years leading up to their trip, they made a list of the plays that overseas Chinese in the United States or foreigners visiting China for the first time.

After five or six years of statistics, a selection of plays favored by foreigners was finally identified. These included Mei Lanfang-style plays such as "Farewell My Concubine," "The Drunken Beauty," and "The Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers," as well as other plays like "The Gathering of Heroes," "The Empty City Stratagem," and "Catching and Releasing Cao Cao."

It can be said that Mr. Mei spent seven years preparing for this so that these barbarians in the West could understand Peking Opera, which shows his painstaking efforts.

It was precisely because of these meticulous plans and advance preparations that Mr. Mei's visit to M was a great success.

After watching Mr. Mei's performance, the cultural figures around Old M were all stunned, exclaiming "high art" and "oh my god!"

Pomona College in the United States and the University of Southern California also awarded Mr. Mei an honorary doctorate, which is a recognition from the local cultural community.

However, the 'food event' that Sun Zhiwei wants to organize is not that high-end, and there is no need to write several professional books for it.

We can only say that we're testing the waters first, to see what the higher-ups think about this kind of activity, and to see if it's effective.

After all, the current environment for our exchanges with Russia is worse than when Mr. May visited the United States, when anti-Han sentiment was rampant.

Didn't you see that the KGB's ears are practically hidden all over the building? Not only that, they've also placed many other positions in the surrounding residential buildings.

In the past two days, he not only inspected the embassy, ​​but also used spatial vision to survey the surrounding buildings.

In several nearby houses, at least ten groups were recording the information they were hearing non-stop.

Realizing he hadn't yet recorded the surrounding locations, he took out another piece of white paper and drew a simple plan, marking the ten surrounding locations.

He didn't write anything on the map, but simply drew a circle at the location of each of the ten windows of the surrounding houses, and wrote the numbers 1-10 inside the circles. He believed that Chief Yang would understand it at a glance.

That afternoon, he didn't go out; he stayed in his office writing a food plan.

There's no need to rush the peripheral locations; he plans to submit them along with the project plan to avoid frequently contacting superiors and attracting the attention of the KGB.

Without ruling out the large number of ears inside, we're currently like a sieve here, so it's best to be careful.

The following day, the head of the embassy secretariat arranged for the new staff member to go on a sightseeing trip to familiarize himself with the surrounding environment.

Sun Zhiwei thought this was a good opportunity to go out and explore. Although he remembered the map, he knew he couldn't go anywhere he'd never been before. He didn't want to get lost in Moscow if he misread the map.

So, the group of about ten newcomers, led by an experienced comrade familiar with the terrain, set off in a bus.

Today we plan to visit two famous tourist attractions: Red Square and Lenin's Mausoleum.

Although everyone has never been here before, they all know about Moscow from books and materials, and know that the two places are very close to each other, so they can finish looking at the sights in no time.

So some comrades suggested that we visit a few more tourist attractions.

So, several more options were added, and everyone was asked to vote on which one to choose.

The available locations are Nikolay Street and Tretyakov Passage, Lubyanka Central Children's Store, National Department Store, and National History Museum.

Sun Zhiwei voted for the Lubyanka Central Children's Store and added, "It's a good opportunity to buy a gift for the kids at home."

(End of this chapter)