My era, 1979!

Chapter 28 "A Bustling Crowd"

"Bang! Bang!"

Someone knocked on the door with their knuckles, the force neither too light nor too heavy, more like knocking on an office door.

Xu Chengjun opened the door with a razor blade in his mouth and saw two strangers standing there.

The man wore a gray Zhongshan suit with worn-out cuffs, and a pair of black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. A smudge resembling fly droppings clung to the lenses, which added a touch of human warmth to his otherwise scholarly eyes.

The woman next to her was even more eye-catching. She wore light khaki flared pants with the hem brushing the ground, her wavy hair was held up with a silver hairpin, and she was twirling a Parker pen in her hand, the gold paint on the cap peeling off.

"Comrade Xu Chengjun?"

The man spoke first, his voice gentle yet resilient.

"I am Chen Jianguo from Hefei Evening News, and this is my colleague Zhai Ying."

Zhai Ying tilted her head and smiled, her eyes sparkling with light: "I'd heard that the author of 'Scales' was an educated youth sent to the countryside, but I didn't expect him to be so handsome!"

"They're much better than the editors at our newspaper. They're always hunched over their manuscripts, their backs are all hunched over!"

This woman's tone of voice and appearance are unlike anything from this era.

This is an unspeakable boldness in this era.

But
It's pretty good.

Xu Chengjun took the razor blade out of his mouth, rubbed his fingertips on the door frame, and suddenly laughed out loud.

"Comrade Zhai, you flatter me. But Editor Chen, I've long admired you. That kid Ma Shengli always talks about your cousin for ages whenever he mentions him!"

He stepped aside to let the two of them into the house.

"Oh, right, I also have to thank those two movie tickets for 'Little Flower'. The movie was really good. To be honest, if it weren't for your help, my essay 'Libra' would probably still be sleeping in the pile of scrap paper."

His tone was warm and teasing: "Speaking of which, I still owe you two cousins ​​a meal. Once I'm done with this busy period, I'll definitely treat you to a Jianghuai noodle shop, extra spicy, all you can eat!"

"Of course, Editor Zhai's help will definitely be needed. We'll go together then!"

As soon as Chen Jianguo stepped over the threshold, his glasses slid down the bridge of his nose to the tip, and he quickly pushed them up with the back of his hand.

"Comrade Xu, you're too kind!"

He took something out of his canvas bag; it was a stack of letters.

One of the ropes broke, and the envelopes spilled onto the table.

"That kid Ma Shengli talks about you all the time at the newspaper office, so I took this opportunity while delivering a letter to come and see you, this rising star!"

"Come on, Editor Chen!"

Zhai Ying interrupted, the silver hairpin shimmering in her curly hair.

"You clearly wanted to come and see the show, but you dragged your cousin along as a pretext."

She sat down on the bed, the hem of her bell-bottoms brushing against the edge.
"But seriously, Comrade Xu, your room is even messier than our editorial office!" She pointed to a pile of scrap paper on the corner of the table. "Comrade Xu, is this where you wrote 'Weighing the Stars'?"

Xu Chengjun was pouring water into an enamel mug when he heard this and laughed: "If Comrade Zhai saw the state of the brigade, he would know that mine is considered clean."

Zhai Ying laughed along; "Then I'll definitely visit the place where Comrade Xu was sent to work in the countryside when I have the chance. But speaking of which, your 'Weighing the Stars' is really well written. The number of reader letters has broken all our manuscript history records!"

"Our editor Chen was exhausted!"

Chen Jianguo had already sorted the letters. The top one had a crookedly drawn scale with the word "fairness" written on the scale beam: "This was sent by a kid from Hongxing Elementary School. He said his dad read the newspaper and stopped putting lead weights into the scale."

He suddenly lowered his voice and pulled a brown envelope from his bag. "And this too, it's from the prefectural committee. They want to invite you to a symposium."

"Oh, so they're trying to recruit us?" Zhai Ying raised an eyebrow.

"I bet five cents they'll make you change 'Buy two ounces, get half an ounce free' to 'Love the collective, operate with integrity.'"

"Editor Zhai!" Chen Jianguo's face darkened. "Could it be that they genuinely think the article is well-written?"

"We're family, so let's not mince words!"

Xu Chengjun watched the two editors bickering.

He also laughed along with her.

Suddenly, I feel that this era has become much more vibrant.

Before he could finish speaking, a commotion suddenly erupted in the corridor.

Three young people in blue school uniforms crowded at the entrance. The girl in the lead had her hair tied in a high ponytail, the ends of which brushed against the "Anhui University" badge on her chest.

She stood there so gracefully at the entrance of 302!
“Comrade Xu Chengjun!” Her face flushed red, and her voice trembled. “We’ve looked for you twice. You weren’t here the day before yesterday, and yesterday we heard you went to the Youth Daily.”

"Lu Xiaoxiao, keep your voice down!"

The bespectacled boy next to her tugged at her sleeve, but couldn't help leaning forward himself. "Hello, Comrade Xu, my name is Zhou Mingyuan, this is Zhao Lei, and this is Lu Xiaoxiao. We are first-year students in the Chinese Department of Anhui University. We would like to ask you how to write a sentence like 'The scales were smoothed and then engraved again'."

Xu Chengjun looked at them and suddenly remembered what he looked like when he was twenty.

In a classroom in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Jinan University, sunlight streamed through the blinds onto the textbook "A History of Modern Literature," where he filled the margins with the words "Writer's Dream."

"It's not really asking for advice," Xu Chengjun said, pulling up some stools for them. "We're all about the same age, so let's exchange ideas. I need your opinions too!"

What do you guys think of the line "pumpkin pulp sticks to the signboard"?

"That's brilliant!" Lu Xiaoxiao exclaimed, her ponytail whipping like a little whip. "It captures Old Zhou's stubbornness while also revealing his shrewdness in managing daily life."

“I think it’s a metaphor,” Zhou Mingyuan pushed up his glasses. “The pumpkin pulp doesn’t stick well, just like the policies back then—they looked strict, but actually…”

"You two are going to argue again!" Zhao Lei suddenly spoke up, his voice muffled. "Comrade Xu will definitely think it's just written to be true."

Zhai Ying suddenly laughed, her silver hairpin gleaming in the sunlight: "These three kids actually know more about writing than those old hands at our newspaper."

She slipped a piece of candy into Lu Xiaoxiao's hand. "Little girl, don't listen to that guy with glasses' nonsense. Writing an article is like making a cotton-padded coat; you only know how well it's stitched once you put it on."

Chen Jianguo was taking sunflower seeds out of his bag when he heard this and glared at her: "Don't set a bad example for young people."

But he still grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and stuffed them into Zhou Mingyuan's hand.

Lu Xiaoxiao blushed as she accepted the candy and stammered, "Thank you, comrade!"

Xu Chengjun laughed and pointed to the two editors, saying, "These two are editors from our Hefei Evening News. This is Editor Chen Jianguo, and this is Editor Zhai Ying. The good articles they handle can stretch from Huaihe Road to Mingjiao Temple. Listening to them talk is much better than what I, a self-taught editor, have heard."

At this moment, Zhao Lei suddenly raised his hand and asked a question that surprised Xu Chengjun: "Comrade Xu, I would like to ask you why your pen name is your real name?"

Xu Chengjun's heart skipped a beat. Was this an idol profile being created for him?

I was born in March, a Pisces.

I like singing, dancing, rapping, and basketball.
He remained unfazed, smiling as he said, "There's nothing I can't tell people, and I was too lazy to think of a pen name, so I just used my real name."

But a thought quietly crossed my mind: when I write something else in the future, I might be able to pick up "Chu Feng" from my previous life.

It's like letting two versions of myself from different eras meet.

For a time, the six people in the room were chatting enthusiastically around the wooden table.

From Old Zhou in "Scales" to the new wheat in Xiaogang Village, from the selection criteria for newspaper supplements to literary theory in the classroom.

When asked how he would evaluate his own writing, Xu Chengjun casually replied, "My writing is very simple; it's just recording what I see and hear as it is."

"But we were just lucky to catch the favorable policy winds."

"In a good year, the wheat in the field will always yield more plump grains."

(End of this chapter)