Back to 80: My Literary Life

"Comedy? What comedy? Do you have a script?" Song Tangtang asked quickly.

"It's not ready yet, don't think about it. I told you that this year and next, Shengshi Film and Television will focus on TV series first and strive to produce a few high-quality films. As for the movies, we will show them first."

Song Tangtang nodded after hearing this.

"Let's go, it's Chinese New Year, go downstairs and have fun with the children." Fang Minghua comforted.

"Then you carry me down." Song Tangtang suddenly started acting coquettishly.

"OK."

Fang Minghua picked up his daughter-in-law in a princess hug. Just as he walked out of the door and was about to go down the stairs, Song Tangtang struggled to come down.

"Put me down, it's not good for the children to see!"

"What's wrong? This makes our husband and wife more affectionate." Fang Minghua carried his wife downstairs and was immediately seen by the two children.

"Dad, you have to hug me like you hug mom!" Daughter Ruirui immediately opened her arms and rushed over.

"Dad, I want to hug you too." My son also came up.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, the whole family accompanied Song Tangtang back to her parents' home. On the third day of the Lunar New Year, they went to their parents' house. On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, they drove with their parents to their grandmother's house in Bailuyuan to pay New Year's greetings. On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, they went to Zhao Hongjun to pay New Year's greetings. Finally, on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, they were free.

I don’t want to go anywhere, I just want to stay at home.

It’s really tiring to celebrate the New Year. I have to drink all the time. It’s better to make a cup of tea at home now.

Two children were playing with firecrackers in the yard. Fang Minghua was flipping through newspapers in the living room with his legs crossed. He heard the sound of "dong dong dong" coming down the stairs. When he looked up, it was his wife Song Tangtang who was running down excitedly with his eldest brother.

"Minghua, CCTV just called and the ratings are out! 60%!"

"Yes, I guess it will go up. It will definitely exceed the 69% ratings of "Yanjing People in New York"!" Fang Minghua said with a smile.

"Yeah." Song Tangtang was also smiling happily at this time, and the big stone in his heart was finally put down.

In this era, the main agency for calculating ratings was CCTV Sofurui. In the era before the Internet and set-top boxes, the "diary method" was used to calculate the ratings.

In fact, the ratings statistics are obtained through sample surveys, which is the same method as the statistics of many economic data.

To put it simply, CCTV Sofurui will select one or several cities in each province. In these cities, "sample households" of 1-2,000 households are "randomly" selected based on their population. One "sample household" represents a certain proportion of TV users in the city.

That is, sample households fill out diary cards every day to collect information about what programs they watch that day. Each family member among these sample users has their own diary card, so that the TV they watch will be recorded in this sample. .

Of course, this method of relying on people to actively fill in the information often has a large time error, but there is no other way, so everyone still believes in this. Not only CCTV, but also various TV stations basically use Sofry data to evaluate the program's communication effect.

Seeing his wife so happy, Fang Minghua smiled and said, "Okay. Don't worry, right?"

"Yeah. As soon as I get to work, I will contact the TV station in Yanjing and start formal talks!"

The TV series "In the Name of the People" is completely popular.

This is another popular TV series after the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" broadcast by CCTV last year. The overt and covert struggles among official figures such as Hou Liangping, Sha Ruijin, Li Dakang, and Qi Tongwei made the audience watch it with gusto, and the streets were talking about this TV series. People in TV series.

Shengshi Book Company, which is far away in Shanghai, immediately launched the third printing of "In the Name of the People" to the market according to the scheduled plan, and prepared to become popular again with the TV series.

Of course, these are all coordinated among the various companies within the Shengshi Group. Vice Chairman Song Tangtang is overall responsible, and Fang Minghua does not interfere.

Now that the first month of the year has passed, a meeting of the judges of the second World Chinese Literature Award will be held. After the meeting, the winning works of this session will be announced.

Fang Minghua is not a member of the jury, and this year he has given the responsibility to Bai Miao, so he feels much freer.

Of course, when individual jury members and shortlisted writers came to Xijing, Fang Minghua still went to pick them up.

Pick up British author James Coleman today.

James Coleman got to know Fang Minghua last year when he went to Danevento, Italy to attend the Strega Literary Award Ceremony. His book "Too Late", which won the Booker Prize, was also successfully shortlisted for the Best Novel in this year's Chinese Literature Award.

This is actually a stream of consciousness novel. The story begins on a Sunday morning when Sammy, who has just been released from prison, wakes up in an alley and tries to recall what happened during those two days of being drunk.

However, things got worse. Sami found himself completely blind, his girlfriend disappeared, and the police were still pestering him.

Fang Minghua read it carefully after he came back and found that it was quite good. However, the common problem of stream-of-consciousness novels is that there is no clear main story line, the logic is somewhat confusing, and it is difficult to understand. This is also reflected in this novel.

But to be in the top five among more than fifty novels shows that the quality is still very good.

Fang Minghua drove to Xianyang International Airport. After waiting for more than half an hour, he saw a tall white foreigner carrying a travel bag coming out of the customs channel.

"James!" Fang Minghua called, James also saw him, came over with a smile, and the two hugged.

"Minghua, I'm happy to see you."

"It must have been a hard journey for me too," Fang Minghua said in English.

"It's not hard, you Chinese people are very enthusiastic!" James

It turned out that James came to China alone, got off the plane in Yanjing and transferred to the plane to Xijing. Although he didn't understand Chinese, he still had kind people to help him.

In this era, Chinese people are very enthusiastic towards foreigners.

Fang Minghua helped carry the luggage to the parking area, got in the car and drove towards the city.

In the car, Fang Minghua briefly introduced the awards ceremony to James. James smiled and said, "Minghua, I know all this. Your invitation letter was very clear and thoughtful."

Of course

Unlike the Strega Literary Prize, where the invitation is only in Italian, the Chinese Literary Prize is bilingual in Chinese and English, just to facilitate foreign writers.

"In that case, I won't say much more. I wish you win the prize!" Fang Minghua said with a smile.

Unexpectedly, James said: "No, no, I can't win the award. I am very happy that my novel can be shortlisted."

"The jury is in session and the results haven't been announced yet. Why do you think your novel can't win the award?" Fang Minghua was a little surprised.

"My novel is a stream of consciousness novel. Minghua, I know you have also written stream of consciousness novels. This style has its shortcomings and is not very popular in your country. I think you also know this."

Fang Minghua nodded.

really.

The genre of stream of consciousness is very popular in the West, especially in Britain and France, so James's "Too Late" won the Booker Prize last year, but stream of consciousness is not popular in China.

Back then, Fang Minghua wrote several stream-of-consciousness novels, which shocked the domestic literary world. There were many critics. Even "Yanhe", "October" and "Contemporary" were unwilling to publish one of them, "The Sun Also Rises".

Finally, Wang Meng was found, and he instructed "Yanjing Literature" to publish it.

Fang Minghua knew this.

"That's why I came here, mainly because I wanted to visit China. I heard that Xijing is a thousand-year-old capital with many historical sites, right?" James asked.

"Yes, there are the ancient city wall, Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Small Wild Goose Pagoda, Terracotta Warriors and Horses James, etc. After the award ceremony, I will take you to go shopping and climb the Big Wild Goose Pagoda!"

What a shame, Big Wild Goose Pagoda!

Fang Minghua added in his mind.