Back to 80: My Literary Life

The north wind was howling over Xijing City today, and it was extremely cold and cold. This kind of weather was naturally not suitable for going out. The whole family was busy doing things at home in the warmth.

My son was concentrating on playing the most fashionable game "Red Alert 2: Glory of the Republic" in his room. When he passed by the door, he heard "Sir, Yes-sir!" and "Construction completed" coming from the computer speakers in the room. Gunfire.

My daughter plays the piano in the piano room, but instead of playing classical music, she sings a popular song while playing:

We all once had an innocent and sad face

Holding the sun in our hands, we look into the distance

Gently day by day, year after year

When we grow up, will we sing "Wish" again?

"wish\

,"It is said that four female college students sang it.

Bright with a little sadness.

The nanny is busy downstairs.

Fang Minghua and his wife were in the study. Fang Minghua was drinking tea leisurely, and Song Tangtang was sitting by the computer, staring at an email from the United States.

It was from Phillips.

In the email, Phillips told Fang Minghua that all the stocks of Dell and Microsoft had been disposed of according to his requirements, and only 3.2 million shares of Amazon stock were left.

Total profit was US$8.89 billion.

Of course, he still has to pay taxes to the government. Since Fang Minghua is not a U.S. citizen, China and the United States have signed a tax treaty. Chinese residents enjoy a 10% tax rate discount on dividend income, which means he has to pay 880 million U.S. dollars. In addition, according to the contract, he personally will Received US$8 million in commissions.

At the end, there are about 8 billion US dollars left!

Seeing this number, Song Tangtang was silent for a long time, and finally turned to look at Fang Minghua who was drinking tea.

"Minghua, as far as the wealth in your account is concerned, it ranks second in the 1999 Forbes list of the world's richest people. The first is Bill Gates. At the same time, it is far more than the Liu Yonghao family, which ranks first in the domestic Hurun rich list."

Just last year, a Luxembourger named Hurun imitated Forbes and created a rich list of China's richest people. Of course, Fang Minghua was not included in the list.

Regarding this Hurun ranking, Fang Minghua sneered: "Do you think it is accurate?"

"Of course it's not allowed, and neither is Forbes, because we don't have you." Song Tangtang said half-jokingly and half-seriously.

Oh?

In fact, Fang Minghua did not expect that the assets in the stock market would expand so rapidly. As expected, people say that finance is the real machine for making wealth.

And stock trading is still the most basic form of finance.

It's great to cut American leeks. Wait two years before cutting another crop.

"Hey" Song Tangtang suddenly let out a long sigh: "I suddenly felt that my struggle was meaningless. You just lay there and became the second richest man in the world."

"What do you mean by lying down? At least you have to have a few million in original capital, right? And you have a vision!" But he didn't have much confidence to say this.

How could it be possible if he didn't cheat himself?

"What do you do with these funds?" Song Tangtang turned to the topic.

"Of course eggs cannot be placed in a cage." Fang Minghua said:

"I want to transfer part of the funds back to the mainland. I can't spend all the money I need to donate. Some of it will be transferred to Xiangjiang. I will deposit part of it in a Swiss bank and put the rest in my account, ready to cut a round of leeks."

"But I heard that it is very troublesome for large funds to leave the United States. I am going to ask Lili to find professionals to handle this matter."

"You'd better go to the United States yourself. Lili is an academic and lacks experience in this area." Song Tangtang suggested.

"Let's talk about it after the New Year. There's no rush in this matter." Fang Minghua said.

"How much do you plan to donate and how?" Song Tangtang asked again.

Fang Minghua pondered for a moment before saying: "Let's see how much we can transfer at one time. As for where to donate? Education, national defense technology!"

The Spring Festival in 2000 came relatively early, with New Year's Eve falling on February 4. Song Tangtang did not go to the United States this year, so it was rare for the family to reunite for the holiday.

Posting couplets, hanging red lanterns, making dumplings, and of course watching the Spring Festival Gala.

To be honest, the overall lighting of this year's Spring Festival Gala was very dim, the visual effects were very poor, and the programs were not good either.

The sketch "Small Station Story" by Huang Hong and Ling Feng is very average, and "My Deskmate" by Pan Changjiang, Gong Hanlin, and Wang Siyi is even worse.

I insist on copying the song "My Deskmate". It was a song six years ago. What's the point of hyping it now?

The sketch "Hourly Worker" by Zhao Benshan and Song Dandan was not satisfactory, but the line "Small, I don't even recognize you in a vest." became a meme on the Internet.

The songs were also average. Liming sang "Happy 2000" and Pu Shu appeared on the Spring Festival Gala stage for the first time and sang his classic "White Birch Forest".

The song is really nice, but when I listened to it on New Year’s Eve, I felt that the atmosphere was not right. Even my daughter said that she might as well sing the song "New Boy".

Hey. The Spring Festival Gala is really an old lady’s New Year celebration, and every year is worse than the last.

Fang Minghua sighed in his heart.

After the Spring Festival, Fang Minghua was preparing to leave for the United States. It was strange that he hadn't seen Li Li and his daughter for a year and a half.

Just when he was preparing to apply for a visa to go to the United States, he suddenly received an invitation letter to participate in the International Book Festival held in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, on April 2 this year.

Edinburgh International Book Festival was established in 1983. It was held every two years in the early days. In 1997, it became an annual festival. As the world's largest book festival today, the event is held at the same time as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Its slogan is "the world's greatest platform for creative freedom".

In addition to inviting Fang Minghua to give an academic lecture, another job is to sign and sell books.

Academic lectures are allowed.

I haven't been to Scotland yet, so I took the opportunity to go around, but I was overwhelmed when I heard about signing and selling books.

However, the book signed and sold this time was not the best-selling Harry Potter series in Europe and the United States, but the book "The Spike".

The email from Demi detailed this matter.

This book has been hyped up in the United States. Some federal congressmen claimed to ban this book, and restricting Fang Minghua's entry was just a gimmick to win votes, and it ended up in vain.

So at the same time, Demi tried her best to promote this book, not only in North America, but also in Europe.

It was agreed with Heinemann, the publisher of this book in the UK, that signing and selling books at the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival would be one of the promotional activities.

This is possible.

Fang Minghua decided immediately.

He was too lazy to go to other book signings, but he had to go to this book.

After discussing with Song Tangtang, he decided to go to the UK to attend the book festival first, and then fly directly to the United States to save the trip back and forth.

Of course, applying for a visa would be more troublesome.

However, it is now 2000, and the visa procedures have been simplified a lot. In addition, with the help of Shengshi Group's Yanjing office, Fang Minghua completed the visa procedures on time and embarked on the journey to Scotland.