Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 55: Guo Xiaosi, the -meter-high aura

For the first time after his rebirth, Zhang Chao took the initiative to ask for a two-day "long vacation" from school. On the evening of April 4, he flew to Guangzhou alone, met up with the staff of Huacheng Publishing House, and participated in the "Youth Fireworks" book exhibition unit of the "Southern Book Festival" organized by Tianhe Book Center.

The "Southern Book Festival" is restarted after a decade, and Tianhe Book Center is one of the largest bookstores in South China, so the standards of the "Youth Fireworks" book fair are also very high.

Friday is the media interview day and order meeting, Saturday is the famous lecture and public open day, and Sunday is the signing day.

As soon as Zhu Yanling saw Zhang Chao, she said to him, "Many writers born in the 80s will be here this time, and Xiao Si will also be here, so don't be nervous."

Zhang Chao responded with a cheesy joke: "Don't worry, my last name is Zhang, and my name is Bu Jing."

Zhu Yanling was relieved to see that he was still in the mood to joke. The most feared thing for young writers is that they lose their temper and are prone to stress reactions when under pressure, either talking nonsense or hurting others with their words.

Han Han is a typical example. It can be said that most of the criticisms he received after he turned 30 were to repay the "debt of words" he owed when he was 20 years old.

Zhu Yanling said: "Yangcheng is our Huacheng Society's home base, and we actually participated in organizing this book fair. So there are some conveniences. I will tell you about the arrangements this time, and then..."

On the media interview day on Friday morning, Zhang Chao made an official appearance with "Young Like You" and announced the official release of the novel.

At the ordering meeting, Zhang Chao attended the signing ceremony of the ordering contract for 8 copies of "Better Days" between Beitasman and Huacheng Publishing House. This is also the largest single order for "Better Days" - of course, the actual procurement process has been completed long ago, and today it is just a hype in the media.

Then Zhang Chao, Huacheng Press editor-in-chief Xiao Jianguo and Betasman's Greater China president Wen Dehua held a symposium with the media present.

Windhua is very young, only 35 years old. He has just taken over the thriving Beitasman China business from the previous president, Aiko, less than a year ago. He is full of energy and vigor.

Wendhua praised Zhang Chao's youth and potential and Huacheng Publishing House's courage, and said that "Better Days Like You" will appear on the homepage of the recommended book list in the next two quarters.

Since Wendhua does not know Chinese, the three of them can only communicate through a translator, so it is basically just business flattery with no real content.

Only Zhang Chao looked at the luxurious background board, the huge, bright Beitasman logo, and the smiling Windward under the background board, and thought to himself: "The withered bones in the grave!"

This is certainly not because he has any opinion on Windward personally or Bei Tasman, but Windward would never have thought that this year would be the pinnacle of his career. Since 2005, Bei Tasman's business has been declining all the way, and finally had to close the domestic book club in 2008.

After the ordering meeting was over, Zhang Chao, who had nothing to do, started wandering around. He originally wanted to find out whether Xiao Si had come, but he soon heard that because he had some legal troubles recently, he would not do any media interviews and would just go straight to signing books.

Zhang Chao couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. However, when he passed by a booth, he was quickly stopped by a middle-aged man who looked very capable and wore black-framed glasses. He handed him a business card and said with a smile: "Mr. Zhang Chao, I hope to cooperate with you in the future."

Zhang Chao recognized at a glance that this was Li Guoqing from Dangdang.com, but he still took the business card and looked at it pretendingly.

In 2004, Dangdang.com was known as the domestic online book sales leader - but in fact, its sales were only comparable to that of a large bookstore like Xidan Bookstore in Yanjing. However, it already accounted for 40% of the national online book sales at that time, so it was not an exaggeration to say that it was the leader.

So even though he is the president, Li Guoqing now has to go to the venue in person, stand up for his own company at the booth, and seize every possible development opportunity.

Now is the period of rapid development of Dangdang.com. Li Guoqing is in high spirits. In January this year, he rejected Amazon's acquisition proposal of 1 million US dollars. Even when Amazon later proposed "any amount between 1.5 million and 1 billion US dollars is negotiable", he firmly rejected it.

This shows how high Li Guoqing's ambition is. This is also the common mentality of domestic Internet entrepreneurs at that time. After the greetings, Li Guoqing felt that the young man kept looking at his waist with a sly look, and he couldn't help but feel a little strange, thinking that his clothes were not appropriate. He looked down and found that the hem of his shirt did not come out of his trousers.

Zhang Chao said embarrassedly: "I'm checking to see if you have the official seal..."

Li Guoqing laughed and said, "Who wears a company seal on their waist? Isn't that crazy? Student Zhang is really a joker. Let me tell you about the development of our Dangdang.com..."

Zhang Chao: "..."

On Saturday, Zhang Chao attended a forum hosted by Shanghai female writer Wang Anyi, with the theme of "Breakthrough in the Post-Youth Literature Era." The content of the forum was nothing special, but another piece of information Wang Anyi said aroused Zhang Chao's interest.

This year, she was hired by Fudan University in Shanghai to teach modern literature and writing courses, and revealed that she might start a "creative writing class" in the future, which is similar to the "writers' classes" held by many universities in the 80s and 90s. However, such classes were gradually discontinued in the early 90s for various reasons.

Zhang Chao became a little interested.

Sunday was the most important day for Zhang Chao at the book fair, which was the book signing. The book fair officials creatively introduced the red carpet walk of film festival stars, allowing the writers participating in the book signing to walk into the venue on a red carpet and leave their signatures on the big billboard behind the red carpet.

The lineup for the book signing was star-studded. Except for Han Han, who announced early on that he would not sign books, almost all the famous post-80s writers came.

Jiang Feng, who won the first prize of New Concept, came with his new book "No Permanent Hurt".

Zhang Jiawei, who also won the first prize and was later nicknamed "Salary Increase" in a straight male forum, came with his first novel "Falling in Love".

Hu Jian, known as the "Young Wang Xiaobo", came with his reprinted best-selling book "The Age of Angry Youth".

There are also Li Shasha, Xiaofan, Jiang Fangzhou, Chunshu, Liu Jiajun...

However, since young writers at that time generally had no camera awareness and lacked image design, and did not pay enough attention to this aspect, the clothes they wore were too homely and casual, and not very photogenic.

Zhu Yanling originally wanted Zhang Chao to wear a school uniform to highlight his identity as a "campus writer", but Zhang Chao refused with a sullen face. In the end, he wore a casual suit. Although he didn't wear a tie, it was almost the most appropriate outfit in the whole venue, which attracted a lot of reporters to take pictures.

Zhang Chao was not used to it, so he hurriedly signed on the promotional board and prepared to enter the venue. At this time, there was a sudden noise behind him, and he could hear many girls screaming from afar, and faintly heard——

"Xiao Si...I love you..."

The reporters who were originally focused on him quickly turned their guns and shot at his back. Zhang Chao knew who was coming, and couldn't help his curiosity, so he turned his head -

What about people?

Zhu Yanling, who was walking the red carpet with him, gently tugged at Zhang Chao's sleeve. Zhang Chao lowered his head and saw a very petite young man with trendy yellow hair and heavy Korean makeup. He was wearing a very stylish windbreaker and was waving at the reporters and the crowd with a smile on his face. He didn't even blink in the face of the blinding flash lights.

Zhang Chao couldn't help but sigh that he was worthy of being Xiao Si. His aura was at least two meters and two centimeters taller than himself.

(End of this chapter)