Chapter 320: He may not be in Hong Kong, but Hong Kong is full of him

Qi Kexiu tossed and turned, unable to understand: all those idle books Wei Ming read as a child were leftovers from his own shelf; he himself barely had a high school education and had more life experience—why did Wei Ming keep being called a rising star of serious literature or a master of fairy tales, while everything he wrote got rejected?

Qi Kexiu put down his bowl and chopsticks, dinner tasting bland; no, he had to keep writing—having become a peasant after leaving the city, the only thing that could change his fate, besides his unreliable son, was the pen in his hand!

But what to write? The magazine didn't like stories about Qin Shi Huang; maybe he should write something about the Qing dynasty.

Recently, visiting the Forbidden City, he'd heard plenty of imperial secrets, and his inspiration bubbled up again.

Yes, that's it—he'd write about Yongzheng, who neglected his harem due to state affairs.

So the women in the harem sought princes, sought imperial physicians, sought eunuchs, and even sought other women.

Yongzheng had a brutal reputation among the people; readers would love this!

As for where to submit, Qi Kexiu thought: such a refined piece must go to "Story Weekly."

He Chengwei never imagined his magazine was seen as such trash by Qi Kuangren—yet, frankly, it made perfect sense!

Today He Chengwei announced early dismissal, and the entire editorial staff went together to Da Guangming to watch "Heroes Born in Youth."

This was the first story from "Story Weekly" adapted into a film—and a co-production at that—having won the adoration of audiences across Hong Kong.

The film didn't disappoint the audiences in Shanghai, nor He Chengwei and the editors—it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant!

After leaving the cinema, passing a street newsstand, he saw a crowd gathered there; he went over to see—turns out a report in "China Youth Daily" had sparked heated public discussion.

He Chengwei glanced and exclaimed: oh, this is about his old flame, Teacher Wei Ming!

He immediately bought a copy and learned that Teacher Wei Ming's true identity had been exposed.

He read the entire article but didn't see the words "Wei Kuangren"—what a pity; the outside world still didn't know Teacher Wei was also an outstanding popular literature author.

Even more regrettable: Teacher Wei now seemed to have abandoned the pen name "Wei Kuangren"—how long had it been since he submitted to "Story Weekly"? No word of submissions elsewhere either—sigh!

"Uncle, see you tomorrow."

"Don't see me off."

Wei Ming saw Lao Fei out, checked the documents Wei Lingling brought—complete and thorough, no major issues; he could handle the procedures tomorrow.

Not long after Lao Fei left, A Long returned alone, expressionless.

"What's wrong? Didn't it work out?"

A Long said: "It went well—Uncle and Aunt thought I was fine, my brother and sister-in-law liked me too; they agreed to let Ying go to Hong Kong with me. But the mother and daughter ended up crying bitterly together, and it broke my heart—I felt like I'd stolen Ying away, tearing them apart."

Wei Ming patted his shoulder: "They can't easily go to Hong Kong, but you can visit home often."

A Long nodded—he'd already met the family; now it was Gong Ying's turn. This time, Dragon's Mother, Teacher Yang, would also go to Hong Kong to visit Uncle Liu, and they'd travel together.

Then Wei Ming and A Long discussed going to the Shanghai Animation Film Studio tomorrow.

The next day, Li Zhi arrived dressed up beautifully to meet them, only to learn Wei Ming would split up with them.

The house matter only needed his father and little aunt—the two parties involved; Wei Ming planned to check on the progress of "The Legend of the Sealed Book" and "Black Cat Detective," while A Long wanted to see if he could poach talent from the studio.

Earning a few dozen yuan at the studio versus earning 2, 00 Hong Kong dollars in Hong Kong—this choice was both easy and hard.

"China Youth Daily" had undeniable influence; after one day's spread, at least a million people nationwide now knew the connection between Wei Ming and Wei Shenme.

On the bus to the animation studio, Wei Ming overheard two middle-aged men discussing Wei Shenme and Wei Ming.

Compared to Wei Ming's literary achievements and how deeply they touched hearts, Hu Ye was far more curious about how much foreign exchange Wei Shenme had earned—they kept debating how much foreign currency Wei Ming held.

In 1981, the Chinese people and government were desperate for foreign exchange.

To push reform and opening, to import advanced technology, China's foreign exchange reserves had turned negative in 1980; before that, they'd been just a few hundred million U. . dollars—always stretched thin.

To attract more foreign exchange, China's antiques and cultural relics took on a vital role in generating hard currency.

Foreign trade departments bulk-exported acquired relics—including Ming and Qing porcelain, jade, ancient books—as "ordinary cultural relics."

They also sold antiques, calligraphy, paintings, and high-end crafts to foreign visitors through Friendship Stores, Rongbaozhai, and other channels, halting bulk exports only in 1988 when the state's finances improved.

So at this time, a children's writer earning such vast foreign exchange was equivalent to a well-performing handicraft factory—naturally sparking nationwide discussion, especially since this children's writer had an even more famous pen name, adding to the legend.

This was why Wei Ming had asked Jin Yong to deposit royalties into a mainland account—some of the royalties from Melinda were also wired to the mainland.

Even though the foreign exchange reached the mainland, Wei Ming could only enjoy the unreasonable official exchange rate, suffering losses himself—but the reputation of earning foreign exchange for the nation was equally vital; this minor writer was likely already on the radar of many high officials.

To date, Wei Ming's mainland account alone had received nearly one hundred thousand U. . dollars; his Hong Kong account held even more—adding royalties from "Moonlight Shadow"'s one million sales, he'd earned over four hundred thousand U. . dollars total, nearly half of which came from that single song.

But those Hong Kong earnings—he couldn't donate them; this money could help him accomplish many big things, earn even more foreign exchange, and eventually repay the nation.

Many at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio still didn't know the fairy tale writer Wei Shenme who often came to guide work was Wei Ming.

But now they all knew—since Wei Ming entered the studio, he received far warmer and more proactive greetings and small talk than before.

A promising serious literature writer willing to join them in making children's stuff—his spiritual realm was simply too high.

"Teacher Wei, welcome, welcome—you're a national celebrity now," as usual, workshop director Wang Bairong greeted Wei Ming, "Let me in on a secret: how much foreign exchange did that one song earn you?"

They were already familiar; Wei Ming knew Wang Bairong was a reformist at the studio, deeply interested in processing work for foreign exchange.

Wei Ming guessed: "About the same as what 'The Legend of the Sealed Book' earned."

"Ah, that much?!"

That was what the entire studio's elite had worked years to earn.

Seeing Director Wang so astonished, Wei Ming added humbly: "Just lucky—I caught the global fanbase still grieving John Lennon's death; my tribute song got so much attention. To earn foreign exchange, you still need to work steadily."

Work steadily at processing.

After the Transformers toys launched, they'd need matching animation for promotion; Hong Kong's animation industry was too weak—over the years, only "Old Master Q" had emerged; America and Japan were too expensive—so hiring the Shanghai Animation Film Studio for outsourcing was a good option; he could recommend it to his little aunt later.

This time, Wei Ming didn't rush to watch "The Legend of the Sealed Book"; he first asked about "Black Cat Detective."

Wang Bairong: "Director Dai Tielang has little experience as a solo director, but he's deeply fond of the Black Cat Detective theme; he's poured tremendous effort into it—the first episode is nearly complete."

One episode is about twenty minutes; from start to final presentation, roughly three months.

This pace wouldn't work for "Transformers," but they could shorten episode length and create the illusion of longer episodes with opening and ending themes.

Then Director Wang took Wei Ming and Liu Rulong to meet Dai Tielang and his team; on the way, he teased Liu Rulong.

"Student A Long, are you coming back to our studio for internship? Don't worry—your skills are top-notch; we'll fight to hire you after graduation, haha."

A Long scratched his head—he couldn't lie, so Wei Ming answered for him: "He's not here for internship—he's here in Shanghai to meet his in-laws."

"Oh? A Long found a Shanghai girl?"

A Long: "Yes."

"Wow, you've got guts!"

"Black Cat Detective"'s first episode, "Crushing the Warehouse Rat," still needed finishing touches, but the first half was ready to view.

Dai Tielang watched nervously as the original author observed the film.

Wei Ming showed no expression—he'd seen "Black Cat Detective" too many times; even as an adult in his past life, whenever it aired on TV, he still watched it with delight, rewatching the five episodes over and over as if there were fifty.

Now it was years earlier, but the quality hadn't dropped.

Wei Ming asked: "Once the first episode is done, can it be broadcast?"

"Yes, we'll screen it on Shanghai TV first, test the reaction," Wang Bairong said.

Wei Ming nodded. Director Dai couldn't hold back any longer: "Teacher Wei, how do you like my film?"

Wei Ming: "Excellent—perfectly matches what I imagined. I hope this series continues under your direction."

"Hahaha, I hope so too!" Director Dai Tielang finally smiled with relief, then began chatting with Wei Ming about his new project, "Jurassic Park"—he loved dinosaurs too.

While Wei Ming chatted with Wang Bairong and Dai Tielang, A Long had already excused himself.

At noon, Wei Ming and A Long left the animation studio; A Long reported: "Three in-betweeners are willing to come to Hong Kong—all married with families, just want better material conditions for their loved ones."

"But if they go there, coming back and forth will be very inconvenient." It's like the seamen.

A Long: "They said they just want to work two or three years, earn a few ten thousand yuan, then quit."

Wei Ming: "If they want to return later, we won't stop them."

Two or three years is enough time for Kuangren Comics' team to mature.

A Long's mission in Shanghai was now complete; next, he'd accompany Gong Ying.

Wei Ming returned home alone, sketched for a while, and finally waited for Lao Wei to come back.

Wei Lingling slumped on the sofa, ungracefully—today she'd run through too many government offices, endured too many bureaucratic speeches, and was mentally exhausted.

Li Zhi hurriedly massaged her legs, helping her relax.

"You're tired? Look how well they treated you—you don't know how lucky you are," Lao Wei scolded her.

To be honest, the officials Lao Wei met when handling affairs had been mixed—yet even the best had never treated him as well as today. Lao Wei sighed: it really had to be Americans!

Wei Ming asked: "So, was it settled today?"

"No, they just accepted our application—they still need to investigate and verify the house belongs to Aunt and Uncle, and that there are no other heirs," Wei Lingling briefly summarized today's progress.

Lao Wei added: "And confirming return doesn't mean actual return—we still need to find new offices for the unit currently using it before we get it back; the timeline is uncertain."

Wei Ming asked: "So how long will we wait?"

Wei Lingling tilted her head: "Shortest, three or four days; longest, ten days to half a month. That's just the time to confirm return—I'll leave once confirmed; the rest I'll leave to Lao Fei."

Now Wei Ming slumped too—he missed home, missed Xuejie, missed Linjie.

"I wonder if A Ming misses himself," little A Min in Hong Kong gazed out the window at the setting sun, thinking of that man.

Summer vacation was truly unbearable—but previous summers hadn't been this hard, and their family was richer now.

With a creak of the door opening, Mother returned—and brought a newspaper, but said nothing.

Zhou Huimin glanced at it—it was "Ming Pao"; the front page was about A Ming!

Previously, Yi Shu's articles about A Ming hadn't made the front page; A Min looked again—oh! It was written by Jin Yong himself!

No wonder.

This was Jin Yong's first article after his northern trip; Hong Kong's elite and tycoons were all waiting to read it.

Yet before even mentioning his meeting with Beijing's top officials, he first described his observations on the plane and in the car, vividly portraying Beijing's summer scenery, then met Wei Ming at the hotel and confirmed his other pen names.

Wei Ming himself confirmed: Wei Shenme, Wei Kuangren, and his English pen name were all him; he also had a musical alias, "A Ming," having written several popular Mandarin and Cantonese songs in Hong Kong.

Hence Jin Yong's headline: "Not Just One Spirit Becomes Three Pure Ones—Wei Ming, Wei Shenme, Wei Kuangren, A Ming—all are him!"

Seeing this article, Zhou Hui was so moved she didn't even want to eat dinner—Wei Ming's brilliance was finally no longer visible only to her!

Now everyone in Hong Kong knows how extraordinary Wei Ming is!

Before, Wei Ming being "Wei something" was never confirmed, but now with Jin Yong's endorsement, there's no doubt.

Of course, "everyone in Hong Kong" was just Min's wishful thinking—the Ming Pao's circulation wasn't that strong; normally it sold just over 100, 00 copies, and during hot events maybe 105, 00, but its readership consisted entirely of white-collar workers and elites.

So the article's influence was still immense—all the most powerful consumers now knew Wei Ming, and understood he wasn't just brilliant, but also a bit arrogant with his talent.

In the latter half of the article, Jin Yong described Wei Ming as "one man equaling Hong Kong's Four Great Talents."

Wei Ming first humbly downplayed himself, then went on to boast—he admitted he fell short of Jin Yong, Huang Zhan, and Cai Lan in individual areas, but when it came to science fiction novels, he refused to yield to Ni Kuang.

Ni Kuang, reading Wei Ming's assessment of him in Ming Pao, let out a cold snort: "Young people have no sense of their place!"

This was already his second time becoming a hot news figure recently—the last time was when he lost a tug-of-war to an elephant and ate its dung.

Later he really did eat it—but it was cat poop coffee, and he teamed up with coffee merchants to successfully hype up this premium coffee and made a decent profit from it.

That's celebrity effect—even eating dung can generate economic returns. Ni Kuang remained smug about it.

At that moment, his son Ni Zhen walked by, humming the song everyone young in Hong Kong loved: "Moonlight Shadow."

A seventeen-year-old boy was at the age of chasing trends.

"Stop singing!" Ni Kuang, hearing the song and thinking of the man behind it, grew angrier by the second.

Seventeen-year-old boys were also rebellious: "Why not?"

"I don't like this song. If you sing it again, I won't give you pocket money after you go abroad," Ni Kuang threatened.

Seventeen-year-old boys also needed money badly—he retorted firmly: "Hmph, fine, I won't sing it!"

Then he started singing Tan Yonglin's Cantonese version of "Flower in the Water."

Ni Kuang: "You're still singing!"

"I already switched songs!"

"You can't sing this one either!" because he remembered the composer's name was "A Ming."

By now, many musicians in Hong Kong had already figured out who this mysterious "A Ming" really was.

He could write pop songs like "Liu Liu De Ta," "Flower in the Water," "Hard to Let Go," and "Dream Camel Bell" in both Mandarin and Cantonese, compose traditional mainland songs like "On the Fields of Hope" and "The Same Song," and still write "Moonlight Shadow"—this Wei Ming was simply too versatile!

Zhang Guorong was recording with his master Li Xiaotian when he saw this article, and immediately began enthusiastically explaining just how extraordinary this man was.

Li Xiaotian said: "I've collaborated with this person."

"What? How come I never knew?"

Li Xiaotian: "The 'Huo Yuanjia' production team asked me to compose the theme song, and the lyricist was this Wei Ming—he wrote 'The Great Wall Never Falls,' and gave it to Ye Zhentang to sing. The lyrics were so good, I believed whoever sang it would become a hit—but the style wasn't right for you."

"Master, what if I asked him to write a song tailored just for me?"

"Hmm, but he's in mainland China—we can't reach him."

"Wait! Ah Lun once invited him to write a song—he must have contact info. We can ask him!"

At this moment, Zhang Guorong and Tan Yonglin weren't in the same company, and their status differed, so they weren't direct competitors—but Li Xiaotian wondered: would someone who could reach him really tell you?

Tan Yonglin: It's not about whether he'd tell you—it's that I can't reach him either. I can only go through that little girl, Min.

Tan Yonglin knew that once Wei Ming's identity was revealed, every Hong Kong singer would be circling him like a piece of Tang San's flesh—Chen Baixiang and Zhong Zhen Tao had already called him asking about Wei Ming.

Tan Yonglin knew he couldn't monopolize Wei Ming—he only hoped Wei Ming, remembering their past collaborations, would give him priority for new songs.

As one of the rare Chinese musicians to break into the international market, Wei Ming carried a halo in the eyes of Hong Kong musicians—even Teddy Robin of Xinyicheng saw the article and proudly boasted to his colleagues about Wei Ming's extraordinary musical talent.

"Otherwise, he could never have written so many wildly different songs."

Among the Xinyicheng Seven, Teddy Robin was even shorter than Ceng Zhiwei and wasn't particularly outstanding as a director, writer, or actor—but he was decent at music. In the 1960s, influenced by The Beatles, he co-founded Hong Kong's first Chinese rock band, The Playboy Band, with Zheng Handong.

Zheng Handong was the general manager of PolyGram, and had a son named Zheng Zhongji.

At that moment, Huang Baiming walked by, motioned for Teddy Robin to lower his voice, and pointed behind him, whispering: "Mai Jia."

Teddy Robin chuckled—turns out Wei Ming really could earn over a million from a single song, which made Mai Jia, the one who exposed this, look foolish.

Mai Jia wasn't happy. Recently he'd wanted to imitate "Wrongly Caught Seven Days," thinking the plot structure was good enough to turn into a comedy version.

But now Wei Ming's fame had exploded, with Jin Yong personally writing about him, and every wealthy person in Hong Kong watching.

And Qingniao had already announced the project was underway—pulling such petty tricks now would only give others grounds to attack him, even make him a laughingstock.

Bullying minor screenwriters was fine, but challenging an international celebrity? That would be a losing move.

Mai Jia only thought of infringing on Wei Ming—but others had already done so.

Although Ming Pao wasn't distributed in mainland China, Hong Kong was connected to Shenzhen, and many areas in Guangdong could access Hong Kong publications through special channels.

On the desk of Liao Mingzu, general manager of Pacific Audio & Video, lay a copy of Ming Pao.

Now he knew—the author of the songs Pacific had stolen, like "Liu Liu De Ta," "Flower in the Water," and "Dream Camel Bell," was none other than his old friend Wei Ming!

"Oh dear, what a mess!" Liao Mingzu valued maintaining his relationship with Wei Ming—after all, Pacific couldn't forever be the sole distributor. When the music market grew more competitive, quality would speak for itself—and Wei Ming was the very definition of quality!

Liao had already begun discussing with Beiyingchang how to produce the original soundtrack for "Mother, Please Love Me Again"—almost all the songs in it were composed solely by Wei Ming. These songs were simply divine!

How many times must one have endured separation from one's mother to write such songs? He couldn't even bear to listen to them a second time.

Liao Mingzu immediately contacted Beijing, hoping to make up Wei Ming's unpaid royalties—even if it was only a few dozen yuan, it was his sincerity.

Unfortunately, Wei Ming wasn't in Beijing, so he couldn't hear Liao Mingzu's personal apology.

Shanghai.

Li Xiaolin had found Wei Ming; the two spent the whole day discussing revisions to the manuscript, and Wei Ming listed over thirty points.

Besides discussing the manuscript, Li the editor also mentioned his father's worries about their hometown in Sichuan.

News of the floods in Sichuan had finally begun appearing in newspapers.

First, on the 9th, heavy rains triggered landslides that caused a major accident on the Chengdu-Kunming railway—the deadliest passenger disaster in Chinese railway history, with hundreds dead or missing.

From the 9th onward, the rain in Sichuan had not stopped. As a basin region, Sichuan was doomed to flooding.

Wei Ming returned home with a heavy heart, when Wei Lingling finally brought good news.

"The government has confirmed—we can get our house back!"

(Bonus update this month, May 5th—please vote for monthly tickets!)

(End of chapter)