265: Chapter 265 Dignity is Priceless, Black Buns are Five Cents

In the early hours of the morning, at the headquarters of Xinchao Publishing House.

Only the Editor-in-Chief's office on the top floor of the entire building had a solitary light on.

Wang De'an sat in the leather office chair, his knuckles gently tapping the mahogany desk.

He had just brewed himself a strong cup of wolfberry tea.

The scalding steam rose, blurring his gaze behind his glasses.

Wang De'an's mood at this moment was both excited and apprehensive.

Just now, the mysterious writer who had caused a cultural storm in Europe sent a weighty new manuscript to his email.

"ordinary world..."

Wang De'an savored the simple name.

With the ferryman's brilliance preceding it, his psychological expectations for this new work were extremely high.

He thought that this would most likely be a masterpiece that continued the style of the previous work, imbued with strong existentialist or romantic sentiments.

After all, Jian Shen had just undergone the baptism of Western classical art in Vienna, so his writing should be more delicate, profound, and even possess a noble demeanor that looked down upon all beings.

This was a groundbreaking work that would initiate the precedent of "paid reading" on the New Tide APP.

It had to be able to command the stage, with a style that made people feel " 高級" (high-class) upon reading it.

"Whoosh—"

Wang De'an adjusted his sitting posture, his expression solemn.

He lit a cigarette, and amidst the swirling smoke,

he solemnly double-clicked the document titled "ordinary world · Part One."

The screen flickered, and the document opened.

However, when the first paragraph of text appeared,

Wang De'an's fingers, holding the cigarette, froze mid-air. The long ash finally couldn't bear the weight.

It broke off and fell onto the expensive ebony table.

There was no elegance of Vienna, no wilderness of Scotland, nor any philosophically charged opening.

What assaulted him was an earthy smell mixed with loess, coal cinder, and rotten leaves.

“Between February and March of 1975, on an ordinary day, fine misty rain mixed with a few snowflakes was falling heavily onto the earth.”

“The season was already approaching the Awakening of Insects, so snow would naturally no longer remain. Often, it would disappear without a trace before even touching the ground.”

“The severe and long winter on the Loess Plateau seemed to be over, but the truly warm spring had not yet arrived.”

Wang De'an's brows instantly furrowed.

1975? Loess Plateau?

What old almanac era was this?

Which young readers nowadays still enjoyed reading such arduous rural themes?

They wanted to read refreshing stories, underdog triumphs, or exquisite urban sorrows.

From his commercial perspective, an opening that immediately presented a face full of loess was simply box office poison.

He patiently continued reading.

The text on the screen continued, describing a county high school playground.

It was lunchtime, and students were queuing for food.

He initially thought it was just a mundane scene description, but as he read on, Wang De'an's fingers, tapping the desk, slowly stopped.

He discovered that Jian Shen's brushstrokes were as cold as a knife.

In that seemingly ordinary narrative, a suffocatingly rigid hierarchy was vividly laid bare through the most primal human act of "eating."

“The school meals were divided into three grades: A, B, and C.”

“Grade A dishes mainly consisted of potatoes, cabbage, and vermicelli, with a little oil, costing thirty cents per serving; Grade B dishes had no meat, only white radish boiled in plain water, costing fifteen cents per serving.”

“And Grade C... that was the shame of the poor. It was cabbage boiled in plain water, without even a trace of oil, only salt, costing five cents per serving.”

Wang De'an subconsciously glanced at the exquisite plate of butterfly crisps and the perfectly brewed West Lake Longjing tea beside him.

That strong sense of contrast caused him a wave of physiological discomfort.

He continued to read.

He found that this was not the cruelest part.

“Staple foods were also divided into three grades: white flour steamed buns, corn flour steamed buns, and... black sorghum flour steamed buns.”

“That stuff was as black as coal and as hard as stone. In front of those city students with white flour steamed buns, eating black steamed buns not only meant they were difficult to swallow, but also meant exposing one's poverty like a scar for everyone to see.”

Wang De'an felt his throat dry and subconsciously swallowed.

The parched sensation even made him forget that there was a cup of soothing tea beside him.

This description was too precise.

So precise that without any modifiers, it constructed a class barrier more brutal than any fantasy world.

Here, there was no battle qi, no magic.

Only the boundary between white flour and black flour, a chasm that tore human dignity apart.

The plot continued to advance.

The protagonist of the book, the tall and thin young man named Sun Shaoping, appeared.

He did not pretend to be a pig to eat a tiger in front of everyone, as traditional protagonists would.

He was hiding.

“He was always the last to get food.”

“When the noisy crowd on the playground dispersed, when those 'Europeans' eating white flour steamed buns and 'Asians' eating corn flour steamed buns had all returned to their dorms, he would sneak to the dining area like a thief, hugging the wall.”

“He quickly grabbed his two black sorghum flour steamed buns from the basket; that was his lunch.”

“He dared not eat them in front of others, nor even let others see what he held in his hand.”

Wang De'an stared intently at the screen, his breathing unconsciously growing heavy.

The next paragraph struck him hard in the chest.

“He hid behind the construction site, which was the dirtiest, most chaotic, and least frequented place in the entire school.”

“He squatted in a pile of broken bricks, holding those two black steamed buns as hard as iron.”

“The rain and snow were still falling. He had no side dishes, no hot water.”

“He used the rainwater flowing from the eaves to forcefully swallow the coarse black steamed bun, which was like grit, down his stomach.”

“When it scraped his throat, it carried a nauseating bitterness. But he had to swallow it, because it was his motivation to live.”

“He swallowed it very quickly, as if what he was swallowing was not food, but some kind of shameful disgrace.”

"Cough, cough..."

Wang De'an suddenly coughed violently, as if a lump of black steamed bun was really stuck in his throat.

His eyes, which had originally been critical and scrutinizing, were now red-rimmed.

It hurt too much.

This pain was not a pretentious moan of discomfort, but a real, flesh-piercing ache.

Wang De'an had also endured hard times.

As a child, he wore patched pants and had to lower his head in front of the entire class because he couldn't afford the two-yuan tuition and miscellaneous fees, wishing he could find a hole to crawl into.

He originally thought Jian Shen was writing about poverty.

But he was wrong.

Jian Shen wasn't writing about poverty; he was writing about dignity.

It was about that seventeen-year-old boy, in an era of extreme material scarcity, desperately trying to maintain that tiny, pitiful yet noble self-respect.

Sun Shaoping wasn't hiding from people; he was hiding from the gaze that would crush his self-esteem.

The cigarette burned to its end, and it wasn't until the sponge filter began to scorch that Wang De'an, as if waking from a dream, finally extinguished it.

He looked at the unfinished plate of butterfly crisps on his desk, suddenly finding them tasteless, even feeling a strong sense of shame.

A memory of hunger from that era, transcending the screen and forty years of time, clutched his stomach.

The office clock ticked away.

Three AM.

Four AM.

The strong Longjing tea had long gone cold, untouched.

At this moment, he forgot that he was the Editor-in-Chief of New Tide, forgot that he was evaluating commercial value, and even forgot that he was in modern times.

He was completely pulled into that Loess Plateau of 1975.

He followed the young man named Sun Shaoping, carrying stones on the construction site, his back raw and bloody, just to earn an extra one yuan and fifty cents a day.

He followed him running wildly in the torrential rain, gritting his teeth and refusing to kneel in the midst of utter desolation.

How could this be mere rustic literature?

This was a history of blood and tears, one that would forcibly drag a person's soul from its comfortable shell.

When more than half of the document had been turned, a monologue about suffering, like a clap of thunder, exploded in Wang De'an's mind.

“Life cannot wait for others to arrange it; one must strive and fight for oneself.”

“And regardless of whether the outcome is joy or sorrow, the comfort is that you have not lived in vain in this world.”

“The reason people suffer is that they pursue the wrong things.”

“But the reason people are great is that they still want to live like a human being amidst suffering.”

...