Chapter 21

Liu Zelai is the deputy editor-in-chief of the Baihuatai supplement of the Z City Evening News. He graduated from H University in 1990 and started working at the Z City Evening News right after graduation, taking over the Baihuatai supplement.

He has been doing this job for six years.

Liu Zelai is a workaholic.

Every day, he spends a lot of time opening and reading letters from free contributors.

There are usually about fifty to sixty such letters every day. If it were another less responsible editor, they might skim through them in less than half an hour.

But Liu Zelai spends at least two hours reviewing the manuscripts. He reads them very carefully, and if there is even a small highlight in a manuscript, he will carefully consider whether it is worth revising and how much potential the author has for development.

His dedication and responsibility are well-known throughout the Z City Evening News.

The Baihuatai supplement is published five times a week and is the main supplement of the Z City Evening News, with one or two pages published each day. The Z City Evening News is a large newspaper, and each supplement page requires about seven or eight articles of a thousand words each, so the demand for manuscripts is quite high.

But to be honest, they are not short of manuscripts.

When they say they are not short of manuscripts, it means they are not short of manuscripts of sufficient quality for publication.

Z City is the provincial capital, and most of the well-known writers and poets in the province are gathered here. These people write articles every day, and they all consider the supplement pages of the Z City Evening News to be their own territory.

Manuscripts from well-known writers in the province are naturally given priority for publication in the city's newspapers, and they are paid much higher royalties than ordinary authors.

There are definitely over a hundred well-known writers in the city. If each of them submits one manuscript per week, that would be a hundred manuscripts from well-known writers every week.

In other words, if the editor wants to save trouble, they could just publish manuscripts from well-known writers and not even need to look at manuscripts from ordinary authors!

But Liu Zelai still spends a lot of time every day reviewing manuscripts from ordinary authors.

Liu Zelai has a sense of mission in his heart. He is eager to cultivate more talented new authors.

He feels that the manuscripts submitted by so-called well-known writers are all filled with a strong sense of decay. They can write a thousand words on trivial matters, and they don't even care if it makes them look bad?

If they could write something with unusual interest and meaning from trivial matters, that would be fine!

The key is that there is nothing worth mentioning, yet they still have the audacity to think that their manuscripts must be published, and if not, it would be a loss of face for them.

To use such nonsense to deceive readers.

Do you still have any shame?

On the morning of July 14th, Liu Zelai had just brewed a cup of tea and sat down at his desk when the person in charge of mail delivery brought him a large bundle of letters.

The bundle contained about a hundred letters.

Liu Zelai started opening the letters and reading the manuscripts. About half of these letters were from readers, and after a quick glance, he sorted them, keeping the valuable ones for further processing.

His main focus was still on the manuscripts.

Recently, he felt that the manuscripts for his section were a bit mediocre, with nothing particularly eye-catching. Liu Zelai was eager to find one or two excellent manuscripts from today's submissions to supplement the section.

He noticed that one letter was particularly thick, using a large brown envelope, and it was quite substantial.

He picked up this letter, carefully opened it, and took out a stack of manuscript pages.

On top of the manuscript pages was a short letter.

He glanced at it; it was an introduction from the author. The author was only 19 years old, a high school senior who had just finished the college entrance exam.

The author's name was Xiao Fei.

According to the author, he had sent ten manuscripts, each a thousand words long, all centered around the theme of "anti-chicken soup."

In the letter, he listed ten sins of chicken soup articles, such as misleading readers, switching concepts, generalizing from a single case, and making up stories.

The term "chicken soup for the soul" originated from the book series "Chicken Soup for the Soul" edited by Americans Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Although there is no official version in China, pirated versions are quietly popular.

Liu Zelai was naturally familiar with this.

He also knew that the types of articles popular on the supplement pages in China, such as reflections and motivational articles, fall under the category of chicken soup for the soul.

As a supplement editor, Liu Zelai had naturally published many chicken soup articles.

He always believed that chicken soup articles have the effect of purifying readers' hearts and removing the restlessness of human nature, which is very beneficial to society.

Now, Liu Zelai found that someone was opposing this view.

At first, he was dismissive.

Liu Zelai thought that a 19-year-old kid, whose thoughts were not yet mature, could not have any profound insights. He probably just had a bit of cleverness and wanted to attract attention.

Before reading the manuscripts, Liu Zelai had already decided to reject the kid's submissions.

But he is a responsible editor, so he decided to take a quick look at the manuscripts to see what the kid was saying.

After reading, Liu Zelai realized that he might have been wrong.

The first manuscript he read was titled "Chicken Soup for the Soul or Spiritual Opium." The manuscript narrates the reflections of a person with a chicken soup addiction, using a satirical tone.

In the story, the chicken soup addict discovers that chicken soup articles motivate people in a very brain-dead way. They do not provide a comprehensive analysis of things but choose a one-sided perspective to tell you that you must do this, and if you do this, you will definitely achieve something. For example, to be successful, you need to have perseverance, and if you persist, you will surely see the light. This is the tone of chicken soup articles. However, in reality, to be successful, you need to make adequate preparations and adopt flexible methods. Persistence can sometimes lead to failure, especially if the direction is wrong from the start.

The addict also found that chicken soup articles often use a method of switching concepts to achieve their purpose. For example, in a widely circulated chicken soup article, a billionaire on a beach vacation meets a young fisherman. The billionaire suggests a path to wealth: borrow money to buy a boat and go out to sea to make money, then buy more boats and hire more people to increase production, then buy more boats to start a seafood company, then open a seafood processing plant, and finally list the company on the stock market. Now, you can use the money raised from the stock market to do big business, such as real estate, and eventually become a billionaire like him.

How did the fisherman react?

The fisherman asked the billionaire, "What will I do after becoming a billionaire?"

The billionaire said, "Then you can come to the beach to vacation, bask in the sun, and fish, enjoying life."

The fisherman smiled mysteriously. At that moment, the fisherman seemed to have transformed into a hermit who had seen through the world. The fisherman countered, "Isn't the life I am living now already the result of what you described?"

In this famous chicken soup article, if the fisherman is not the son of a world-renowned tycoon, he must be a self-deceiving and unwilling-to-change failure.

The author uses this story to convey the philosophy: "What others spend their whole lives pursuing, I, a commoner, already possess, but I just didn't know it."

It seems profound, but it is actually just a cold joke. Anyone with a bit of intelligence would realize that this article is just a silly thing written for the sake of being chicken soup.

The only thing a poor fisherman shares with a billionaire might be the free sun and sea breeze.

But the billionaire enjoys much more than just basking in the sun. He has a large amount of money to support him in enjoying many beautiful things freely, while the poor fisherman, except for basking in the sun and enjoying the sea breeze, can hardly compare in other aspects.

From this perspective, chicken soup articles are just a way to deceive people. They only want to numb your soul and make you forget your anger and desire for progress.

Poor people, not only are they deceived, but they also shed tears of gratitude and sing praises, which is truly tragic.

Liu Zelai spent half an hour reading the ten manuscripts and found that he was convinced by the thoughts of this young man named Xiao Fei.

Upon careful reflection, most so-called chicken soup articles are indeed like this.

He immediately decided to report to his superiors and open a special column for these ten anti-chicken soup articles. First, he needed to write a letter to the author...