Chapter 156: Only the Skilled in Battle May Lead

Indeed, whether due to the weather or some other reason, the troubles down south hadn't spread, but up north, problems with chafing and soreness were cropping up.

After all, sitting right beside the capital, Pingjing always got a preview of imported goods ahead of the rest of the country.

Just like the sanitary napkin production introduced three years ago—it was all about whether someone could seize that selling point.

Hadn't some cadre from the Jiangzhou Commercial Bureau mentioned seeing it in a movie before?

Ordinary people simply let that chance slip by.

Yet there were always those who managed to seize the moment.

Take someone like Rang Weidong, a twenty-year-old reform prodigy whom everyone naturally looked to.

Simply because this era was witnessing the emergence of such bullsh*t powerhouses all over the country.

Didn't Rang Weidong come to Pingjing half a year ago just to tag along with a batch of reform-and-opening pioneers attending various symposiums?

Over the past six months, Jibei had also produced a top-tier figure.

Alongside the director of the Haidian County Shirt Factory in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, their status in the reform-and-opening underworld was roughly equivalent to Northern Qiao Feng and Southern Murong.

Had Rang Weidong not repeatedly declined and kept a low profile—virtually refusing to cooperate with or participate in various interviews—coupled with the fact that Yu Songhai happened to be blessed with "the happiness of a husband of two wives,"

the situation would probably have been a tripartite equilibrium of North, South, and West dominating the heights.

That shirt factory director from Jiangsu and Zhejiang had cut the ribbon for the opening act of reform last year.

The fellow from Jibei was this April's business section chief who contracted the first state-owned factory in the country.

And his brilliant move was to roll up scratch paper...

This made Rang Weidong deeply suspicious that this bastard, just like him, had spotted toilet paper rolls at the Canton Fair.

Or perhaps witnessed them in some foreign-affiliated hotels in Pingjing.

In any case, the entire province of Jibei had already started trending toward the use of this rolled toilet paper!

Consequently, it became a running joke among state-owned factories across Jibei.

If you didn't reform properly, you'd end up going off to sell scrap paper!

Rang Weidong decided he would pay a visit to this person later, because he seemed to sense another layer of threat.

However, the immediate priority was the photography exhibition.

Finalizing the upcoming heavyweight collaboration between the organizers and co-organizers was actually a branch-off issue arising right before the holiday.

Shen Cuiyue hadn't even had a chance to distribute the photographs to everyone yet;

the three parties had just sat down and exchanged pleasantries.

Already, Rang Weidong had signed an agreement starting next year to formally count natural-year sales exceeding ten million rolls, with the latter half of this year simply rolling over into the next.

Yet there were no penalties even if this target weren't met!

The other party had no concept of suing for breach of contract; they were merely after a promise.

In return, it was guaranteed that Rang Weidong's sales team would secure the pricing rights and sales rights for at least one hundred million color film rolls over the next decade, with the factory promising to supply as many as requested.

As the First Film Factory under the Ministry of Chemical Industry, the Kaixuan Plant stated that such civilian volumes of film were, to them, child's play—once the machines started rolling, one hundred million rolls a year could easily be produced.

Just think, shooting a single movie required hundreds of thousands of feet of film in a flash; this volume of still film was truly a non-issue.

Thus, Zhang Lingyun and his crew effectively secured a golden career guarantee for the next ten years!

Worship the boss, one and all!

Yet, the next force to resist new thinking turned out to be the newspaper office.

In truth, being a vanguard of reform at this juncture carried immense risk.

Southern Murong had been investigated for economic issues from start to finish; Northern Qiao Feng had assumed office by posting giant wall newspapers, and during his most illustrious moments, he was continuously plastered with big-character posters as well.

Ultimately, both passed into obscurity, but at least they avoided prison in order to preserve the significance of reform and opening.

Therefore, Rang Weidong's low profile was entirely correct.

Just quietly rake in the cash.

But others couldn't see this bigger picture and simply assumed he was just lucky.

Once the photographs were distributed, opinions immediately diverged.

The film factory had already started pondering how to modify and design the packaging, and how to execute Rang Weidong's request for an initial batch of one hundred thousand units, rolling out the new packaging in batches of ten thousand.

The photographs on the table were all acceptable; any of them could win gold, silver, or bronze awards.

All three parties tacitly agreed that designating specific individuals to win awards was a non-issue.

Even allocating one gold award each, dividing up the silver and bronze, and finally tossing a few to genuinely outstanding submissions from society made it quite easy to reach a consensus.

The only exception was the series of photographs displayed by the two female college students under Manager Shen's direction, which immediately caused the newspaper folks to shake their heads vigorously: "No, no, how can it be this style?"

This was supposed to be the humanistic care and earthly vitality that Rang Weidong had demanded of Manager Zhang and his team.

Among them, the most outstanding piece depicted a rundown alley in Jiangzhou, where a cook was stir-frying dishes over a stove in a shabby restaurant.

A very ordinary subject matter.

Yet it had been shot like an art piece by a bunch of old photography studio masters.

In later generations' terminology, it was staged.

Rang Weidong had given them a hint to capture the essence of everyday life, so they genuinely stared at all sorts of smoke and fire; perhaps given their cultural level, that was all they could understand.

And in their photo studios, weren't they accustomed to arranging all sorts of appropriate props to construct a perfect composition?

Along the weathered wooden outer wall of a stilted building, a row of smoked cured meat and sausages hung along the upper edge of the window.

In truth, searching the entirety of Jiangzhou, one couldn't find a family that wealthy right now—at least twenty or thirty pieces of cured meat hung like a curtain, with several long strings of sausages dangling down, perfectly serving as dividing lines.

This was already professional-level compositional staging.

To top it all off, plates of red and white peppers, greens, radishes, and eggplants were deliberately arranged right beneath the front of the window—the colorful fruits and vegetables were purposely sought out just to highlight the film's vibrant colors.

And the purpose of both these elements was to set off the dim, darkened interior, where the flames from the stove were leaping up onto the surface of the wok.

The cook, turning his head with a sly wink, had a face slick with sweat.

All the foreground elements served to accentuate the deep shadows, while the darkness acted like a velvet backdrop lifting up the flickering flames.

Rang Weidong knew that at the time, at least ten photographers must have raised their cameras to simultaneously snap a flurry of frames, and then handpicked this single shot out of one or two hundred.

Almost every scene had been executed by them through this kind of collective military operation.

Pray tell, how could a solo amateur photography enthusiast compete?

The other photographs were cut from the same cloth: an old grandmother smiling toothlessly while holding up a delicacy, young men and women enjoying a hot pot with their faces scrunched up in sheer bliss, all set against the backdrop of these dilapidated alleys.

However, the photography director in charge of layout at the newspaper flatly rejected this style: "We have already listed templates in our promotional advertisements to reflect the achievements of reform and opening, to showcase the hustle and bustle, the heaven-storming zeal of the frontlines of reform—not eating and drinking. If you want to award this a bronze medal, I have nothing to say, but the gold and silver awards must absolutely not go to this type."

Rang Weidong hadn't originally intended to split hairs: "Fine then, please give me a few more templates, and I'll have the photography team reshoot according to your opinions."

Yet this fellow was as slippery as an eel: "How can you call this following my opinion? We are a news media organization representing the mainstream attitude. If we award gold and silver medals to photographs that unilaterally pursue wining, dining, and hedonism, it will greatly drive a downward slide in the same genre of ideology, leading everyone to pursue hedonism!"

He even singled out the other photos of broken alleys for critique: "I don't know what your train of thought is here—they're all run-down streets and alleys. Isn't this asking to be laughed at? Are these the achievements of reform and opening?! Shouldn't it be a brand-new look, towering skyscrapers? Even character close-ups should feature various industries battling fiercely on the frontlines!"

This was where Rang Weidong drew the line.

No.

Of course, he didn't say that out loud. Just as he noticed He Yuemei taking notes with solemn earnestness, a joke suddenly popped into his mind.

He smiled and stood up: "We have a nursery rhyme in Jiangzhou: *Old granny with pointed feet, when the train comes she can't escape defeat.* Pray tell, what is this old granny's surname?"

The conference room—which moments before had featured the Jibei faction chatting away inattentively, a dozen or so grimacing newspaper folks, a score of sales team members, and even two or three dozen young reporters and editors sitting along the outer perimeter—instantly fell dead silent.

What are you talking about?

Even Shen Cuiyue, the only one familiar with the Jiangzhou accent, was stunned. What kind of talk is this?

Of course, she certainly knew this nursery rhyme; the next line was *rolling, rolling, rolling down into the river*, and she had almost blurted it out.

But what was the meaning of this?

Finally, someone couldn't help asking: "Say that again?"

It was the classic activation of the riddle-solving reflex.

Rang Weidong recited it once more, while everyone—whether college students or veteran cadres of the journalistic front in their fifties and sixties—fell into deep thought.

Because they trusted this reform prodigy to a certain extent, knowing there was a purpose behind his words.

Yet it truly baffled them.

The head photojournalist frowned: "What on earth are you trying to say?"

Rang Weidong delivered the punchline with a straight face: "Her surname is He, because *Little He is just showing its sharp horn*."

The entire conference room fell silent for half a second like a biting northern wind sweeping through, until a female reporter couldn't suppress a giggle, triggering an outburst of laughter across the entire room.

Comrades of 1984, who had never witnessed a deadpan joke before, laughed with absolute glee; one elderly comrade even had to reach into his pocket for his quick-acting heart pills.

The head photojournalist chuckled as well: "What on earth are you getting at?"

Rang Weidong maintained a deadpan expression: "Comprehension of the prompt! Associative thinking! What are the achievements of reform and opening? They are towering, magnificent buildings, but even more so, they are the delicious dishes in the ordinary people's bowls. Ordinary people care even more about whether they are eating well today, whether they are dressed warmly; the warmth of daily human life is the greatest achievement of reform and opening. That is what I am trying to express. If you misinterpret the prompt, it's just like those bound feet—when the train of historical progress rolls over them, you simply can't escape."

Rang Weidong's college entrance examination essay score had been decent enough.

More importantly, his directional understanding of national peace and prosperity derived from the subsequent forty years ensured his reading of the prompt was undeniably correct.

This was an era that loudly proclaimed: *Whether it's a black cat or a white cat, a cat that catches mice is a good cat.*

Continuing to emphasize grand narratives was quite literally missing the mark on civil service examination essays.

Regardless, the moment his explanation silenced the room, it immediately elicited enthusiastic applause from the university students.

In reality, this was precisely the greatest dislocation and painful dilemma faced by contemporary college students.

Yet Rang Weidong had articulated it clearly.

Some among the reporters couldn't help applauding either, and the folks from the Jibei Film Factory hurriedly joined in.

Reminded of another joke, Rang Weidong couldn't quite stop himself: "Let's try another one. Dogs go *woof woof*, cats go *meow meow*, pray tell, what do chickens do?"

Once again, the room fell silent as everyone thought hard. Someone tentatively ventured, "Cluck cluck cluck?"

The person next to them corrected them, "No, that's a laying hen. It should be cock-a-doodle-doo..."

Whereupon Rang Weidong announced: "Opportunities are reserved for those who are prepared."

This time, instead of uproarious laughter, the entire room plunged into profound contemplation!

Comrade Rang Weidong's words carried profound meaning!

Thus, the entire room erupted in super-enthusiastic applause!

These two seemingly cross-talk-style punchlines provided a brilliant, metaphoric parallel for many things.

In truth, all debates concerning reform and opening in this era required citing classical authorities; Northern Qiao Feng took the stage at the Jibei Paper Mill, plastered big-character posters, and lectured at length, while Yu Qili had to write treatises of his own.

Everyone had various doctrines they could draw upon to debate.

Yet nobody had ever witnessed someone persuade their opponent by making the entire crowd double over with laughter.

Even the veteran comrades felt that this young man had cleverly bypassed direct confrontation to emphasize the core ideology with lighthearted humor.

Quite formidable indeed.

In any case, that photography director, who had initially been inclined to elevate the matter to a high ideological plane, found himself unable to maintain his stern demeanor: "Weidong, you really have a way with words!"

At this moment, the highest-ranking newspaper official present suddenly spoke up: "The gold award work at the recent national art exhibition was by that oil painter from Jiangzhou, the one who painted *Father*. I went to see it; it truly has a rich sense of daily life. Whether it's the pen tucked behind the ear or the scars wrapped around the fingers, when the masses see such a work, they are moved from the bottom of their hearts. I agree with young Rang's opinion."

And just like that, the ideological direction of the works for the Kaixuan Cup Photography Exhibition was settled.

Shen Cuiyue didn't care about such matters and signaled Xiao Xiao to hurry downstairs and reserve a restaurant for lunch.

Then she shared a few hearty drinks with the head photojournalist.

Everything had been smoothed out.

As for whether there would be a calligraphed inscription or not, it didn't really matter anymore, did it?