On his last day on the island, Lin Chaoyang accepted an exclusive interview with the "United Daily News" and talked about his feelings during the past few days of visiting the island.

During the interview, when a reporter asked him if he had gained any inspiration from his trip to the Bay Island, Lin Chaoyang smiled and said: "Inspiration is not always accurate. No feature-length work can be completed based on inspiration."

The reporter persisted and asked, "Is it possible for you to create a work about the history and destiny of the Bay Island or the two sides of the Taiwan Strait in the future?"

Lin Chaoyang took a moment and replied seriously: "Maybe there needs to be a suitable time."

After hearing Lin Chaoyang's ambiguous words, the reporter wanted to ask more questions, but he did not want to talk about this topic any more.

During his visit to Bay Island, Lin Chaoyang received warm hospitality from people in the cultural circles of Bay Island. Wherever he went, there was a surge of enthusiastic readers, which showed his strong influence in Bay Island.

The upsurge of public opinion on the fifth day directly made him the focus of discussions in the streets and after dinner, and he truly became a national writer known to all the people on the island, including women and children.

By the time the public recovered from this wave of news, Lin Chaoyang had already left.

But even though the others are gone, the voice remains.

August 4, the day after Lin Chaoyang left Wandao.

"United Daily News" published an exclusive interview with Lin Chaoyang before leaving Bay Island. The content of the interview was nothing special.

Some people noticed that in the conversation between the reporter and Lin Chaoyang, the reporter talked about whether he would create works about the Bay Island and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait in the future. Lin Chaoyang’s answer was ambiguous. It is not clear whether he refused directly out of politeness or had some concerns.

But this answer still gives some hope to many of his loyal readers. It would be great if Lin Chaoyang could really write such a work.

In addition to the exclusive interview, what no one expected was that Lin Chaoyang actually published a signed article in the "United Daily News" titled "Two sides of the Taiwan Strait and three places are all brothers."

This article is 6,000 words long and can be regarded as a summary of Lin Chaoyang’s six-day trip to the Bay Island. It is also his final mission to the Bay Island this time.

There is a paragraph in the article that reads:

""..——--In June and July, the mainland was threatened by flooding that had not been seen in a century. My wife and I actively advocated donating money to the affected people, which received an enthusiastic response from the cultural circles and citizens of Hong Kong.

On July 23, hundreds of enthusiastic people from Hong Kong's entertainment industry gathered at Happy Valley Racecourse to raise funds for a performance for the floods in East China. The scene was touching. Among them were Brigitte Lin, Sylvia Chang, Luo Dayou, Yi Nengjing and other Bay Island entertainment circles who came to their aid.

During the visit, I was deeply moved to hear that people on the island had also raised large amounts of donations for the disaster-stricken compatriots on the mainland.

Looking back on the past, the ancestors of the mainland crossed the sea and landed on the island with the courage to explore and develop the unknown, and took root here. They brought the fire of the Central Plains culture.

From then on, Chinese language, customs and beliefs took root in the land of Bao D.

For thousands of years, even after dynasties have changed and foreign enemies have invaded, the Chinese civilization has continued uninterrupted. There is a bend of strait between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, but the longing and concern have never been diluted by the distance.

On both sides of the Taiwan Strait, blood is thicker than water.

Hidden in the Hokkien language are the accents from the hometown, the fireworks in front of the Mazu Temple are inextricable nostalgia, the lively dragon and lion dances, and the bright Lantern Festival lanterns are the inheritance from the ancestors and the continuous connection of roots.

———.」

After the article was published, it continued the news boom of the previous two days and immediately caused a huge response from all walks of life in Bay Island society.

This response quickly broke down into two opposing camps. One side believed that Lin Chaoyang's article was sincere, touching, integrated with emotions, and profoundly righteous.

The other side believed that Lin Chaoyang’s article contained evil intentions and was clearly acting as a pioneer.

The two parties insisted on their own opinions and the quarrel was intense, which invisibly once again expanded the influence of Lin Chaoyang's visit to Bay Island, and almost became the most influential cultural phenomenon in Bay Island in 1991.

Even the sales of Lin Chaoyang's works published on the island have also been rising steadily.

However, these quarrels in the Bay Island no longer have any impact on Lin Chaoyang. His visit to the Bay Island is to be a dove of peace between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and it has more symbolic significance.

After wandering around the bay island for a week, he planned to take a good rest for a few days after returning to Xiangjiang.

This week, for a salty fish like him, the workload is indeed a bit heavy and he needs to take a break. Unfortunately, the reality does not allow him to rest at all.

He arrived in Hong Kong and had just rested for the night when Robert Gottlieb's overseas phone call came home.

McGrath, the second-in-command, had previously been in charge of the column. Of course, Robert Gottlieb's personal call was not just to push for the publication.

"Lin, guess what the sales of The New Yorker were last month?" Robert Gottlieb's tone was full of joy, but also a little bit shy.

"Are there 10 million copies?"

Robert Gottlieb was so disappointed by Lin Chaoyang's nonsense that he complained: "Don't you care about the response to your column?"

"Of course you care, but you didn't say anything!'

Robert Gottlieb was silenced by Lin Chaoyang, and he wisely chose not to get entangled with him.

"Let me tell you, last month our magazine's cumulative sales reached 4.26 million copies."

4.26 million copies?

The New Yorker is a weekly magazine with 4 issues per month, which means the average sales volume is 1.065 million copies.

This sales volume—·...-is quite average!

In the past, when his works were published in domestic publications, the sales volume increased by hundreds of thousands of copies. The column "A Bite of China" has been published in The New Yorker for more than a month, and the sales volume of a single issue has not even reached 100,000 copies. Lin Chaoyang

I was very disappointed.

Of course, this is just his psychological activity.

Seeing that Lin Chaoyang remained silent, Robert Gottlieb on the other end of the phone said happily: "Are you also surprised?"

Lin Chaoyang:?

He wanted to complain that Gottlieb had never seen the world, but out of politeness he said: "Yeah,

I really didn’t expect that!”

Robert Gottlieb continued with a proud tone: "There is something even more unexpected! Lin, did you know? As of the last issue in July, the magazine's sales have exceeded 1.1 million copies!"

Listening to this number, Lin Chaoyang felt a little comforted. From 900,000 to 1.1 million copies, this increase is quite considerable.

"The sales volume of 1.1 million copies is not the point. The point is the sales growth driven by your column. Can you understand? Lin, this is the largest sales increase of The New Yorker in the past eight years.

As long as your column continues to be updated, sales should increase significantly."

"Of course I understand. Robert, it seems you have to increase my royalties."

Robert Gottlieb smiled heartily, "No problem! Of course the royalties will increase!"

The "A Bite of China" column brought the largest sales growth to The New Yorker in eight years.

It’s not just the benefits brought about by increased sales.

As one of the leaders in the American literary and art journal industry, The New Yorker's huge influence is not only reflected in its huge readership, but also in advertising fees.

Different from the situation where domestic journals can only rely on magazine sales to generate revenue, and advertising revenue is pitifully small,

Since the birth of The New Yorker, advertising fees have been an important source of income, even far exceeding the income from magazine sales itself.

At its peak in the 1960s, The New Yorker's annual advertising revenue reached $60 million, making it the money-printing machine of the periodical industry.

After so many years, inflation has increased a lot, but the advertising revenue of The New Yorker has not increased but declined. All of this is of course due to the shrinking sales of the magazine.

Nowadays, magazine sales are showing a trend of old trees blooming, and advertising revenue will inevitably rise in the future. Robert Gottlieb is naturally excited.

He is now extremely grateful for his decision. Lin Chaoyang is simply his lucky general, so a little increase in royalties means nothing.

But whether it was him or Lin Chaoyang, everyone understood that this was just a joke.

The New Yorker's payment to writers has not changed much over the years, and has always been between 25 and 50 cents per word.

For an article of about 3,000 words, a writer can earn up to US$1,500, which is already the highest fee standard for writers writing for The New Yorker.

You can publish up to 4 such articles per month, which is $6,000.

For a writer who contributes to one of the world's top literary magazines like The New Yorker, this is indeed a bit pitiful.

However, famous magazines have always been stingy in terms of manuscript fees.

The magazine has its own reputation, and it is an honor for the unknown author to publish an article in the magazine. Such a magazine never lacks high-quality authors and manuscripts.

This was true for Ming Pao when Jin Yong was in charge, and it was also true for The New Yorker.

Whether you are a writer or a journalist, if you are lucky enough to contribute to The New Yorker, it will be almost no difficulty for you to have your work published.

If his works can appear regularly in the pages of The New Yorker, or even become a columnist, then he will already be at the top of the American literary and journalistic circles.

With such a powerful reputation bonus, who would care about such trivial profits as publishing fees?

"Lin, how about we extend the column time?"

Robert Gottlieb made the suggestion.

"extend?"

"Yes. Your column is so popular that I think we can continue to do it and make it the signature of our New Yorker!"

This will also be good for you and can further enhance your reputation in the United States."

Robert Gottlieb's tone was full of intrigue. He and Lin Chaoyang originally agreed to run the column for one season to see the effect. Now that the effect is so outstanding, he naturally didn't want to let go of Lin Chaoyang's golden pen.

But Lin Chaoyang had no such intention, and he was not short of money. He wrote a column for The New Yorker because he was jointly persuaded by Gottlieb and Jones to promote China's food culture.

Columns are like a lock for a writer, and he cannot freely touch them.

Every time I'm having fun, I suddenly remember that I haven't written the manuscript for next week (tomorrow) yet, and I feel sad, depressed, and hopeless in life.

What's more, he still has a novel to write, and he really doesn't want to waste this energy.

Thinking of this, Lin Chaoyang laughed and said: "Robert, don't be ridiculous, I don't have that much to write.
To be continued...