Chapter 33: Stuck on a Pirate Ship?

As the creaky door pushed open, an office of roughly twenty square meters came into view.

Though small, it was fully equipped; it seemed to contain everything, yet the clutter was so chaotic it resembled a storage room. A portly middle-aged man, noticing the youth of the contributor, cast a glance of slight surprise before reaching out a hand.

"Hello, I am Editor-in-Chief Mo."

"Zheng Fei."

The middle-aged man said, "We just moved in, so things are a bit messy. Please, sit wherever you like."

Zheng Fei scanned the room, unable to help but mutter to himself, "Sit wherever I like? You might at least provide a place to sit!"

Furthermore, in an era where there was little to go around, to be this plump was a clear sign of a very good diet. Noticing the young man standing motionless, the middle-aged man realized his oversight and pulled out a folding chair.

"My apologies."

Zheng Fei looked around the office, wondering if "shell companies" existed in this day and age. He recalled that such things only became prevalent in the early nineties, after the real estate boom in Hainan.

Seeing the young man’s lack of trust—he might as well have had "I want to leave" written on his face—the middle-aged man hurried to stabilize the situation. He feared the young man would find them unreliable and take his manuscript to another publishing house.

"I’m sorry about this. This is our temporary office. It’s a bit small, but we are a one-hundred-percent legitimate publishing house."

As he spoke, he produced various credentials for Zheng Fei to inspect. After glancing at the documents, Zheng Fei roughly understood the nature of the firm. He had not expected it to be a joint state-private enterprise. It fit the characteristics of the current era; while the reform and opening-up policy was underway, regulations were still strict, and joint ventures were less prone to public criticism.

When the middle-aged man saw that Zheng Fei did not turn and leave after finishing the papers, he finally let out a sigh of relief. He had lost count of how many people had turned and fled the moment they heard the words "joint state-private," fearing they were being scammed.

Truth be told, this "Advanced Publishing House" had been a private firm before the Liberation. Later, under the drive for nationalization, many private publishers were merged into state-run ones. They had thought they secured an "iron rice bowl," but with the advent of reform, their private-sector lineage made them the perfect scapegoats to be spun off. The publisher now operated as a joint venture, forced to find its own office space and receiving only half their wages from the state, leaving them to sink or swim on their own.

On the surface, the authorities used flowery language, calling them a "pioneering unit for reform," but in reality, they were left empty-handed. Without capital, they couldn't hire artists to commission work, and unsolicited submissions were even rarer.

They didn't have their own periodical, and famous long-form novelists would never dream of submitting their work to a place like this. Editor-in-Chief Mo felt utterly helpless.

What troubled him most was the "private" label, which made the number of employees a point of contention. According to *Das Kapital*, Marx posited that if a business hired more than eight people, it began "appropriating the surplus value of workers" and was thus considered a capitalist venture. So, not only were they broke, but their staff size was strictly capped. What could a publisher do with only eight people?

All they could do was drift along, "ringing the bell as long as they were monks," reading newspapers and soaking up the sun. They had resigned themselves to mediocrity; after all, there were plenty of people in this day and age who did nothing but read papers at work.

But what annoyed Mo the most was that the year-end was approaching, and they would inevitably be called to meetings by the relevant departments. They would certainly be paraded as a typical example of a "pioneering pilot unit" to be criticized, serving as a laughingstock for their peers. Mo thought that if they only managed to publish one or two books a year, it would be too humiliating. At the very least, they needed three.

And here, a "sucker" had walked right through the door. He had to secure this.

"Young comrade, let me tell you, don't mind our office. That’s just because we’ve recently separated from a larger house. Our foundations are solid. Forty years ago, many of the posters in old Shanghai were designed by us... that Paramount, and the vanishing cream posters—all designed by us. You know Eileen Chang? Her first book was published with our help..."

The middle-aged man rambled on until Zheng Fei grew impatient.

"Perhaps you could look at the manuscript first? If you find it suitable, we can consider discussing things further."

"Ahem."

Reminded by the young man, the middle-aged man snapped back to reality. Right, he hadn't even seen the work yet. If it didn't meet the standards for publication, what was he getting so worked up about?

But when he opened the kraft paper envelope and saw the contents, he was astonished, staring at Zheng Fei with a look of utter confusion.

"Are these comics drawn by you?"

Hearing the middle-aged man correctly identify them as "comics" was Zheng Fei’s turn to be shocked. Most editors in this era didn't even know what a comic was, and even if they saw them on the black market, they would just dismiss them as a type of picture book.

"Yes, I drew them," Zheng Fei nodded.

The middle-aged man’s smiling expression turned serious.

"Wait here a moment; I’m going to call someone over to talk to you."

The middle-aged man stepped out, knocked on the door of the next office, and shouted, "Sui-sui, come out quickly!"

"Someone brought a comic manuscript to our house. I don't really understand this stuff, so come out and take a look."

A lazy voice drifted from the next room, sounding as if the person hadn't woken up yet.

"Nobody even submits picture books, let alone comics. Who are you trying to fool? If you want cigarettes, buy them yourself; I’m not running errands for you."

"I’m not lying, hurry up!"

"I want to sleep a bit more."

The middle-aged man pounded hard on the door. "If I’m lying to you, I’ll never touch a cigarette again in my life!"

Hearing this, there was a significant commotion in the next room. As the door opened, a young woman with somewhat frizzy hair, wearing a thick cotton-padded jacket and heavy glasses, shuffled out. She looked to be eighteen or nineteen, as if she had just graduated.

When the young woman saw Zheng Fei, their eyes met, but she immediately lowered her head, not daring to even offer a greeting, giving off an impression of profound social anxiety.

The middle-aged man looked at her disheveled appearance with disdain, but he gritted his teeth and introduced her anyway:

"My apologies. This is our editor, Xu Sui-sui, a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy. She usually handles the manuscript reviews. You can ask her any questions related to art."

He didn't dare tell Zheng Fei that this girl was the pillar of their house; she was not only the editor but also the artist. The two picture books the house had previously published were both written and illustrated by her.

The bespectacled girl, who avoided eye contact, kept her head down, but the moment she saw Zheng Fei’s manuscript, her eyes lit up.

"Did you really draw these?"

Seeing her suddenly lean in so closely and with such excitement, Zheng Fei was genuinely startled and took several steps back.

"Yes, I drew them."

The young woman was exceptionally agitated.

"What did you use to draw this hair? And these lines—did you use a fountain pen or a dip pen..."

"You draw so well, did a teacher teach you?"