madnovel Chapter 21: Signed Edition Hong Kong Star Posters
Chapter 21: Signed Edition Hong Kong Star Posters
In October, the weather in Beijing starts to get cool.
Li Si'an sat behind the counter of the music store, flipping through a book called "Contemporary Music Scene" in her hand. After flipping through two pages, she threw it aside.
The magazine said that the Chinese music scene is lively this year. Lao Lang's "My Deskmate" has been popular since last year and the craze is still going strong. Sun Yue's "Wishing You Peace" is playing everywhere.
Needless to say, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Jacky Cheung's "True Love," Andy Lau's "True Forever," and Emil Chau's "Love Follows" all sold better than the last.
He closed the magazine, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.
The audio-visual store has been open for almost three months. Selling forty or fifty cassette tapes a day is considered good; they make three or four yuan per tape, totaling a little over three thousand yuan a month, of which forty percent goes to their uncle.
Chen Dong was overseeing the video arcade. There were fifty or sixty people there every night, and with the soft drinks and snacks, they made over five hundred a day, which amounted to fifteen thousand a month.
The magnetic card team distributes between 8,000 and 10,000 yuan per month. Putting it all together, they make a net profit of over 20,000 yuan per month.
A 17-year-old high school student earning more than 20,000 yuan a month would make anyone overjoyed.
Li Si'an was very happy.
In my past life, I was a programmer, working myself to the bone for a pittance.
Now it's great, you can make money just by lying down.
Zhang Yuanxiao supplies the magnetic cards, Sister Nan runs the distribution channels, Tang Yun oversees the store, and Chen Dong watches over the video arcade. He spends his days attending classes, checking accounts, and spending his evenings cuddling with Tang Yun upstairs.
This is great!
But he knew in his heart that this money was easy to earn, and the potential for growth was limited. The magnetic card business could only last another year or two at most; once information became transparent, the business would be over.
Record stores and video arcades are reliable, but you can only make a maximum of 20,000 yuan a month.
Enough to live on. Enough for him to live comfortably.
But that's not enough for him to date female celebrities.
In his past life, he was holed up in his rented room watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Road Home," and watching Zhang Ziyi wear a bellyband on the red carpet, thinking to himself, "This person is really amazing."
In his life, he had only ever sat at the same table with Zhang Ziyi and watched her eat ribs with her mouth glistening with oil.
They were very close. But he wanted them even closer.
He wasn't pursuing Zhang Ziyi—he had no interest in that dark-skinned girl. But he wanted to be closer to the girls in the entertainment industry, the ones he could only see on screen in his past life.
This requires fame, money, and status.
So he had to enter the entertainment industry.
Li Si'an opened the drawer and glanced at the savings account. For the three months of August, September, and October, she earned a little over 20,000 yuan each month. After deducting food and other expenses, there was more than 50,000 yuan in the savings account.
More than 50,000. That should keep him busy for a while.
He thought about the little he knew in his past life.
Movies? Chinese cinema from 1995 to 2000 was stagnant. Feng Xiaogang was still making TV dramas, and Zhang Yimou's "To Live" was still banned. Cinemas were deserted.
The real commercial films won't emerge until 2002's *Hero*, which is still seven years away. That's too far.
TV dramas? In China, producing TV dramas requires a license, and only a handful of organizations hold such licenses: CCTV, provincial TV stations, and a few film studios. The industry is small, the barriers to entry are high, and without connections, it's virtually impossible to get in.
After much thought, as someone who has been reborn from another world, the most realistic way out is still to plagiarize songs.
Firstly, he has a professional foundation. His studies in music and related subjects at the Affiliated High School of Beijing Dance Academy were not for nothing.
Vocal music, instrumental music, small band arrangement, music theory, harmony, form analysis, songwriting, music composition, and staff notation—these are all his major courses.
He has a proper formal education, not some self-taught person.
Secondly, his uncle, Zhou Weidong, has connections in Beijing's arts and culture circles. Big names like Cui Jian and Mao Amin could easily give him a helping hand and help him establish himself in the industry.
Thirdly, he has a cheat code.
One evening in mid-October, Li Si'an sat at her desk on the second floor, with a sheet of white paper spread out in front of her and a pen in her hand.
He wrote the date in his notebook: October 1995. Then he wrote a line below: First song, to be determined.
I'll try writing it down first. If I can write it, I'll save it; if not, oh well. I'm not in a rush to use it anyway. I'll have to wait until I'm an adult.
He tried to recall a song. The melody was clear; he could go through every note in his mind, from the verse to the chorus.
He could write the lyrics, and they were pretty close to the original. But when he tried to recreate the arrangement, he found it was all blurry.
I wrote a line of melody, then crossed it out. I wrote another line, then crossed it out again.
It's not that I can't write it, it's that after I write it, something always feels off. The melody is right, but the details of the arrangement don't fit in, and the whole song feels adrift, lacking substance.
Li Si'an threw down the pen and leaned back in her chair.
My mental strength is insufficient. I need to upgrade.
He pulled up the system panel and glanced at it. Level 3 requires 100 grams of pure gold. Pure gold isn't available on the market, so he had to buy gold jewelry. Assuming a gold content of 99.9%, 100 grams wouldn't be enough; he'd need to buy 110 grams to be on the safe side.
The price of gold is over 130 yuan per gram, which is a little over 14,000 yuan. He has over 40,000 yuan, so he can afford it.
No rush. I'll go to Caibai in a while.
One weekend at the end of October, Li Si'an was organizing the tape racks in the store when she suddenly remembered something.
In his past life, he had read a report that said during the peak of mainland China's idol-chasing craze in the 1990s, a single original Hong Kong poster could sell for tens or even hundreds of yuan. Didn't he have a ready-made channel in Hong Kong?
That evening, Li Si'an used the shop's phone to dial a Hong Kong number.
"Mom, it's me."
"Si'an? What made you suddenly decide to call your mother?"
"Business at the shop is alright, just letting you know I'm safe. I also want to discuss something with you. Since you're in Hong Kong, could you please buy some original posters of the Four Heavenly Kings and send them to me? I need the Hong Kong editions, with traditional Chinese characters on them."
Zhou Weilan chuckled on the other end of the line: "What do you need that for?"
"Sell them. You'll make more money than selling cassette tapes."
"You're quick-witted, aren't you? Okay, Mom will go buy it for you. Whose?"
"I want Andy Lau, Leon Lai, Aaron Kwok, and Jacky Cheung. Get more of the regular versions, and a few autographed ones too."
"The autographed edition is more expensive."
"It's okay, autographed copies will fetch a good price."
Two weeks later, a large package from Hong Kong arrived at the store.
When Li Si'an opened the package, Tang Yun was standing next to her sorting through the cassette tapes. Inside were dozens of posters neatly stacked, each one pressed flat and secure.
This is the original Hong Kong edition, printed on thick paper with accurate colors. The top few pages are printed with signatures, written in a flowing, elegant style.
Tang Yun leaned closer for a look: "Are you really planning to sell?"
"Nonsense. Why would I bother if I wasn't going to sell?"
Li Si'an cleared out a wall in the most prominent spot in the store and hung up the posters one by one. She hung up three or four of Andy Lau's posters, three or four of Leon Lai's posters, and three of Aaron Kwok's posters.
When it was Jacky Cheung's turn, he pulled one out of the stack of posters and hung it up—just one.
Tang Yun glanced at him: "Why is there only one Jacky Cheung photo?"
"The God of Songs' fans buy more cassette tapes than posters. If we hang too many, they won't sell."
The standard edition is priced at 45 to 50, while the printed and signed edition is priced at 120 to 150.
After hanging them up, he stared at the printed autographed copies for a few seconds.
Then he pulled a black marker from under the counter.
"What are you doing?" Tang Yun asked.
"There are too few autographed copies; we can't sell enough."
Li Si'an took out a regular poster and carefully traced the printed signature on it, stroke by stroke.
When he was a child, his grandfather forced him to learn calligraphy for a few years with a rattan cane. He has good pen control and can easily trace a signature.
After tracing one, he held it up to look at it and compared it with the real printed signed version next to it.
"Does it look like it?"
Tang Yun glanced at it: "Pretty much."
"That's fine then."
He traced five or six pictures in a row. He had pictures of Andy Lau, Leon Lai, and Aaron Kwok—each one. After he finished tracing them, he added a line to the price list.
"Limited edition handwritten autographed copies shipped directly from Hong Kong, 298 yuan each, limited quantity, while supplies last."
Tang Yun looked at the line of text and her lips twitched: "You're too ruthless."
He pulled Tang Yun into a tight embrace and planted a heavy kiss on her cheek. Releasing her, he looked at her and said, "What do you know? This is called seizing a business opportunity."
After saying that, he sat down in the chair and casually pulled Tang Yun onto his lap. Tang Yun was caught off guard, and her body swayed, so she put her hands on his shoulders.
"What are you doing...?" She struggled, but couldn't break free.
Li Si'an placed his hand on her waist and gave it a light squeeze. He clicked his tongue inwardly—this waist was so slender and supple; the waist of a dancer definitely felt different from that of an ordinary girl.
Tang Yun went limp, leaning against his chest, her voice soft: "No..."
He pinched it again. Tang Yun shrank back, grabbed his wrist, and whispered, "It tickles...stop it..."
Li Si'an looked down at her and smiled, "Will you dare say I'm dark-skinned next time?"
Tang Yun blushed, pushed him away, stood up from his lap, turned her back to straighten her clothes, and didn't look at him.