Luckily I’m not a professional editor and to be an editor once in a while is also a short pain for me. But I’m still thinking there is no reason to feel painful on it. After that it seems I have more understand of the pain editors feel because of the nowadays’ system and the press.

I’m to stay at home to sort out and proofread the manuscripts. In fact I don’t have mind on that but do some light readings or surf the net for reading news. Several hours later, the manuscripts are still are where they were. I stared at them fixedly and they gave me back a dull look. It seems says : “ Why are you still dawdling as you have to hand in tomorrow？” Then I opened it slowly with red pen in hand.  A question came in my mind at once, that is , is there anybody read the book after it’s republished if the editor even don’t have any interest to open and read it?  However, it’s unnecessary to think about this as resources are being wasted and editors put in a lot of hard work and energy.

Every time when I read some published articles with junk texts, I can’t help thinking of the work Text is Made from Meat written by Dong Qiao. He is a writer from editor’s family. His editor career makes him have a careful and dense sentiment to texts. His writing has a laconic style without any complicated words, while has flowery words other than simple ones. His beautiful writings resulted from several decade’ an edifying influence  of  Chinese and Western culture on him, also from the return of his taking texts as heart.

I took out several books of Dong Qiao again and checked the names of the executive editors. I think they really are luck editors. I also gave some circles on some wrong words. What readers mind are also Mr. Dong mind. He said there were a lot of errors in the works, about 600 or 700 pages which are a little hard to read, published in Sichuan province. Beautiful works written by great writers should be with most excellent editors’ reviewing and proofreading. So I , as an unlucky editor, don’t even have the chance of making mistakes in proofreading good works.

One friend of editor asked me on line via QQ talking software when I will be back to the company while I was sorting out the papers like chewing wax. He wanted to give me back a book written by Linda and by the way was to introduce me four books he just bought with RMB 38. Nowadays there are few people like reading and fewer ones who buy books for reading. It’s a wonder he is my profession and we have a common interest of reading. Therefore we talk starting from books, associate with each other for reason of borrowing, exchanging or talking about books, or now and then giving a good book as a gift.

When I      was studying in the university I started reading works written by Linda. In the classes of Foreign Constitutional Law, teacher Han Dayuan let us know her and his works. She published a book Concern in The Deep of History, one of the four books­­, including President is Undependable wrote in 1998, I Have a Dream Too in 1999, Split the Night Like a Comet in 2006. That friend recently read Linda’s works and had a lot sigh with emotion. Affected by him, I bought all the books of Linda. He gave me a book Beautiful as Freedom and borrowed one Sweep Leaves to for the Winte from me.

Good works have unfailing charm. The book Concern in The Deep of History have been reprinted for twelve times with 0.11 million copies since August, 2008. Compared with the best sellers starting print for 0.1 million copies, It took more than 10 years to sell out over 0.11 copies which is really a long time seller.

Several decades later, there must will be more readers who will miss Linda and Dong Qiao. The pages will yellow while the beautiful works will be monuments. By that time, the book I’m working on must has been turned to pulp and ashes.