30 years ago, 10,000 yuan was equivalent to 1.08 million yuan today!
30 years ago, in 1993 or 1994, I and my wife were working in a state-owned enterprise in Shandong Province. We both held intermediate professional titles, but our monthly salaries were only a meager 200 yuan each. This was considered quite low at the time, as most people were earning only tens or a little over a hundred yuan.
Since my wife was from the north, she was frugal with her own expenses, but she was generous when it came to our only daughter. Before every midterm, final, monthly, or unit test, she would instruct me to order a special dish from a fancy restaurant. I remember ordering fish-flavored shredded pork the most, to encourage our daughter.
Apart from saving on household expenses, from 1985 to 1994, I was at the peak of my career in publishing papers and books. I remember one book in particular, which was about memorizing vocabulary. Professor Yi Jingyu from the Foreign Language Department of Beijing Normal University asked me how much I received in royalties for my previously published books. I replied that the most I received was for the book "Basic Pronunciation Rules of International Phonetic Alphabet," which earned me over 800 yuan. Professor Yi said that the manuscript of this book was excellent and offered to take care of obtaining an ISBN and finding a printing factory. I would be responsible for sales in Shandong, while he would handle nationwide distribution. He assured me that this approach would be much more successful than publishing through a publishing house.
Later on, just within the schools affiliated with my former workplace, I sold nearly 20,000 copies of the book at a discounted price of 60% (original price was 6 yuan, but I only charged 3.6 yuan). The remaining amount was given as a small commission to the head teachers, subject teachers, the director of the academic affairs office, and the principal and vice-principal. This was the way things worked in the country. If there was money to be made, everyone would benefit. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to sell so many copies.
I kept the money earned from book sales in a savings account and regularly called Professor Yi to seek advice on how to handle it. Each time, he simply advised me to keep it in the account and withdraw it when needed. It wasn't until 1997, when I went to Beijing to attend a national conference on
