This is an elder who can chat with young people at the New Year's dinner table, and it is also a "true old two-dimensional" who has witnessed the enlightenment era of Chinese animation. She has become the kind of elder that young people want to meet the most during the Chinese New Year. Author |Tris also.
Edit |Zhan Tengyu.
Title Picture |Nie Yifan.
One day in October 2023, in a noisy restaurant in Xicheng District, Beijing, a female elder with a round face, short curly hair, glasses, and a look of being in her 60s was talking at the dinner table: "A small elf, but when she fights with monsters, she is very strong, and she has been killing for a thousand years, which is also a kind of contrast and cuteness." "At the funeral of the brave, people also said, how come this child doesn't even have a little sadness? ”
The old second yuan should be able to hear it, and the content she is talking about is the popular anime "Buried Frilian" in 2023, the heroine Frilian is an elf with a thousand-year lifespan, and the story tells the adventure story of her and her friends.
This clip of the dinner chat was filmed and posted on the Internet, with the title "Maybe one day the elders will not urge marriage at the dinner table, but chat with you about the new fan". In just a few minutes, the ** sparked heated discussions among netizens, and the young people were excited: "2077 Mewtwo image leaked", "I saw what I look like when I get old", "I envy such elders", ......
The 64-year-old is really old and two-dimensional.
In the comment area, some people recognized this aunt who talked eloquently about anime as 64-year-old Yan Baohua this year, the former editor-in-chief of "Beijing**" (hereinafter referred to as "North Carolina") magazine. North Carolina is one of China's first original comic magazines, founded in 1995 and has long since ceased publication.
The first issue of "Beijing**".
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The person who filmed the dinner ** was the anime up master "Cat Priest". He and Yan Baohua's daughter Suzaku are friends who play group games together. In a chat about two years ago, Suzaku accidentally mentioned that his mother used to be the editor-in-chief of "North Carolina", and Pastor Cat became excited and proposed to visit Yan Baohua. The first time they met, he brought his previous "North Carolina" magazine to Yan Baohua for an autograph. He told Yan Baohua that he has been a loyal fan of "North Carolina" since he was a child.
The two gradually got acquainted, and Pastor Cat planned to make a series of "the oldest two-dimensional popular dramas" with Yan Baohua**. In April 2022, he came to Yan Baohua's house and showed her the very popular anime "Dressing Doll" at that time, because there were a small number of large-scale pictures in it, which can be called "Mom Sees Fight". After reading it, Yan Baohua commented that the large-scale picture did not make her unacceptable, but she felt that deliberately making such a picture was actually not confident in the content.
That issue of ** received a good response, and many people praised it: "It is worthy of being an old-timer, and it hits the nail on the head." ”
After that, every once in a while, they would get together to talk about the ** of anime. The time Yan Baohua talked about "Buried Frilian" at the dinner table, it was when everyone went out to dinner together after a regular shooting, and the cat pastor took a picture at the dinner table, Yan Baohua didn't know it, and asked him halfway through the conversation: "Are you recording?" ”
Yan Baohua didn't expect that after retirement, he met a new group of young people who love to watch animation through a new form.
It's just that today they don't call it "**" but "two-dimensional".
The assigned "two-dimensional membership".
At Yan Baohua's home in Beijing's North Third Ring Road, huge bookshelves are filled with handifolds, comic books, and children's literature by her. In the middle of the bookshelf is a small poster with a girl with short purple hair from the anime Bang Dream! it's mygo!!!Li Yan Baohua's favorite character "Gao Song Lantern".
(Figure Nie Yifan).
Sitting at the table in front of the bookshelf, Yan Baohua recalled the first half of his life when he formed a bond with the "second dimension".
In 1977, the first year of the resumption of the college entrance examination, 18-year-old Yan Baohua took the first place in the liberal arts examination in Beijing and was admitted to the Chinese Department of Beijing Normal University. At the time of graduation, she was assigned to a middle school in Xicheng District, Beijing, as a teacher. At the end of the five-year service period, she was admitted to Beijing Normal University for a master's degree in children's literature. In 1990, she was assigned to the Beijing Juvenile and Children's Publishing House, a subsidiary of Beijing Publishing Group, as a "professional counterpart" children's literature editor.
College Entrance Examination.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The emergence of Beijing ** magazine originated from a cultural project called "5155 Project". In the early 1990s, Japanese manga was introduced to China, but because there was no formal introduction channel, all kinds of pirated Japanese "picture books" were proliferated. At the intersection of North Taipingzhuang in Beijing's Haidian District, there are pirated bookstalls as far as the eye can see. At that time, several of the journals that were sought after were mainly published Japanese manga works, and there were few formal copyright imports, let alone domestic original works.
It is said that one of the country's leaders at the time found his grandson reading a Japanese "picture book" at home. He asked the child, why don't you read the publication in our own country? The child told him that there was no one in the country.
In order to vigorously develop domestic comics, in 1995, the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Press and Publication Administration launched the China Children's Animation Publishing Project codenamed "5155" - striving to establish five animation publishing bases within two or three years, focusing on publishing 15 sets of large-scale series of children's animation books, and establishing five children's animation publications. "Taking out five issues at once has never happened before, and there will never be any such thing. Yan Baohua said.
Beijing Publishing House created "North Carolina", and the other four books are "China**", "Juvenile Comics", "Comics King" and "* Pioneer".
North Carolina 2005.
Cover of the 12th issue.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
It was in that year that Yan Baohua was transferred to North Carolina as the founding editor, and there were only four people in the entire editorial department.
No one in the publishing house has ever made a comic magazine, and finding an author is the first problem. The editors invited some children's writers in the hope that they would be in charge of writing the story and the comic book writers would draw it, but that didn't happen. Then, the editors began to look for mature comic book authors everywhere, and through some "doujinshi" at the time, they wrote letters to the authors.
Cartoonist Yao Feila was a long-term contracted writer of "North Carolina". In 1995, when he was still in his third year of college, he received a letter from a publishing house, which was opened on a letter with red letterhead printed with "Beijing Publishing House", and the first sentence was: 'Hello Yao Feila: Instructed by ** to vigorously develop China's original animation ......”
Yao Feilaxin. Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The letter was written by Yu Hong, the deputy editor-in-chief of "North Carolina" at the time, and Yao Feila replied: "Hello Sister Yu Hong, everyone else calls you teacher, can I call you sister?" ”
Like Yao Feila, Nie Jun, Xia Da, Lin Min, Li Yao, Ruan Yunting, Gao Lao and others joined "North Carolina" one after another, and later they became well-known domestic comic book authors.
In addition to the difficulty of finding authors, in the editorial office of the last century, the layout of comic magazines was also difficult. The text is not arranged in a conventional way, but is placed in different frames. No one in the publishing house has ever done such a typesetting. In the era when the technology was not yet mature, the magazine originally used "photographic plates", and the ** of each page of the magazine was put together by hand, and then put into a machine similar to a scanner to scan it. At that time, the editors each had a "scalpel" and slowly pasted one work after another onto the page, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Here, Yan Baohua, who was assigned the "second yuan nationality", went from an ordinary editor to an associate editor-in-chief and then to an editor-in-chief. "Good personality" and "serious and positive" are the comments of other colleagues about her, and a later young editor recalled: "Often her hearty laughter can be heard in the whole corridor".
In 1996, Japan** said in a report: "Chinese teenagers who are obsessed with Japanese comics are moving from imitation to originality. ”
Not into the stream".
As a groundbreaking magazine for its time, North Carolina has always been a pioneer in its business ideas.
In 1998, "North Carolina" held its first "Comic Expo" in the lobby of Beijing Publishing House. This was the first time that an anime fan event was held in China at that time, which was somewhat similar to today's "Comic Con". Including the on-site manga contest and the "doujinshi" exchange, Japanese and Chinese manga artists were also invited to the site to do a Sino-Japanese manga exhibition. More than 2,000 people crowded the exhibition hall of the publishing house, and Yan Baohua walked from the first floor to the second floor, and two buttons on his clothes were squeezed off. Pastor Cat, who was still an elementary school student, participated in the on-site comic contest and won the second prize in the elementary school category.
At the same time, the comic book convention of "North Carolina" was also the first time that the concept of cosplay was introduced in China, and it was named "** Fashion Show" at that time.
Participated on 30 November 2003.
The performers of the cosplay contest come to an end.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In the following years, the scale of the comic convention became bigger and bigger, and once, the venue was rented in the auditorium of the Beijing Institute of Technology, and the number of people was too large to have to enter in two batches. The school complained that there were too many people involved in the event, and the lawn of the campus was trampled down. Later, the venue was changed to a larger theater at the Beijing Exhibition Center, and the performance had to be reported in advance, but when the Cultural Affairs Bureau declared the performance, none of the staff of the Cultural Affairs Bureau knew what cosplay was.
Around 2000, it became the highlight period of "North Carolina", and the magazine also did comic painting training, voice actor training, etc., "The scale is not large, but everyone is crowded to participate," Yan Baohua said.
Different from the popularity and commercialization of today's two-dimensional culture, in the traditional and conservative publishing industry, animation culture always seemed to be considered "unpopular" back then. Once, "North Carolina" designed and produced an original T-shirt to sell at an anime event, and it turned out to be a best-selling and profitable. When communicating at the group's middle-level work meeting, he was ridiculed by the leaders of other magazines: "No matter how well your T-shirts sell, how much can you sell in total?" Do you think you're selling t-shirts? ”
But the readers who like "North Carolina" have given Yan Baohua and his colleagues a lot of motivation. Yan Baohua presided over the mailbox column of the magazine, replying to readers' letters like a "confidant sister". There are often so many letters from the editorial office that they can't be opened.
Beijing, 2003**.
Group photo of the 7th PEN Club.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The editors have even hosted children who have run away from home. One morning at work, Yan Baohua met a junior high school student wearing a sportswear and carrying a schoolbag, who had been wandering around the front hall of the publishing house. Yan Baohua went up and asked him who he was looking for, and the child said, "I want to find "Beijing**" Yan Baohua took him to ask while shopping, only to know that he had an awkward relationship with his family, he bought a train ticket from Shandong, and slept alone at Beijing Station for one night, and inquired all the way to the publishing house early the next morning.
Another time, a Northeast parent called the magazine office, saying that his child could not be found, and saw that the child's bedside was pasted with posters of "North Carolina", under the pillow and under the bed were magazines, and concluded that "it must have gone to you", "If you meet it, you must help me stop it." ”
Yan Baohua flipped out the previous "North Carolina" magazine, showed me the "Beijing ** Memorabilia", and she was very excited when she mentioned the past, and when she talked about the emotion, her eyes were filled with tears.
Yan Baohua said that not long ago, she watched the work of Japanese cartoonist Fujimoto Shu "Suddenly Looking Back", and she also recalled that at that time, there were many hand-drawn manuscripts of comic writers displayed in the corridor of the magazine, which were available to everyone at the open day for readers. Today, the magazine's former workplace has been rented to a restaurant.
At a friend's banquet, Yan Baohua walked into this space again. In the splendid banquet hall, Yan Baohua couldn't help but recall:
This used to be my office, and when I was holding events, the paintings were hung here, and readers came from here, and we had a symposium ...... thereShe remembers every picture clearly.
In Yan Baohua's heart, "North Carolina" is a "neutral" comic magazine, it is not a juvenile comic magazine, the kind of bloody story based on fighting; It's not a shoujo manga, the kind of beautiful romantic story. The comic book story of "North Carolina" is closer to reality and is never "young".
But they are still the most "out-of-the-box" type of publishing house. The leaders always felt that comics were not serious and meaningful content, and the business effect did not meet the requirements, so the publishing house decided to stop "North Carolina" in 2006. After readers heard about it, they wrote to the magazine, and the more Yan Baohua read it, the more uncomfortable it became, but there was nothing he could do.
Cover of North Carolina 2006 Issue 1.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In front of the office in 2011 with a visitor.
Group photo of representatives of Tezuka Corporation in Japan.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
After the resumption of publication in 2009, the magazine began to switch to color. The comics, content and style of painting are also more aimed at children's readers, and they have almost lost their former temperament. In 2012, the magazine was terminated by the publishing group, and a few years later the issue number was cancelled and transferred to other magazines.
After retiring, Yan Baohua was rehired by the company for 6 years and was assigned to engage in the editing and sorting of social history. For a long time, every time I walked past the place where I used to work and saw the sign of "Beijing ** Animation Platform", Yan Baohua couldn't control my tears. Friends around her persuaded her: "You just think, these things don't really have much to do with you, can you just treat it as a mixed profession?" ”
In 2022, after Pastor Cat uploaded the first ** of "Old Two-Yuan Watching Anime", I heard that the **volume soon exceeded 100,000, and Yan Baohua, who was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, cut his hand excitedly. When the number of ** reached 200,000, Yan Baohua thought to himself: If so many people paid attention to "North Carolina" back then, would we not have stopped publication?
Curiosity beckons.
In the first issue, Yan Baohua watched "Bang Dream!" with Pastor Cat it's mygo!!!In the tenth episode, Yan Baohua and Pastor Cat were moved to tears by the plot, she handed Pastor Cat a tissue, and the picture of the two of them wiping their tears together was named a "famous scene" by netizens in the comment area.
Yan Baohua said that in the past, the first issue of the magazine was completed a month in advance, and by the time I received the letters from readers, it was three or four months earlier. And now the feedback I get is always timely. Every time she sends **, she can immediately see the audience's evaluation. Looking at the discussion of young people, Yan Baohua inevitably regretted: "How big do you say the current two-dimensional industry is?" We used to be such a good brand, I don't know what it would be like if we did it now? ”
Every year, the former editors of North Carolina magazine get together to celebrate Yan Baohua's birthday, and each time they say surprise her, let her stand on the side of the road and wait, and then take her to the chosen place for her birthday. Everyone chatted and ate together, complaining about their current work. They were very happy to see Yan Baohua appear on the Internet to chat about anime, and felt that her state was even better than before her retirement.
But Yan Baohua was still a little puzzled: "Why are young people willing to watch someone of such an age talk about anime?" What do you want to see? "Last Christmas, she sent a ** to watch anime with her daughter, and both of them were wearing dresses. **After the release, she asked her daughter: "Why didn't anyone in the comment area say that we both wear skirts in winter?" The daughter said to her: "Because it is not important, it fully shows that people don't look at this, they want to watch you chat." So, you don't have to prepare anything, you can say whatever you want. ”
In the past, I always wanted to be professional, after all, I made comics. Later, I understood that people just think that an old lady is funny when she talks about this, you have a different idea from mine, people don't mind, just listen to what you say. Yan Baohua said.
Participate in book promotion activities in January 2024.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
The relationship between Yan Baohua and her daughter seems to be more equal and harmonious than that between ordinary mothers and daughters. She can understand that her daughter likes to wear "Luo skirts" and is willing to play games with her. On the matter of "liking two-dimensional culture", daughter Suzaku firmly believes that it is not her mother who has influenced her, but she has influenced her mother. Today, Suzaku works for a game company that used to be her childhood favorite when it produced games.
Unlike other older people, perhaps because of the work in the first half of his life, he was doing "fashionable" things, Yan Baohua has always been a person who remains curious about various things. In addition to watching anime, Yan Baohua has other hobbies after retirement, such as cooking. Cat priest they came to shoot**, Yan Baohua welcomed them to order in advance, and she cooked it herself. Recently, she watched the drama "Labyrinth Rice", and thought about whether to restore some of the dishes made by the protagonist in reality. She loves children's literature and has written adventures of her own imagination.
When curiosity beckons, embrace it with passion and embark on a new life. She said in an invited speech. During that speech, Yan Baohua also recited an anime "Bang Dream!". it's mygo!!!, a lyric written by her favorite protagonist Xiaodeng and her teammates:
I don't understand, I don't always understand, I don't know what is ordinary and taken for granted, the world is so far away from me, and the spring that has embraced the warmth and sunshine will also be burned out by the scorching summer sun......I don't want to lose or give up, and although the alarm clock becomes chaotic, as long as everything hasn't dissipated, I want to redeem it, I want to confide".
Netizens commented: "It turns out that Mr. Yan is the 'old Gao Song lamp'." ”
Teary-eyed, you have the same persistence and the same fiery emotions as Xiaodeng. ”