"Brother-in-law, were you really hit in the palm by a nail when you were a child?" Leng Zhimeng asked Huang He with great interest, holding a copy of Story Meeting.
"Do you think a palm pierced by a nail would have no scar left?" Boss Huang rolled his eyes and then extended his palm for Leng Zhimeng to see clearly.
The story was featured in Story Meeting, and even Boss Huang didn't know how to react when he read it.
The article described Boss Huang's childhood. It said that when Boss Huang was young, his parents worked in a factory as old shoemakers. Boss Huang himself detested shoemaking, always expressing his desire not to become one, believing it to be a simple job with no skill involved, and it always smelled bad. He vowed never to be a shoemaker.
His parents were worried. One day, they approached Boss Huang. The article specifically noted that Boss Huang was only six years old at the time.
Boss Huang had to point out the inaccuracy. When he was seven, his parents started their own factory and stopped being shoemakers. The timeline didn't match!
Indeed, it was precise.
Boss Huang's parents gave him a shoe sole, four pieces of leather, and three nails. They asked Boss Huang to fix all four pieces of leather onto the sole using these three nails. If he could do it, it would prove that shoemaking was indeed a simple job, and he wouldn't have to be a shoemaker anymore; he could do as he pleased, and his parents wouldn't interfere.
The six-year-old Boss Huang was very excited and immediately agreed. He initially thought it would be simple because one nail could fix two pieces of leather. By overlapping the leather, he could secure all four pieces onto one sole.
Yes, this showed Boss Huang's cleverness; the child was smart from a young age.
However, the article then went on to say that when Boss Huang tried to nail the shoes, he found the nails his parents provided were too short. After passing through two pieces of leather, they couldn't penetrate the sole, thus failing to secure the leather.
But if one nail could only fix one piece of leather, three nails wouldn't be enough. Boss Huang thought hard but couldn't find a solution. In the end, he could only admit defeat to his parents and ask for their guidance.
His parents then set the three nails aside and took out a bottle of glue. They said, "Our factory has already improved the process; we don't need nails anymore. We can fix the leather directly with glue."
"You don't even know this most basic shoemaking knowledge, only using your imagination and brute force. How can you truly understand the leather industry and the importance of a shoemaker?"
"By extension, if you don't understand the whole world, you believe the whole world is inferior. How can you grasp the truth of a world?"
After this lesson from his parents, Boss Huang realized the vastness of the world and his own ignorance and insignificance. He turned over a new leaf and became an excellent young shoemaker, eventually leading the Jiangnan Leather Factory to become the Jiangnan Group, and Boss Huang became the world's richest man.
Well, some might wonder, where is the promised scene of his finger being pierced by a nail?
This scene was actually at the beginning of the article, or rather, the editor's note. It was what the editor wanted to tell readers before writing the article.
For example, the editor's note for this story was: "When the reporter had the honor of interviewing Huang He, he asked if he had any memorable stories from his childhood. Huang He then showed the reporter a scar on his palm and, lost in thought, told the reporter, 'Do you know how this scar came about? It was pierced by a nail!'"
Then followed the main text.
As for whether the story described in the main text was true or false, Huang He himself found it difficult to say. If he claimed it was false, the problem was that Boss Huang had lost almost all his previous memories. The older the memory, the more lost it was. He had no memory of events before the age of ten, so how could Boss Huang be sure if this story happened when he was six?
If he said the story was true, Boss Huang felt it was insulting his intelligence.
Of course, these weren't the things Boss Huang wanted to complain about the most. What Huang He really wanted to ask was that after reading the entire main text, he couldn't find any mention of his palm being pierced by a nail. How did it connect with the editor's note at the beginning?
So, when Leng Zhimeng asked Huang He, Boss Huang looked confused and helpless, only able to show Leng Zhimeng his palm and let her see if there was a scar there.
After all, it was a through-and-through wound, a wound that no technical means could repair and would definitely leave a scar.
As a result, Leng Zhimeng didn't want to admit it, so she pouted and said, "I can't see clearly. Maybe there is!"
"Then let me give you a feel!" Annoyed, Boss Huang grabbed Leng Zhimeng's thigh with his large hands and rubbed it vigorously. "How is it? Do I have a scar on my palm?"
Leng Zhimeng's face turned red. Huang He also realized his inappropriate behavior, coughed, and subtly withdrew his hand. Leng Zhimeng then said she had work to do and hopped away like a rabbit.
"Alas, how can I not control these hands?" Boss Huang looked at his large hands and sighed deeply, appearing quite melancholy.
On a related note, afterwards, Boss Huang specifically had someone find the editor of the article in Story Meeting and ask if the story in the article was true or false, and most importantly, what happened with that steel nail, why there was no follow-up.
The editor was very frightened and stammered out the truth.
It turned out that he was a very young editor, a recent university graduate and an intern at Story Meeting. Logically, such a person shouldn't have been writing articles about Boss Huang. However, the editor-in-chief had instructed them to write a story that couldn't be found in other articles or newspapers to highlight the novelty of this particular piece and thus attract more attention and sales.
But this requirement was very difficult to fulfill. After all, almost all the stories about Boss Huang that could be clearly understood had been written about by media outlets across the country over the past few years. Even the story of Boss Huang helping an old lady cross the road had been reported by thousands of media outlets. There were simply no new stories to find.
Moreover, Boss Huang himself didn't accept interviews, making it impossible to get new stories from him. The only way was to make up a story.
This method sounded absurd, but for many media professionals, it was commonplace, just like that story from years ago about a Japanese elementary school student who could march 50 kilometers in the desert with a 30-kilogram load in just one afternoon.
An inexperienced editor couldn't weave such a tale.
But the problem was that Boss Huang wasn't an ordinary Chinese elementary school student with no background; he was the bona fide world's richest man. If a story was fabricated like this, one should consider whether Boss Huang would cause trouble in the future. Therefore, none of the seasoned editors in the editorial department were willing to take on such a task. In the end, this job was assigned to this recent university graduate. Thus, this story was undoubtedly fabricated.
As for the issue of the nail piercing his palm, the young man fearfully told Boss Huang that he had originally written about Boss Huang learning shoemaking as a child, using nails to fix leather, and accidentally piercing his palm. Blood flowed profusely, but he endured the pain and hammered the nail in, then went to see a doctor alone, thereby highlighting Boss Huang's resilient and determined character from a young age and achieving an educational purpose.
However, when he submitted the article, the editor-in-chief rejected it, stating that such an article was too bloody and that the chance of Boss Huang discovering and suing was too high, so it needed to be rewritten.
But the rewriting work wasn't handed over to this newcomer; it was given to a senior editor. However, the article still bore the name of this intern editor, but the content was completely changed.
Yet, some part of the article had to be written by the intern editor, otherwise, there would be legal trouble. So, this senior editor simply kept the editor's note written by the intern. But perhaps due to poor eyesight, without careful review, he failed to delete the part about the palm being pierced by a nail.
And because they were rushed for time, the printing and proofreading were not carefully checked. Consequently, this resulted in an editor's note that didn't match the article.
After hearing this story, Boss Huang could only sigh at the wonder of the world and let the editor go. It was later rumored that the editor felt too ashamed to continue as a reporter and instead became an online novelist, where he later did quite well.
Through this absurd and bizarre, yet true story, the media's pursuit and frenzy for Jiangnan Group and Boss Huang, the Chinese richest man, were fully demonstrated. Interview invitations were constant, and various reporters went to great lengths to try and interview Boss Huang.
Sometimes, there were more than a dozen people wanting to check his water meter in a single day, which showed the media's madness. However, except for the invitation from China Central Television, which was impossible to refuse, Boss Huang generally accepted none. But this lively atmosphere continued for a long time, until a day in May.