Since its inaugural issue was launched in 1985, Fairy Tale King has been published for 36 years. In this publication, only the works of fairy tale writer Zheng Yuanjie were published, and the highest circulation reached 1.8 million copies. As a well-known children's literature brand in China, an author writes a monthly magazine that has set a Guinness World Record.
On December 15, Zheng Yuanjie announced on her personal Weibo that the Fairy Tale King magazine would cease publication in January 2022, with an appendix "A Letter from Zheng Yuanjie to Three Trademarks".
On Weibo, Zheng Yuanjie explained the reason for the suspension, "I want to say sorry to the millions of readers and friends who have supported the monthly magazine "Fairy Tale King" for 36 years, sorry that I have limited energy at the age of 66, and I can only devote all my energy to fighting with the 7197328 Pipilu trademark, the 8229932 Fairy Tale King trademark, and the 5423972 Shuk trademark by stopping writing the "Fairy Tale King" monthly magazine. ”
A stone stirs up a thousand layers of waves. Since entering the literary world in the late 1970s, Zheng Yuanjie has been recognized as one of the most dynamic writers in contemporary Chinese fairy tale creation, and his fairy tale characters such as Pippi Luxi and Shuk beta have long been well known. The Fairy Tale King, published monthly (and also semi-monthly), is the main way for his work to meet a wide audience. When the news came out that the last issue of the monthly magazine was closed in December this year, many readers left messages, "Childhood is over."
Issue 495
The monthly magazine "Fairy Tale King" has been circulated for 36 years, with a total circulation of more than 200 million copies. "The earliest readers are the post-70s, all the way to the post-10s, five generations of readers." Zheng Yuanjie said in an interview with the surging news reporter, "Although it is difficult to give up, I must use this way to show my attitude." I really feel that the power is not enough, the work is the writer's child, when you know that your child goes to a place, there will be danger, no parent will let the child go. When all 672 trademarks that infringe on my intellectual property rights are successfully protected, Fairy Tale King will resume publication. Zheng Yuanjie said, "But there is a premise, I hope I can live to 100 years old." ”
"At this stage, the protection of trademark rights is not satisfactory"
The Paper: Can you tell us the real reasons for the suspension of "Fairy Tale King"?
Zheng Yuanjie: Trademark infringement has plagued me for more than 20 years, "can't be solved, can't see the hope" Since the end of the 70s, I have been writing and publishing fairy tale works, but the establishment of "Fairy Tale King" is actually a witness to the process of intellectual property protection in China's reform and opening up for more than 40 years. Intellectual property rights are mainly composed of three parts, copyright, patent rights and trademark rights. In this part of copyright, our country has made great progress, from the difficulty of defending rights and presenting evidence at the beginning, to now I make a whistleblower phone call, which can make illegal pirate booksellers sentenced. Last year alone, 11 illegal booksellers who pirated and pirated my work were sentenced. There has also been considerable progress in the protection of patent rights, except for the protection of trademark rights, and frankly speaking, the status quo is not satisfactory.
The Paper: In your opinion, what are the difficulties in trademark protection?
Zheng Yuanjie: I think the reason may be that there are still fewer people who pay attention to this issue, and people who pay attention to this problem may go to agency companies, agency companies are generally for profit, and the longer they drag on the links and processes, the higher the profit. I started out looking for an agency, but when I found out that something was wrong, I started to study it myself. So far, there are 672 trademarks that infringe on my intellectual property rights, and they have preemptively registered trademarks with my original well-known fairy tale character names, Pippi Luxisi, Shuk Beta, and titles such as "Rubik's Cube Mansion", "Can Villain", "309 Dark Room", and "Five Apples Tossing the Earth".
672, which may not sound like much to you, but if you know how many years and how much it takes to defend the rights of each trademark on average, you know that this is a terrible number. It takes an average of 6 years to successfully defend a trademark, and it costs an average of 90,000 yuan, and the longest one I spent 14 years to win the lawsuit. In the 20 years that I have protected trademarks, there have been only 16 trademarks that have been successfully defended. So I began to think a year ago, how can the whole society pay attention to the protection of intellectual property rights in the field of trademarks? If you think about it, you can only use the suspension of "Fairy Tale King" to issue your own voice, imploring the whole society and relevant departments to pay attention to the unsatisfactory registration and management status in the field of trademarks.
The Paper: In your opinion, what harm does the abuse of trademark rights have in addition to infringing on your interests?
Zheng Yuanjie: Trademark registration is actually related to the lives and safety of thousands of ordinary families. If the law encourages the possibility of preemptively registering someone else's trademark in bad faith, use it for business purposes. Note that some people do not want to operate, but take the trademark itself to "operate". Someone once preemptively registered my trademark, and then privately asked to say, can you spend 500,000 yuan to buy this trademark back?! Many people preemptively register trademarks for this purpose. In addition, some companies register "Rusisi" as "brine (meat) Sisi" for the purpose of "free riding", playing the side ball of harmonic sound. The quality of such a crooked person is questionable, not only affecting my reputation, but also posing a threat to the health and wealth of consumers.
The Paper: I saw the cover of the last issue of "Fairy Tale King", which read "Exclusive Publication: A Letter Written by Zheng Yuanjie with Tears". Can you talk about the specifics of this letter?
Zheng Yuanjie: I wrote a letter to three trademarks, and I have been defending my rights against these three trademarks for 32 years, but they still go their own way. They are "Chengdu Pipilu Pork Skin Meat", "Jiangsu Shuke Ms. Underwear", "Tmall Fairy Tale King Flagship Store", this letter was also posted on my personal Sina Weibo.
The Paper: Can you tell us the specific content of the last issue of "Fairy Tale King"?
Zheng Yuanjie: The last issue of "Fairy Tale King" completely restored the content of the inaugural issue, and the ordering was the same. On May 10, 1985, the first issue of "Fairy Tale King" was published, and the first work was "New Biography of the Bull Demon King", and the final issue was the same. I hope to use this form to pin a feeling.
Close-up photo of Zheng Yuanjie The image in this article is provided by the interviewee
It has become customary to "rest at 8:30 p.m. and get up at 4:30 a.m. to write."
The Paper: Your fairy tale creation began in the late 1970s, and your early works were published in some youth literature journals, so why did you publish a copy of "The Fairy Tale King" edited by yourself and completely contributed by yourself?
Zheng Yuanjie: One reason is that the domestic manuscript fee at that time was a unified standard, that is, two yuan for a thousand words. But I think that after my work was published in these magazines, especially those serialized works, such as The Adventures of Shuk Beta, The Cube Mansion, etc., it has significantly increased the circulation of these magazines. But the fee is the same as that of other authors, and I think it is actually "eating a big pot of rice". I told them, can I argue according to the quality, I don't want much, a thousand words, two pieces of five lines can't? The response was that there was no way to prove that my work had led to an increase in circulation. In addition, if you are satisfied, other authors will come to ask for similar requirements, and there is no way to balance them.
I was wondering how I could link my work to circulation? The only way to think about it is for a magazine to publish only my work. The circulation is high, I naturally deserve more, and I simply don't even have a basic remuneration without circulation. Later, I also checked the information and found that no one had done this before (in a magazine, only one person's work was published). It should be said that it has caught up with the good era of reform and opening up, and this matter has been accomplished. I'm a particularly contract-heavy person, and I understand that after fame and fortune, it's hard for a person to lie there and concentrate on writing, so I signed this contract (exclusively for "Fairy Tale King") for 30 years. At that time, the people in the magazine office thought this was incredible, 30 years? It's a miracle that you can stick around for 3 years. But I did, and I did it for almost 37 years.
The Paper: In the early days of "Fairy Tale King", what did you think was the biggest difficulty?
Zheng Yuanjie: It is the delivery date (laughs). At that time, the magazines were all distributed through the post office, and I had to hand over all the manuscripts on the 1st of each month, and the printing house printed the publications and pulled them directly to the railway station, and then sent them to all parts of the country by rail. So you have to hand over the manuscript on the 1st, and you have to fine five thousand yuan a day later, which was a huge amount of money at that time. In all these years, I was punished once, and in June 1986, I went abroad to the Philippines, which affected the delivery of manuscripts. I thought I could write after going abroad, but in fact there were too many uncontrollable things, which still affected writing. After being bitten by a snake for ten years, I was afraid of the well rope, and since then I have never gone abroad again, until the expiration of my 30-year contract, and then I began to go abroad to see.
The Paper: Regarding your creation in the 1980s, I noticed that there are two views in the anecdote, one is that your early creations were more obviously influenced by the children's literature writer Zhang Tianyi, and the other is that a group of fairy tale writers represented by you in the 80s are called "hilarious" fairy tales.
Zheng Yuanjie: In the early days of my fairy tale creation, I was indeed influenced by Mr. Zhang Tianyi, because when I was a child, I liked to watch his "Da Lin and Xiao Lin" and "The Secret of bao hulu". Obayashi and Kobayashi was one of the three books that had the greatest impact on me. If I hadn't seen Obayashi and Kobayashi as a child, I wouldn't have made a living writing fairy tales today. In 1981, I went to Zhang Tianyi's house to meet him, and he was already in a wheelchair. I only have the word Taidou in my mind. On May 10, 1985, the special issue of my work" "Fairy Tale King" was launched. The next day, I went to The Babaoshan Cemetery in Beijing to bid farewell to Zhang Tianyi's body. At that time, I stood solemnly by his side, full of reverence in my heart, and I was grateful that his fairy tales had influenced me, inspired me, and armed me, so that in the future, when I chose to write fairy tales as a means of making a living, I was "superior" to others.
After Mr. Zhang Tianyi's death, his family organized and published the complete collection for him, and invited me to write a preface to the whole collection. I am very emotional, this is a very beautiful thing in life. As for the second question you mentioned, I think it is a joke at all, that some people who do not understand or respect the laws of literary creation are giving others hats, which is a kind of diseaseless groaning. I don't approve.
The Paper: Regarding your writing habits, I remember that there are many "rules", can you introduce your current writing arrangement?
Zheng Yuanjie: In the year of the founding of "Fairy Tale King", I still maintained morning writing. After gaining some fame, I found that writing during the day was not guaranteed, and only writing in the morning could ensure that no one would disturb him. So since 1986, I have rested at 8:30 p.m., got up at 4:30 a.m., and concentrated on writing 3,000 words between 6:30 p.m. and every day. I also woke up at 4:30 this morning and had to write something. I think it's a good habit to finish the day in the morning, it's going to be very idle during the day, and you'll really feel like you have 25 hours in the day. I now go to bed at 6:30 every night, which also has the big benefit of not going to socializing.
Maintaining good living habits is the cost of my continuous creation. My grandfather Liu Runfu was a famous physician in internal medicine, and I listened to his admonitions since I was a child. For example, drink water only boiled water, eat boiled eggs for breakfast, go to bed early and get up early, and defecate once a day. These things may sound bland, and the benefits of perseverance are very great for the body.
"All 672 trademarks have been successfully defended, and "Fairy Tale King" will be revived"
The Paper: Looking at the introduction, "Fairy Tale King" was also released in Taiwan for a period of time?
Zheng Yuanjie: Yes, Newton Publishing Company in Taiwan came to me in 1990, they saw my works, felt that children in Taiwan could also accept it, and asked me to authorize the publication of "Fairy Tale King" in Taiwan. It was founded in Taipei in 1991 and has been running a total of 60 issues in 5 years. The Taiwanese version of "Fairy Tale King" is also distributed in Hong Kong, so the young readers of Hong Kong and Taiwan have also written to me, and from reading the letter, I found that in fact, the interests of young readers in the two sides of the strait and the three places are actually no different, and they are also problems encountered in school and writing homework. A few years ago, I was invited to Taiwan to give a lecture, and when the parents of the children present met with me, they said that when I was young, I also watched (The Taiwan version) "Fairy Tale King".
The Paper: I noticed that in 1994, you announced that you would "close your pen." What was the reason at the time?
Zheng Yuanjie: The first time I sealed the pen was because of pirated books, just like the current trademark rights brought me pain, I really can't see hope. I announced the closure of the pen, and after the announcement, it actually played a role. The relevant departments came to me, listened to my opinions, and then there were a lot of improvements. For example, before the pirated books, we stipulated that the scene should be caught 300,000 yards of foreign pricing in order to criminally punish and arrest people, but this is difficult to do, sometimes it takes a lot of effort to raid the scene, the result is only 290,000 yards of foreign, just take these illegal traders can not do. Now, as long as there are 500 pirated books copied on the spot, people can be arrested.
The Paper: After entering the new millennium, "Fairy Tale King" suspended the publication of new works in 2002, what was the reason at that time?
Zheng Yuanjie: That time in 2002, because many children read my books, according to my own growth experience, many adolescent physiological problems no one told us, such as boys' sperm, girls' menstruation, it is easy to form a problem for children, resulting in misunderstandings. I think that since the children love to read my books, "grass and rabbits" simply wrote these plots into it and let the children know. For example, Pippiru lost sperm and let Rusisi have menstruation. After the children saw it, they went to ask their parents these questions, and the parents asked if they watched my works, and as a result, these parents did not do it, and sent this issue of "Fairy Tale King" to CCTV, and the "Today's Sayings" column made a special program called "Children are not suitable.".
The magazine agency told me that CCTV was paying attention, and we were very nervous. What to do? At that stage, I was really concerned about the children's problems, and I might not be able to hold back if I continued to write, so I simply published my previous works first. This thing is very interesting, if you write these physiological problems into popular science books for children to see, it doesn't matter how to write, but you can't write them in literary works. Later, I also wrote "Pipilu Sends You a Hundred Lives", which is to popularize safety education for children, which specifically mentions the prevention of sexual assault, and the circulation is also very large.
The Paper: So how long did this period of publication of previous works last?
Zheng Yuanjie: At that time, it was probably estimated that if I only published my previous works, it could last for 9 years. In addition, at that time, 20 million newborns were born every year Chinese mainland, and there were always many new readers who had not read your work. What touched me very much was that sometimes when old works were published, circulation went up. In 2006 and 2007, I began to publish new works in Fairy Tale King.
The Paper: In recent years, the content of each issue of "Fairy Tale King" has been a mixture of new and old works?
Zheng Yuanjie: 30 years after the founding of "Fairy Tale King", I began to go abroad frequently, and in recent years, I have run out of all five continents. I opened a column on "Fairy Tale King", "Stay at home, take you around the world", using a combination of fairy tales and travelogues to introduce and tell stories to everyone. For example, a reader has written to me asking me which places in the world are most worth visiting.
In 2018, I really felt that the power of maintenance was not enough, and the newly written works would not be published, but this had no effect and did not attract everyone's attention. From 2018 to the present, there are also new works published in "Fairy Tale King", but they are more piecemeal. Some of the better fairy tale works I have written in my new works will not be taken out first.
The Paper: "The Fairy Tale King" is suspended, but I believe that your fairy tale creation will not stop. In the future, readers want to see your fairy tale works, what kind of way can they go through?
Zheng Yuanjie: Just like this morning, I still got up and wrote 3,000 words, which are stored in the computer, and there are already 5 million words. If all 672 trademarks are successfully defended, I will take out all these works, about 100 copies, and "Fairy Tale King" will be revived at that time. But there's a premise, I want to live to be 100 years old. I think I have to come up with an attitude, to have such an expression. The work is the writer's child, and when you know that your child is going to a place, there will be danger, and no parent will let the child go.