Volume One: Fish Leaps into the Sea at This Moment

Chapter 0001: Reviewed by David Bennett

In Songjiang City, with a population of 8 million, there are no more than 80 people doing the same job as David Bennett.

David Bennett is a proofreader at the Songjiang Daily.

Unlike book proofreaders at publishing houses, his job requires working the night shift all year round.

What qualities should a newspaper proofreader, especially one at a daily, possess? Simply put, they need to be meticulous and attentive, focused and engaged, and also have a considerable amount of reading experience and political awareness. In short, proofreading is not just about picking out typos and incorrect punctuation; it’s a seemingly inconspicuous position that actually demands a high level of personal ability.

Thirty-three-year-old David Bennett has been working the night shift as a proofreader for seven years. His working hours are from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Day after day of reversed schedules, day after day spent with words, day after day reading the dry, repetitive language of the daily paper, has left his body in a sub-healthy state, made him less talkative, and caused his mindset to age far beyond his actual years.

There are five proofreaders at Songjiang Daily, but only four actually do the work.

David Bennett is the youngest of the five, and the only contract worker; the other four are all on official staff.

At first, David Bennett felt quite unbalanced about this, but gradually he came to terms with it. Not to mention the growing talk of delayed retirement—by a conservative estimate, he still had 32 years before retirement, and who knows what the policies would be by then. Just looking at how the newspaper business was declining day by day, he felt that print media might not even last another five years, destined to be swallowed up and wiped out by the internet and mobile phones.

At this point, spending over a hundred thousand to buy an official position from the leadership really wasn’t worth it.

Sitting around waiting to die was not in David Bennett’s nature. A career spent with words and the quiet of the night made him good at thinking and planning.

A year ago, David Bennett started discussing with his wife Shawn Harris what to do if the newspaper went under. After thinking it over, he realized that apart from reading a lot of newspapers and being able to drive, he didn’t have any money-making skills. His wife, who was a university teacher, comforted him, saying it was fine—even though student enrollment was dropping year by year, even if the newspaper folded, the university wouldn’t go under anytime soon, and he still had her.

The lights in the newsroom were as bright as day, and the internal phone rang constantly.

David Bennett had just finished the second round of proofreading for the sections he was responsible for tonight, passing the time listening to music with his headset.

David Bennett had just caught a level B error.

The Double Color Ball lottery had just been drawn tonight, with the numbers 1, 7, 8, 11, 21, 31, 1—a very unusual set.

When the first proof was handed in, David Bennett routinely checked the numbers on the lottery website, and there was no problem.

But in the second proof, the numbers had become 1, 7, 8, 11, 21, 31.

The blue ball “1” had been accidentally deleted by the layout editor.

If this went to print, according to the newspaper’s latest reward and punishment policy, David Bennett’s week of night shifts would have been for nothing. David Bennett called the layout editor on the internal line, told him the Double Color Ball numbers were wrong, and asked him to check online and fix it quickly.

The ringing in his ears started again!

He stood up from his seat and walked to the window, did a few stretches, and felt a bit better.

“It’s almost midnight, and the layouts being submitted are still being revised. No way I’ll get off early again today,” David Bennett thought as he stood by the window, looking out at the pitch-black night sky.

Tomorrow was the opening day for Songjiang City’s Metro Lines 1 and 2. Some of the newspaper’s leaders were as excited as if they’d been injected with chicken blood, determined to put out a beautiful issue. David Bennett, however, found it ridiculous—a newspaper with a daily retail of less than 10 copies, who was it being made to look good for? The city leaders? They only looked at the first and second pages, checking if their own reports were included, and seeing which officials around them got bigger, smaller, higher, or lower coverage.

“Mr. Bennett, have you finished checking my section?”

Behind David Bennett was a female editor from the current affairs department, about 31 or 32 years old, who had been at the paper for three years. It was said she hadn’t signed a labor contract, had no insurance or housing fund, no year-end bonus, and not even the usual small perks.

The seemingly glamorous newspaper office was becoming less and less humane. Clearly a sunset industry full of leaks, yet it still clung to a strange sense of superiority. If you said the big shop bullied people, it was only those who got in by ability without any connections who were bullied; those with family ties lived very comfortably. In a newspaper group, the frontline reporters and editors for several papers numbered barely 300, but nearly 2,000 people were drawing salaries and enjoying benefits.

David Bennett greatly admired the female editor’s tenacity, and also felt sorry for her, because if she had started ten years earlier, her endurance might have been worthwhile, but now it was hard to say.

“I’ve finished. I already asked the layout editor to take it back and fix it.”

After sitting back down, David Bennett couldn’t get back into proofreading for a while. He wondered what the point was for that female editor to stay here, and also thought about what would happen if he kept working here—even if the newspaper didn’t fold, staying up all night every day, he probably wouldn’t live to collect his social security at 65.

It was already 1 a.m.

The whole city was silent, except for the occasional roar of a dump truck passing by.