At this time, the Shanghai Municipal Government was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Beiyang Government.

Why nominal?

In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, with the increasing stimulation of the concession municipal government to the Chinese community and the formation of local autonomy ideology, the Shanghai gentry and merchants initiated the local autonomy movement and established institutions to promote the cause of autonomy.

In 1911, the Shanghai Chengxiang Autonomous Office and the Shanghai Municipal Hall were established successively.

With the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution and the liberation of Shanghai, the administrative institutions at the provincial and provincial levels in Shanghai were abolished.

The Shanghai Military Governor's Office became the main military and political institution controlling the Shanghai area, directly administering the Shanghai County Office and the municipal institutions in the Zhabei area of Chengxiang and Baoshan counties in Shanghai.

The other counties in the Shanghai area that had declared independence were nominally subordinate to the governor of Jiangsu.

That's why many schools and administrative agencies in Shanghai have the word "Jiangsu" in front of them.

In January 1914, the Beiyang government resumed the establishment of the province in Shanghai, and governed all counties in the Shanghai area.

The Beiyang government also successively sent envoys to Shanghai to implement a provisional military and political system, and the administrative power in the Shanghai area was actually in the hands of the warlords.

Because of the warlord melee in the north, it also affected the change of regime in the Shanghai area.

In November 1915, after the assassination of Zheng Rucheng, the envoy of the Shanghai town, the Beiyang government changed the envoy of the Shanghai town guard to the envoy of the Songhu Protector.

After He Fenglin, the envoy of the Songhu Protectorate, took office, Lu Yongxiang, a warlord of the Anhui clan and the governor of Zhejiang, obeyed the orders of Zhejiang and Shanghai, and Zhejiang and Shanghai formed a close alliance, and Lu Yongxiang continued to dominate Shanghai's financial revenue, which caused a serious confrontation with the direct warlords entrenched in Jiangsu.

In October 1920, Li Chun, the patrol envoy of Suzhou, Anhui and Jiangxi and the overseer of Jiangsu, died violently in office, and Qi Xieyuan succeeded him as the superintendent of Jiangsu.

Qi Xieyuan claimed: Shanghai is a part of our Jiangsu and must be recaptured.

Lu Yongxiang regarded Shanghai as his economic lifeline, and resolutely refused to let go, so he counterattacked: "Shanghai is the gateway to Zhejiang, and it must be maintained." ”

After the First Zhifeng War in 1922, the direct warlords controlled the Beijing government.

In order to maintain the territory of Zhejiang and Shanghai, Lu Yongxiang and He Fenglin contacted Zhang Zuolin and Sun Zhongshan to form an "anti-straight triangle alliance".

This is the current situation of the Shanghai municipal government, and in order to fight for Shanghai, the warlords of Zhejiang and Jiangsu are on the verge of breaking out.

Against this backdrop, the Shanghai Municipal Government was very difficult to meet Shunichi Sakuragi's requirements.

Movies are a new thing, and the Beiyang government does not yet have a unified film censorship system.

In 1920, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Tianjin and other provinces and cities successively promulgated film censorship regulations to censor the production and release of local films that "obscured prostitution and theft, and corrupted people's hearts and customs".

This is regional, there is no unified standard, and it is not too binding, and it was not until 1924 that the Ministry of the Interior of the Beiyang Government issued a general order requiring film censorship.

And "Jinmen Hero Huo Yuanjia" is a patriotic movie, except for alluding to the Japanese, there is no clause that can be banned.

If the film is banned in the Chinese community with an allusion to the Japanese, it may cause a riot.

As a result, the Shanghai Municipal Government pushed the matter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after all, it involved the Japanese and was a diplomatic matter.

To tell the truth, the Shanghai Municipal Government has no control over the Star Film Company, because the Star Film Company was founded in the French Concession, with American investment, and is a Sino-foreign joint venture.

This is Lin Zixuan's shrewdness.

He dragged the American lawyer Peterson into the Star Film Company, gave him the status of a minority shareholder, and registered a shell company in the United States in Peterson's name to participate in the investment of the Star Film Company.

This is a very common phenomenon in later generations, and in order to avoid taxes or strive for preferential terms, many Chinese companies will put on a layer of foreign capital.

Mr. Peterson is also the U.S. agent and legal counsel for Star Films.

Of course, Lin Zixuan paid a lot of price for this, but in the long run, it was all worth it.

Shunichi Sakuragi fell into a state of madness, and he protested to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Beiyang government in the name of the Japanese consulate, demanding that the screening of "Huo Yuanjia, the Great Hero of Jinmen", be banned.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Beiyang Government was very efficient, after all, the Japanese were involved, and someone was sent to mediate.

Lin Zixuan doesn't care about this, then mediate slowly, anyway, he is not in a hurry.

On August 10, 1922, the Novel Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 8, was published nationwide.

Here we will talk about the strong distribution ability of the Commercial Press, which is an important criterion to measure the strength of a publishing house.

Founded in 1897, the Commercial Press is the largest private publishing organization in China, with thousands of employees, and is a publishing enterprise integrating editing, printing and distribution.

It is a publishing company that takes into account a variety of operations.

He has compiled textbooks for universities, middle schools, primary and secondary schools, compiled large-scale reference books such as Ciyuan, and translated Western academic classics such as The Theory of Heavenly Evolution and The Wealth of Nations.

Organize important ancient books such as "Four Serials", and edit large-scale series of books such as "Wanyou Library" and "University Series".

He has published more than a dozen magazines in various disciplines such as "Oriental Magazine", "Novel Monthly", and "Nature", founded the Oriental Library, Shanggong Primary School, manufactured educational equipment, and even shot movies.

It has hundreds of offices and distribution offices throughout the country, and can spread books and magazines throughout the country as quickly as possible.

Lin Zixuan's Vientiane Bookstore and the Commercial Press are completely incomparable, just like a baby and an adult.

This issue of "Novel Monthly" can be said to be very bland, with no radical remarks or battles, as if the whole world was full of harmony all of a sudden.

The only highlight is probably Lin Zixuan's "Border City".

This is not to say that "Border City" is combative, but there is nothing else to see, only this one can be appreciated.

First of all, because Lin Zixuan is famous enough, but also because this is the first new literary novel written by Lin Zixuan about China.

As a result, "Border City" has attracted the attention of all parties in the literary world.

Lu Xun didn't say anything after reading it, but he didn't think so, "Border City" wrote too idealistic about the countryside, not so much realism as romanticism.

Lin Zixuan imposed his imagination of beautiful things on that group of peasants and poetized the countryside, which was not a good phenomenon for the development of new literature.

Zhou Zuoren praised it, and the aesthetic concepts expressed in "Border City" won his heart.

Hu Shi and others have expressed their opinions, believing that this is a kind of writing direction of new literature.

This kind of poeticization is not the poetry of Europeanization and Europeanization, but the poetization that comes from within the nation, which is the pursuit of traditional virtues and a kind of root-seeking.

Of course, there are also detractors, this time they don't say that Lin Zixuan's writing is bad, but criticize it from another angle.

Lin Zixuan has never been to Xiangxi, how can he write such beautiful Xiangxi customs? This may have been ghostwritten.

Lin Zixuan scoffed at this, he hadn't eaten pork, and he hadn't seen a pig run?

According to this logic, novelists must experience their own novels, so when a novelist writes about a woman, he must first be a woman, if he writes about a dead person, he must die first, and when he writes about an alien planet, he must first go to outer space.

That's not a novelist, that's a neurosis, and one of the most important qualities of a novelist is to have a rich imagination.