Chapter 76: The Surging Tide

The few private words that Gu Cheng had stressed repeatedly not to be reported during the press conference were, unsurprisingly, sold out by those shameless entertainment reporters. After all, everyone wants a higher circulation, everyone wants better ratings. At the peak of "Meteor Garden’s" popularity, the top male idol had made his first public appearance in over a month—how could the media not exploit every last bit of it? Those people would have reported even the color of Gu Cheng’s underwear if only they knew, but unfortunately, no one did.

That very night, all the major newspapers with entertainment news made sure to pin Dingdang Net’s actions to the top of their pages. But online media moved even faster than print—within an hour of the press conference’s end, portals like Huangyi, Souhu, and Sina Entertainment had already sent back their articles and published them online. The weeklies and TV stations could only watch as their faster counterparts snatched up the breaking news, so they had no choice but to focus on adding depth to their reports. One after another, they cited Gu Cheng’s impassioned words over and over, drawing from all sorts of references.

...

One day in mid-June, in a remote county town in the west.

A desolate county with not even a single legitimate audio-visual store. The only entertainment options in town were two internet cafés and three or four video rental shops. The net cafés charged five yuan an hour, while renting a disc cost fifty cents a day. For those without a VCD player at home, there was always the option to watch in the tiny back room of the rental shop—the owner would charge one yuan per day, and you could watch whatever was playing. If there weren’t enough stools, you stood, or simply sat on the floor.

Occasionally, the rental shops sold discs and tapes too, all at a flat rate of eight yuan each, regardless of content. But the selection was meager: for the older generation, only albums from Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung were available; for the younger crowd, only Richie Jen, Nicholas Tse, and Wang Fei could be found. As for singers who debuted around the turn of the millennium, their voices had yet to reach this place where the “spring breeze never crosses Jade Gate Pass”—even bootleg discs were a gamble for the shop owner, who didn’t want to get stuck with unsold stock. The disc manufacturers he bought from weren’t much more daring, either.

Liu Mazi was the owner of the largest audio-visual store in the county. That afternoon, just as he finished his nap and opened up shop, a group of students eager to watch movies rushed in. Skillfully collecting money while keeping order, he called out, “Come on, line up! Fifty cents each! The new film, ‘Meteor Garden’—watch all you want!”

Business had been much better these past two months since “Meteor Garden” became a hit. He’d been the first in the county to stock up on those discs, and thanks to his foresight, he’d left his previously equal competitors far behind.

“Boss, do you have the ‘Meteor Rain’ disc for sale? Or to rent?” He had just finished taking money when two clear, youthful voices piped up behind him. He didn’t even need to turn around to know it was the two most popular girls at the county high school—Li Feifei and her younger sister Li Tingting. The two of them were fawned over by all the boys and never bullied by anyone.

But when it came to what they asked for, Liu Mazi was truly clueless. “Huh? Only ‘Meteor Garden’ here. Take it or leave it.”

The girls clarified, “We mean the album! Gu Cheng’s latest album!”

Trying to save face, he replied, “Album? Oh, you just want to listen to ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’! No problem, after the screening, Uncle’ll rewind the tape a few extra times so you can listen to it again and again!”

“Forget it, we’ll just go buy it at Mr. Chen’s internet café,” the sisters said, stomping their feet in annoyance as they left. They had heard that a few classmates had already gotten the tape at the café across from the school yesterday. Being model students, they’d never set foot in an internet café, so they’d only learned about it a week late.

The sisters wandered the street behind the school for a while, found the café but didn’t dare go in, until they spotted a male classmate nearby. Li Feifei immediately put on her queenly air and called out, “Zhang Chao! I forgot my ID, you take us in!”

The boy was stunned, but flattered and happy to oblige, even ditching his planned Counter-Strike match with his friends.

In truth, in a small county town like this, no internet café ever bothered with checking IDs.

The café owner glanced at the girls and his eyes lit up. The atmosphere in the café changed at once—some of the gaming nerds turned to see pretty girls at the counter, and couldn’t even focus on their games, staring openly instead.

Li Feifei blushed, unsure how to talk to the owner, and asked in a low voice, “Boss, do you have ‘Meteor Rain’ for sale? I heard from my classmates…you have, um, everything…”

Her awkwardness made the owner misunderstand. He grinned slyly and said, “Come on, sit down and browse. Take your time picking out whatever you want. Just add it to your cart, pay me in cash, and come pick it up in three days!”

For residents of a remote western county, three-day shipping seemed remarkably fast.

Li Feifei opened up Dingdang Net, and a whole list of popular albums immediately flashed across the homepage. Before she could look closely, she noticed a search box for site-wide searches. She wondered if she might find albums by some of her other favorite singers too.

She tried typing in “Zhou Chuanxiong,” “Sun Yan Zi,” and “Elva Hsiao,” but each time the system replied: “No matching search results found. Please browse other sections.”

It seemed Dingdang Net hadn’t yet secured distribution deals with the big record companies, so for now, albums from those famous artists weren’t available on the site.

“There are too few products listed—it’s better to just browse the recommendations,” Li Feifei thought, giving up on the idea of doing all her shopping in one go and scrolling through the recommended page.

At the top was “Meteor Rain,” followed by Jay Chou’s “JAY” and the album “Lucky-Number” from a female singer named Jolin Tsai, who hailed from Taiwan.

Each album had a track list and detailed description. From the description, it was clear that this Jolin Tsai had just signed with Chengpin Audio-Visual Agency.

As for the rest of the business details, those naturally weren’t posted online—

Gu Cheng had no reason to let the world know that he’d spent nearly a year “placing on hold” Jolin Tsai, confirming that her fallout with her previous agency wasn’t some act of betrayal for fame, but a genuine dislike for having her musical style exploited. Gu Cheng had paid a million yuan to buy out her contract and sign her to his own label.

Before this, ever since Jolin Tsai’s public statement the previous August, she had suspended all entertainment activities in Taiwan, a silent protest. Seeing her name lose value and fade from memory, her old agency, Loud Voice Studio, was happy to part ways for a mere million.

This business deal was handled by Lin Zhiling, with help from industry heavyweight Hu Zongxian as an intermediary.

That’s why Jolin’s newest album was featured at the top of Dingdang Net’s recommendations.

Li Feifei browsed for five or six minutes, conferred with her sister, and spent eighty yuan on three albums, plus another hundred and twenty on a full set of twelve “Meteor Garden” VCDs, then got ready to go—they were among the wealthier families in town and owned a CD player.

“Boss, we want to browse Dingdang Net on your computer too! Let us in the back! The money we save on internet fees means we can play another hour of Legend!” a few boys shouted, protesting that the boss only let the girls shop online for free.

At first, it was just noise, but the boss’s eyes gleamed as he replied generously, “Sure, you can browse for free—but no more than ten minutes each! If you don’t buy anything, you’ll have to pay one yuan for the internet!”

He was calculating: Legend Entertainment offered a five-yuan commission for every album sold, equal to selling a game card. In this small town, few could afford five yuan an hour to play “Legend.” For those without a computer at home, it took about three hundred yuan in net café fees to sell just one game card.

But if he could bundle in album sales, he might sell more albums than game cards. Giving them a free ten minutes to browse in exchange for a possible five or ten yuan commission was a great deal.

“Wow, Boss Chen is so generous today? We’ve got to show some respect!” joked the boys, some of whom, having CD players at home, were already scheming to buy the “Meteor Garden” set and show off to the girls. No more squeezing into the rental shop’s back room—they could invite their crushes over to watch at home. Even if they couldn’t afford the full set, they could pool money to buy one, or buy a twenty-yuan album to brag, maybe even get a girl to come over to “appreciate” it together…

Gu Cheng’s portrayal of Hua Ze Lei was simply too popular now. The adrenaline rush was too much for this group of hormone-fueled boys—they couldn’t hold back and ended up buying a pile of discs.

Watching the line at the cashier’s computer, which was locked to the MAC address, the café owner couldn’t stop grinning: “Letting them browse for ten minutes only costs me a yuan in internet fees, but I make at least five or ten in commissions—what a windfall! I’ll plaster the shop with posters for Legend and Meteor Garden and pitch Legend Entertainment’s products to everyone who comes in. But why hasn’t that damn promoter come back? I wanted to ask him for a few hundred more Legend posters. I can’t be expected to pay out of my own pocket to advertise for Legend, can I?”

This sort of thought was instinctive and widespread. Across the country, the tens of thousands of internet café owners, fired up by commissions, had all become eager, unpaid salesmen for Legend Entertainment and Dingdang Net.