Chapter 94: On the Power of the Artsy Young Man [First Update]

In the earlier rounds of verbal warfare, Ren Qian had played the part of someone immune to every poison and impervious to every provocation: you could hurl abuse all you liked, while he stood motionless as a mountain.

Only at the very last moment would he suddenly unleash a devastating move, catching his opponent off guard and turning the tide in an instant.

And just when the netizens had begun to long for that kind of composure, he would again disappear once the deed was done, brushing off his sleeves and leaving his merit and fame hidden from view. So free, so unrestrained.

No one had expected that this time, the so-called God Qian would completely change his usual style. He not only struck back, he even issued a pursuit order.

His fans, fired up as if injected with adrenaline, gathered at once and charged toward the personal pages of the two Weibo influencers at the very top of the list.

For an hour and a half, they carpet-bombed them with the clarifying reports about the car-crash scandal.

These major Weibo influencers survived entirely on their followers and made their living from them. If their follower count exceeded five million, then reposting an advertisement for Weibo, or promoting Weibo, could earn them ten thousand, even twenty thousand yuan at a time.

But the downside of Ren Qian’s fans pouring in by the thousands was... losing followers.

Losing followers meant losing money. And money was what mattered most. If there was no money to be made, who would even care about these Weibo influencers? Who would still bother posting saccharine “soup-for-the-soul” essays on Weibo?

So by around eleven o’clock, the two influencers could no longer withstand the relentless drop in followers and finally raised a white flag before God Qian’s army.

“Without yet knowing the truth about the car-crash scandal, I, as a public figure, rushed to repost rumors and make reckless comments. That was ignorance on my part.

“I sincerely offer my apologies here. If this has caused mental distress or emotional pressure to Ren Qian himself or the people around him, I am willing to pay him appropriate compensation.

“I also promise that from now on I will behave properly and never offend you again...”

This sprawling eight-hundred-word apology was full of sincerity; one could read the regret seeping from every line.

But Ren Qian’s fans would not have it.

They were not about to let things end with a perfunctory, insincere apology. The anger that had been ignited in them would not be so easily put out.

...

The next day, the young nurse went to the library as usual, while Ren Qian went to work.

He had two rehearsals to inspect at Jiangnan Television’s broadcasting bureau. Counting on his fingers, the next broadcast of the singers’ competition would be on March 25.

Four days remained. There was still time.

No matter how hard those singers trained in private, Ren Qian only cared about the result.

Whatever standard he had set at the beginning, they had to deliver exactly that.

If there was even the slightest flaw...

Shapu Liang was scolded until he spent two full hours in the recording studio howling himself hoarse with diligence. Sun Mu Nan nearly lost all confidence in music. Murong Xue had to vomit every day...

These were all lessons carved into the wall by the past.

“That’s not how you sing it. Folk songs are songs passed down among the people. First of all, if you want to sing folk songs, you have to understand them. Their content is rich. Religion, love, war, labor, drinking, dancing, revelry, and rituals can all be included.

“Folk songs express a nation’s feelings and customs, so each has its own distinctive scale and tonal style.

“Take French folk songs, for example, with their vigorous romance; Italian folk songs, with their passionate intensity; English folk songs, with their simple and gentle grace; Japanese folk songs, with their sorrowful indignation and resentment; Spanish folk songs, with their wild and unrestrained spirit; Chinese folk songs, with their lingering tenderness and melancholy. All these folk songs reveal a strong national temperament and coloring. I’d better demonstrate it myself...”

The seven singers had been rehearsing for two days, but they still could not find that folk-song feeling.

Listening from the side, Xu Zhiqian voiced his confusion. No matter how one looked at it, these songs seemed to run contrary to orthodox ancient-style aesthetics. To call them unorthodox would not be an exaggeration.

“Brother Qian, why do we have to sing songs like this? I find it so strange. ‘I fell in love with a wild horse, but my home has no prairie’—the melody is good, but the lyrics are just... what even is that? It doesn’t resemble anything.”

Ren Qian smiled mysteriously and said nothing. Instead, he called for a staff member to bring him a guitar.

There is a commercial survey like this: an automobile manufacturer designed two models and conducted market research before production.

Twenty percent of respondents liked Model A very much.

Sixty percent liked Model B, but not very much.

Yet when the manufacturer finally built the car, they produced Model A.

Why?

The company’s marketing manager explained it this way: only those who love a car’s design to the point of obsession will actually pay to buy it. Those who marked only “somewhat like it” are usually indecisive about purchasing; they wait and watch, lacking their own judgment and simply following the crowd.

Ren Qian also took this law into account when choosing songs for his audience. What he wanted to please were the artsy young men and women—because these young aesthetes possessed rich emotions and usually vented them through Weibo posts dripping with self-indulgent melodrama, or by writing incomprehensible ancient-style poems to show off their cultivated pretensions.

Only these artsy youngsters would hear a song and suddenly become wildly excited, then hurry to write amateur song reviews—which, in truth, were nothing more than stale soup-for-the-soul.

Ren Qian knew very well that as long as he pleased this group, he would effectively have hired himself an army of volunteer promoters.

His scheming was absolutely solid.

Back when Eason Chan opened up the mainland market, it was precisely songs like “Ten Years,” rich in literary sentiment, that drew in a large crowd of these artsy youngsters.

Perhaps no one had noticed.

In 2004—yes, in 2004—Eason Chan, who had not yet achieved much fame on the mainland, suddenly went viral in QQ journals.

The artsy youngsters wrote journal entries for him. They posted those “If you do not share this, you are not Chinese” entries, those “one song moved 1.3 billion Chinese people to tears” posts. Eason Chan’s songs began to catch fire on the mainland...

In the post-folk-song era, such rhetoric once again became all the rage:

For example: “People who like folk songs all have a deeply family-oriented heart, whether toward relatives or their hometown. They also possess a strong sense of patriotism and a great desire to contribute to society. People who like folk songs are warm and sincere in dealing with others, and are well worth making friends with.”

For example: “Folk songs tell stories, while pop songs make sentences. Only when you have your own story can you understand his story.”

Such claims may sound more lofty, but in essence they are no different from “If you do not share this, you are not Chinese.”

Take Song Dongye’s line, “I fell in love with a wild horse, but my home has no prairie,” for example.

Back when Miss Dong swept across the country, artsy youngsters everywhere praised her, wallowed in self-intoxication, and wrote review after review. The quality of those music reviews was even comparable to top-scoring college entrance exam essays.

Then, when countless people kept answering the question, “Why does this line resonate with so many people?” the original writer, Song Dongye, stepped forward and explained: “You’re overthinking it, everyone... I was just using a metaphor.”

“The guitar’s here. Watch me demonstrate.”

Ren Qian did not have the leisure to explain. After this program was over, they would naturally see just how high the artsy youngsters’ emotional trigger points really were.

He tuned the strings and checked the pitch.

He sat down in the chair.

He crossed one leg over the other.

He opened his mouth, and the room fell silent.

The singers around him widened their eyes.

That was it! Exactly that feeling!

They had all racked their brains before and still could not find it, yet Ren Qian had discovered it with a mere gesture and a single posture...

P.S. This chapter was met with irresistible force and my poor kidneys are exhausted... please send recommendation votes to restore my masculine vigor. Those who vote will enjoy lifelong peace, a house full of wives and concubines, and children and grandchildren echoing like music in the rafters... Namo Amitabha...

By the way, in the latest episode of I Am a Singer, Hacken Lee sang “The Stairway.”

Lazy Book’s taste, tsk tsk~