Chapter 132: And the winner is……
Translated by me, edited by drpetro.
At 3 PM, the Benz G-65 arrived.
The plate and insurance was all taken care of by the dealership, so Ye Qing, having received the car, immediately had one of the company drivers bring Hulk One and Hulk Two and follow behind his Lagonda as he headed right for Zhongyun broadcasting station.
Within the Blue Sky Tower, everyone was still focused on that giant wall TV.
Dragon TV’s news only spent a couple of minutes on what was happening with this year’s exhibition, however, there was still many streaming platforms that were streaming this year’s most innovative award ceremony.
Ji Ke, being the IT manager, swiftly swapped out the channel to the most watched stream broadcast on Douyu.
This company was mainly made up of recent university graduates, so naturally they all had accounts on Douyu. Although they wouldn’t be able to influence the decisions being made inside the activity center, they could at the least fan the flames of the wildfire.
As for the live crowd inside of the activity center, it was mainly made up of representatives of participating companies and product users from all nations.
This grouping of judges was actually quite reasonable, as those that wanted to play the dirty game needed to buy out at least 200 members of the crowd before they were able to win the award with the slimmest of margins.
Not taking votes online also prevented all the users from the big companies from casting their votes to tip the scale.
Take Xiaomi and Huawei for example. If online voting was allowed, then their votes would definitely double that of the other eight added together.
Within the stream was a gathering of the fans of the products’ makers, where the majority of them supported Xiaomi and Huawei. If you only looked at the floating banners, then you might have mistaken that Huawei and Xiaomi had already won the award.
There are some who supported the mechanical engineered chairs and the alloy trees, however, when you place them in front of the two international corporations, then they pretty much amounted to nothing.
Ji Ke and a couple of other juniors were completely unconvinced. This time there were two products from Monster Heavy Industry that entered. Yet, no matter if it was the mechanical engineered chairs or the engineering marvel that was the metal alloy trees, they were obviously more innovative than those complete product upgrades or those prettied up products that were only for show.
Being unconvinced naturally leads to action. Since everyone just came out of university, naturally everyone had a laptop.
“If Huawei gets it, then it’s definitely rigged!”
“Go search up these mechanical engineered chairs on the internet for yourself. If you can find anything remotely similar then I’ll stream myself eating my damn keyboard.”
“You guys see that giant Yingke pine in the middle there? Weren’t you guys shocked by it? Well that’s also made by Monster Heavy Industry.”
“So what? I admit that those trees are marvelous. But how can we buy back a tree? How much would that be?”
“Yeah yeah ~ and there’s also the mechanical engineered chairs. 88,000 each, who the hell is able to afford it? Since we can’t afford it, then why should it win?”
“Born to rage! Unstoppable, and unholdable! All fans of Mi, let us all cheer for Xiaomi!”
“Born to rage! Unstoppable, and unholdable!”
“Born to rage! Unstoppable……”
This was an unfair confrontation to begin win, which was why all of Ye Qing’s juniors got ripped apart in less than a minute.
“It’s all because I was too naive.” Ji Ke admitted in the company group chat: “I originally wanted to bring us good fortune, yet we were stepped over by Xiaomi’s fans.”
“It’s so obviously rigged! How can we win like this?”
“Yeah, no matter how good our products are, we still can’t compete with all of Huawei’s and Xiaomi’s users.”
“Support from the viewers doesn’t mean that the live crowd will also support them.” The human resources manager Yu Huali, the oldest of all workers, comforted: “With all the innovative ideas placed there, if they still only decide depending on who had the bigger user coverage, then there really is no point in the award.”
The juniors all nodded that that was on point, but still none of them harboured any hope.
The award ceremony kept on going, the ten chosen products would all have their makers’ representative come forward to raise votes for themselves.
The first to speak was Huawei. When the dignified spokesperson actually got up, he immediately grabbed the eyes of many females from the audience.
His speech was even more elevating than his looks. As soon as he got up, he quickly and clearly joked a bit about some of the company’s product, such that the entire audience burst out laughing. The tone of his speech, just like that, went from serious to highly contagious.
From the smart cat to their responsibilities to society, and even the spirit of Huawei.
Yet all of this just sounded all too convincing to everyone……
Next came Xiaomi.
This time it was an uncle like figure that looked classy and refined, with some really long hair, and a well groomed beard.
“People are grand because of their dreams!”
“At the beginning, there were only a dozen of us with a couple of guns looking to create defining cell phones. Who at the time thought we would succeed?”
“Then I’ll tell all those doubters right here, right now! We spent three years, and reached first domestically, and third internationally!”
“And no we didn’t just stop there with cell phones……”
This refined uncle’s speech, without even mentioning the viewers on the stream, even all of the juniors in the office felt like Xiaomi would win with how motivational it was.
Monster Heavy Industry was the fifth to go. When the extremely nervous looking Xu Xiaohu walked up with the microphone, everyone in the office embarrassingly covered their eyes.
“The… the mechanical engineered chairs, even foreigners praise how good it is!” Xu Xiaohu stated with clenched teeth, as if the wrong words would literally send him to the execution grounds.
“Hahahahahaha ~ my screen is completely covered in soup!!”
“Yes the mighty Monster Heavy Industry. I give that speech 100 points, as for the others, 9900. I’m afraid of how proud he’ll be.”
“Jesus! Someone help me with my embarrassing syndrome!”
“Although I’m a fan of Monster Heavy Industry, I’m still going to say that Xiaomi’s going to win this innovation award.”
Ye Qing’s juniors had already turned their heads. The embarrassed them couldn’t even muster the courage to face the gruesome reality that was about to play out.
Because next came the voting process. After all the other companies had their time to draw votes, the 500 person live crowd needed to vote for their choice using their on hand voting machines.
On the giant screen behind the hosts came the live counters for all ten different products.
The counter below the product images changed non-stop.
Ten votes, twenty votes, Xiaomi’s vote count was ahead of everyone else.
And then……
Contrary to everyone’s belief, Xiaomi’s votes only came in at number three. The one leading ahead was actually Monster Heavy Industry’s mechanical engineered chairs, moreover, it was actually ahead of Xiaomi by a large margin.
Closely following came the metal alloy trees, which was only lagging behind at second place with the slimmest of margins.
“WHAT! What are these people doing!! Clearly Xiaomi should be first!!”
“Yeah, Xiaomi’s speech was just too perfect. Are these people blind?”
The votes kept on coming in. The 500 live voters, just like having taken the wrong drug, were actually giving all their votes to, if not the mechanical engineered chairs, then the metal alloy trees.
When the counters finally stopped moving, the mechanical engineered chairs, to the amazement of everyone watching, was first with 147 votes, while the metal alloy trees followed closely behind by only a 5 vote difference.
Everyone from Monster Heavy Industry didn’t even have the guts to look because in their eyes, the votes for Monster Heavy Industry were definitely embarrassingly lagging behind at last place.
The first one brave enough to turn to find that something was wrong was actually Yang Baihe.
“Ahh, guys look!”
“Ah, did my eyes break?” Within the extremely large office, sounds of shock, exclamation, and surprise could be heard coming from all the juniors.
First!
At number one was actually Monster Heavy Industry!
Second was also Monster Heavy Industry, and in addition it was ahead of third place Xiaomi by at least 50 votes.
“Rigged……”
“If this isn’t rigged, then I’ll eat my mainframe. How can the mechanical engineered chairs be first while being this expensive?”
“I’m only seeing rigging! This isn’t fair, give back my Huawei first place!”
The chat in the stream immediately exploded with an uncountable amount of ‘I do not accept’, ‘I will not accept this result.’
On the other hand, within the Blue Sky Tower, everyone from Monster Heavy Industry was cheering and congratulating each other. Even the mature and solemn human resources manager was also happily cheering and slapping the desk.
The entire office was practically an ocean of happiness. What they believed to be the impossible actually happened.
In addition, the Monster Heavy Industry, with a margin, won both first and second; though second place came with no prize.
“Hahaha ~ Let me tell you why.” Ji Ke quickly hammered away at the keyboard, while shaking with excitement: “Because the mechanical engineered chairs even had foreigners praise how good they were.”
“You bunch of idiots, why aren’t you guys searching the internet for videos of the mechanical engineered chairs to see just how good it is?”
“See, this is what a real winner selection looks like. No matter how good Xiaomi’s speech is, it still can’t cover how lacking their products are in innovation.”
While countless viewer were fighting it out, the two hosts came back on stage, one spoke in Mandarin, while the other in English said: “Let us warmly welcome, the representative of Monster Heavy Industry, the winner of this year’s Innovation award, Mr. Xu Xiaohu, to come forward and speak a couple of words.”