Chapter 111 - Getting Closer
Sky Forum isone of the largest BBS forums in China, with more than 1.5 billion registeredusers.
It is known asthe online home of Chinese people all over the world, opening up nine major sections,such as news and current events, people's livelihood, film and televisiongossip, gossip chat, literature reading, fashion hotspots, Emotional Home andso on, with up to 50+ sub-sections.
Among them,the international outlook, domestic vision, entertainment gossip, anecdotes andother sub-sections are extremely popular. Active users are often in thehundreds of thousands or even millions. The forum has been established for 20years, and a lot of network hot events and network celebrities have emerged.
Therefore,Sky Forum has also become one of the important battlefields for onlinepromoters.
The postthat Wang Jiashi opened pointed out that "Super Singer" does not liveup to its name. It was posted in entertainment gossip section. The poster's ID iscalled Stray Cat. It has been a hot post with more than 1 million clicks.
The Stray CatID is very famous in the entertainment section of Sky Forum. Stray Cat'sidentity is quite mysterious. No one knows what's his occupation is or if he isa man or a woman. His daily stories in the entertainment section explode allkinds of materials in the entertainment circle. (TN: For now, Stray cat is ahe, until his gender is known.)
For example,a certain star is cheating, a certain idol scolded fans, a certain big shot isgay…
Stray catposts have a common feature, that is, his words are meaningful, the materials areoften genuine and real, rarely make groundless accusations or fabricate facts. So,it is regarded as the guiding light of the entertainment section by the forumnetizens.
His postsare often followed very closely. Within just a few hours after posting, hispost has already reached the top of the list, with more than 10,000 comments.
On Mondaymorning, a 10,000+ responses were amazing.
In thispost, Stray Cat criticized the popular variety show "Super Singer" ofXiangnan Satellite TV, and the incident that caused the explosion was Lu Chen,who was eliminated in the audition! (TN: Explosion = buzz)
Lu Chen, male,22 years old, a Beijing drift singer, used to sing in a Houhai bar.
With justthese few pieces of information, only a few people will know who Lu Chen is.Within the population of more than 30 million in Beijing, at least 10 millionare Beijing drifters. Unknown singers are simply as many as the hairs on an ox.If each of them throws a brick at Houhai Sanlitun, they can turn it overseveral times.
But Stray Catalso pointed out Lu Chen's other identity.
Lu Chen isthe songwriter of the three songs of the wandering band "In Spring","Reason To Be Strong" and "I Want to have a Home". He is atalented pop music songwriter!
What? Yousaid you haven't heard these three songs?
Then you'rereally Out. Check out the official website of the China Music Chart. "In Spring"firmly occupies the top position in the 3rd and 4th week of July! (TN: "Out"here was in the raw. Which mean "out of date".)
And "ReasonTo Be Strong" is currently ranked No. 7, and "I Want To Have aHome" is No. 12. The Wandering band's album "In Spring" has climbedto No. 2 on the album hit list last week.
As a smallalbum with only five songs, having such a high ranking in the music chart isconsidered to be going against heaven's will. Because the Wandering band is anew group that just debuted.
But thosewho are not blind should know that their success is completely inseparable fromthe three songs written by Lu Chen!
And such anoutstanding songwriter was actually eliminated in "Super Singer"audition?
That'ssimply the biggest joke in the world!
Stray Catalso mentioned in the post that Lu Chen not only has outstanding creativetalent, but his playing and singing skills are so excellent that there is nopossibility of him failing the audition due to poor performance.
To prove hispoint, he attached two Youshi links. (TN: Think of it as YouTube links)
The firstlink is a clip of Lu Chen's singing in the "Singing China" qualifyinground, and the second is the live video of Lu Chen winning the first place inthe top 16 of 32.
And thesongs Lu Chen used to participate in the competition were all his own originalworks!
In responseto this, Stray Cat commented: We always say that domestic original works nowadaysis not enough, and most of the idol stars can only sing and imitate pop music fromEurope, United States, Japan and South Korea. That good creators are getting fewerand fewer.
But in fact,Jiangshan has many talented people, and has excellent creators, but they justdon't have the opportunity.
"SuperSinger" should have been the most suitable stage for Lu Chen to play histalent, but because of some people's malicious suppression, he was forced to goto "Singing China" to fight for his own honor, which is really a pity!
This is alsothe sorrow of the domestic pop music world.
Stray Catfinally said that the reason why he broke the news in the forum was not becausehe received money to speak for someone.
He did notknow Lu Chen, and he did not have any dealings with him. It was someone who hadinformed him first. And he was also deeply moved by the songs written and sungby Lu Chen, so he took the initiative to take a shot at Xiangnan Satellite TV.
The twofavorite songs of Stray Cats are Wandering Band's "In Spring" and LuChen's "You Who Sat Next To Me".
This post isvery long and contained a description of Lu Chen's elimination from theaudition of "Super Singer", his appreciation of the song "In Spring", andhis strong criticism on domestic pop music scene.
And there's evidence,there is a video that has the truth!
At the endof the post, Stray Cat added: "Super Singer", Lu Chen throws Ling Xiaoxiao atleast three blocks! (TN: He's just saying to "Super Singer" that Lu Chen ismuch better than Ling Xiaoxiao.)
It took WangJiashi more than half an hour to finish reading the entire post, including, ofcourse, watching two live videos. He read it very carefully and even browsed alot of responses.
The numberof responses to this hot post is extremely high, and the comment area isrefreshed very quickly.
"Hype again?"
"Orz, it's actually a post by Stray Cat, oh my1!"
"Hahaha, are Xiangnan Satellite TV and Beijing Satellite TV going to tear each other up2? I already expected it."
"Thisis a bit interesting. I'm curious about who these people are that aresuppressing the newcomers."
""In spring"?Ah ah ah, my favorite song recently, it was circulated dozens of times lastnight!"
"I've listenedto "In Spring", but I didn't expect that it was written by a peer. I thought itwas originally written by the Wandering band."
"I haveseen the competition of "Singing China" top 32. Lu Chen's song was very good,and I support him!"
"StrayCat has made his move, a storm is about to set off on the rivers andlakes!"
"Can Isay I like Ling Xiaoxiao?"
"Good stuff…"
The SkyForum is mixed with fish and dragons, and there are all kinds of people who commented,some are curious, some are skeptical, and some are supportive. (TN: Fish anddragons = good and bad people)
And WangJiashi very much agrees with Stray Cat's understanding and appreciation of thesong "In Spring". At the same time, he also thinks that Lu Chen, whowrote this song, is a very excellent songwriter.
If one takeinto account the performance of the latter in "Singing China", it isnot at all exaggerated to say that he is an outstanding singer.
However,Wang Jiashi could not imagine that a song like "In Spring" waswritten by a 22-year-old young man, shattering the impression he had previouslybuilt in his mind.
As for theinside story of Lu Chen being suppressed, Wang Jiashi had little interest.
Stray Cat isalso said to be a marketing giant. He has seen a lot of gossip posts by theother party, many of which are true, and some of which are deliberately hyped.Even the people in his circle can't fully tell the difference.
But just forthe song "In Spring" itself, Wang Jiashi has too much to say.
He closedthe webpage, opened his work software, and typed "In Spring" on thetitle.
He wrote:
I justreturned from my vacation abroad. I'm still jet lagged, and today I went towork in the company.
Then I listenedto a song called "In Spring".
I think thissong should be known and listened by many people, have their own experience andsentiment. It seems that I do not need to say anything more, just listen to thesong.
But some words are stuck in my heart, not to mention that it's very uncomfortable. I really want to share with others, so there is this article.
This is a song that seems to be relatively petty bourgeoisie3. It is about a hard-hearted person who already has a "credit card", a "little princess, a "home with 24 hours of hot water," and "the pain of the past has gone with the wind". He yearns for the past of youth, which was once so difficult and "no one cared about", as well as a kind of cry and worry about the unknown tomorrow,
All this canbe seen in the lyrics of the song. The lyrics of "In Spring" are notcomplicated, but a simple three-paragraph structure. The first two main sectionof songs write about the difficult and happy days in the past, and the latter partof the song write about the days that are no longer difficult but sad andconfused, and the overall climax is the worry for the future and the expressionof the ultimate destination of life.
What touchesme deeply was the intense emotion contained in this song!
…….
For theentire morning working hours, Wang Jiashi was writing the same article.
He wrote andrevised again and again, word by word, and repeated several paragraphs 7 to 8times because he was not satisfied with them. He struggled to write arecommendation article that only has a thousand words.
Because whenWang Jiashi struck on the keyboard, he also struck his stimulated emotion intothe text.
In the smallroom, there was only the clacking sound of the keyboard.
At the sametime, the post [Unworthy of the name "Super Singer", the author of"In Spring", Lu Chen, was eliminated because of behind the scenedealing!] was also forwarded to his blog by Stray Cat.
Stray Cat isnot a Big V in the Inspur blog, but when he has a number of friends in the blogcircle, it has been liked and reposted by Big V bloggers with hundreds or eventens of millions of followers. (TN: Big V = VIP)
Today is thefirst working day after the weekend, and it is the time when office workers andwhite-collar elites are busy, so posts are not spreading quickly on blogs and arenot being forwarded much.
However,during the lunch break, the number of forwards brought about by several Big V suddenlyincreased sharply, jumping from dozens to hundreds at the beginning to morethan 5000, and the number of comments also broke through 3000, forming a smallhot spot.
But this isjust the beginning, like a brewing storm, the wind makes small waves.
_____
TN: Just anexplanation for the title: as the previous chapter is about a storm rising,now, its approaching.
TN: Forwarded can also mean reposted.
TN: Actual translation is "I top!" which In Cantonese, this is a swearing word. In general, there are three meanings. One is expressing surprise, the second is dissatisfaction, and the third is mantra.1
TN: "Tearing" is an internet language. It means preparing to tear someone's face off and not feeling affection. The way I understand this is exposing the wrong doings of someone without holding back.2
TN: petty bourgeoisie (小资) - Petty is a Chinese vocabulary, pinyin is xiǎo zī. It is a popular term in the mainland of China since the 1990s. It was originally referred to as the " petty bourgeoisie ", especially for young people who want to live in the West and pursue inner experience, material and spiritual enjoyment. The petty bourgeoisie should be a person who pursues the taste of life. Petty bourgeoisie is generally an urban white-collar worker. It has a certain status and wealth in society, and it is a certain distance from the " middle class " - mainly in the economic aspect.3
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