PLT | Chapter 36

High Mountains and Flowing Water

After signing the three fans, Yan Chao felt as if his whole person had gone a little dazed.

So Xiaqing Yuan really was shipping his CP across the whole troupe. The shixiong-shidi were shipping it onstage, and saozi was shipping it offstage.

Respect.

Still, at least they had settled the matter of borrowing the child. Everyone ate a few bites of food, exchanged the obligatory pleasantries that always came with a drinking table, and then got ready to start drinking.

Once the drinking was over, everyone would still have to go back to their own homes. At this table sat only two women, Deng Wei and Jiang Lili. Deng Wei would drive her husband and child, while Jiang Lili would drive Guan Chenfeng and Jiang Chenchi.

So Zhou Chenyu looked at Yan Chao very knowingly.

Yan Chao also very knowingly replied to him, “Don’t count on me to drive you.”

Zhou Chenyu blinked pitifully at him. “Then who’s going to drive me?”

Yan Chao said, “Hurry up and marry yourself a wife, then someone will drive you.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “Then wouldn’t you be my…”

Realizing that with that last sentence he had once again handed Zhou Chenyu a target, Yan Chao quickly cut him off. “Stop right there. I’ll drive you.”

Zhou Chenyu gave a heh-heh grin and shouted toward the other tables, “Tonight Xiao Yan-laoshi is driving me, so not one drop is allowed to be forced on him!”

At first Yan Chao did not realize it, but after watching the other tables go through several rounds of drinking, he finally understood that Zhou Chenyu had said it on purpose. Otherwise, with the ferocity of the way they were pressing drinks, if Yan Chao did not get poured several jin into him tonight, he probably would not be getting away from the table.

Fine then. Zhou Chenyu, this guy, sometimes really did do a tiny bit of human business.

These star performers all made their living off their voices, so after having a couple small drinks with their own table, they did not touch much more alcohol. Over at the other tables, the staff were drinking with increasing enthusiasm, so on their side, they started chatting.

He Chenfeng said, “To tell the truth, before tickets for the special went on sale, although I never worried our tickets wouldn’t sell out, I also didn’t expect they’d sell this fast.”

Zhou Chenyu laughed without the slightest modesty. “Normal. Who are you? Who am I? How could there be any reason for them not to sell fast?”

Jiang Chenchi, a little embarrassed, said, “Before tickets went on sale, Guan Chenfeng and I both still felt a little nervous. Who would’ve thought shige really called it.”

Guan Chenfeng said with animated delight, “Our tickets sold fast, we did great tonight, and the audience was so happy. Once the people in Dong Yuan hear about it, they’re probably going to be furious.”

Deng Wei also let out a snort of laughter. “Just a few days ago I even saw Wei Chenxuan’s fan leader arrogantly steering the discourse to tear into our Xia Yuan. Tonight they’re probably going to be stomping mad again. But what’s the use of stomping no matter how high they jump? Honestly, not to mention just one of the chen-generation juniors like him, in Dong Yuan, even those old seniors like your shibo and the others still wouldn’t dare open a ten-thousand-person show lightly at this point, right?”

Guan Chenfeng smiled smugly. “With hard results in hand, we smile and watch the mad dogs.”

The way this kid used fan-circle slang so fluently made the whole table burst into laughter.

He Chenfeng said, “We really still owe a lot to Xiao Yan-laoshi’s program. The boost The Second Role gave our Xia Yuan really can’t be underestimated. Zhou Chenyu was already pretty popular before, and now these two younger stars of ours can also be counted as launched.”

Zhou Chenyu was so proud it was as if he were the one who had made the program. “Exactly. Every time the two of us record, Xiao Yan-laoshi personally writes the scripts. Otherwise how could it have gotten this popular?”

Yan Chao thought to himself that Zhou Chenyu was being modest. Wasn’t that first wave of CP fans emotionally invested precisely because Zhou Chenyu had spared no effort in shipping the CP as business?

Deng Wei said, “To be honest, I think new media really is a very good channel of dissemination. We shouldn’t ignore the role it can play. Look at before, although we also had quite a few zhanjie posting videos online, it was all just fenced-in self-amusement. In the end it never broke out of the circle. It was still only the group of people who listened to xiangsheng who were watching. But ever since the program started airing and bought a few trending searches for us each episode, it immediately became different. A lot of people from outside the circle began paying attention to traditional quyi. That point alone is something worth learning from.”

Yan Chao nodded in agreement. “Every time our station holds a meeting to analyze the data, it also shows that in the beginning, most of The Second Role’s audience knew absolutely nothing about traditional quyi. But after a lot of this kind of content was broadcast later on, audience stickiness still remained very high. That shows our content really was successfully pushed out, and it attracted a lot of people to pay attention to this completely new field.”

Deng Wei said, “It’s a pity I don’t have the head for marketing. Otherwise, if you ask me, we really ought to learn from the entertainment industry’s whole system. From top to bottom, whether in management or publicity, everything ought to be arranged in a unified way according to a certain standard.”

Guan Chenfeng said, “Saozi, no joke, if we really did that, our theater would definitely be several times more booming than it is now.”

Yan Chao said, “To be honest with you all, I’ve actually thought about this issue before too. The proportion of young people in the groups paying attention to xiangsheng is getting heavier and heavier, and the audience has also become, to a certain extent, more internetized and more fan-circle-oriented. The audience is making progress. If the theater’s management still can’t match that, then that really shouldn’t be the case.”

Zhou Chenyu glanced at him and, unusually serious, said, “What you’re saying makes some sense. I also think there are still very big problems with our current performance management and fan operations, especially this whole area of online dissemination. It’s basically a complete blank, entirely left to fend for itself. In the long run, that’s not really a solution.”

Deng Wei said to him, “Troupe master, once you finish being busy with this variety show, if you have the mind for it, how about thinking about building this area up a bit?”

Zhou Chenyu covered his face. “The film emperor couple really are good at assigning work. From twenty years old until now, all the best years of my youth have been wasted in the little theater. I don’t even have the energy to date!”

“If you really wanted to date, wouldn’t there be plenty of girls throwing themselves at you?” Deng Wei laughed. “If you ask me, young people should work hard for a few years first. Once you reach thirty and stand firm, once your career is successful and you’ve matured too, then you can seriously think about marriage.”

Zhou Chenyu pouted in grievance. “Then when am I ever going to have what my shige has, a wife, children, and a warm kang?”

Hearing that sentence of his, and that utterly straight-man tone of his, Yan Chao for some reason felt a burst of irritation rise in his chest.

So he continued by steering the topic back toward business. “But there’s still one issue that makes me a little worried. I’ve also been following the comments online about The Second Role all along, and there’s every kind of opinion. Sometimes it inevitably even makes me a little doubtful myself. I wonder whether this kind of format might make the traditional art of xiangsheng lose its proper flavor.”

But Zhou Chenyu waved a hand. “How could that be? Traditional art also has to move forward with the times. As long as the root doesn’t change, it always has to throw out the old and bring in the new in order to connect with the era. At the very beginning, xiangsheng performers all used to make a living by street performance. Just for the sake of preserving so-called ‘tradition,’ are we supposed to stand out on the street and perform it there?”

Yan Chao said, “But when I visited before, I felt Old Master Zhou’s attitude was pretty hard to read.”

He Chenfeng said, “My shiye has always been the sort of person who never shows his feelings. Without knowing the full picture, he won’t make judgments lightly. Now that the show is popular and our Xiaqing Yuan is getting better and better, that proves it’s the market’s choice. The old master sees all of that clearly. How could he be unhappy?”

After a pause, He Chenfeng sighed again. “But in the end, what the old master can’t let go of most is still opera. It’s a pity there isn’t a platform like this now to help him carry it forward, and Zhou Xiaoyu also…”

Before he could finish, Zhou Chenyu cut him off. “It’s such a good day, why do you keep bringing that up? Isn’t it annoying? Come, come, come, let me toast you. Thanks for matching me in Xi Shi. Your Silang Tanmu was even more unforgettable.”

“Stop teasing me,” He Chenfeng said, drinking a cup with him. “But it’s been ten years since you sang this Xi Shi, hasn’t it? What suddenly made you think to sing it again?”

Yan Chao knew Zhou Chenyu had not sung opera in a long time, but what he had not expected was that it had really been as long as ten years.

Subconsciously, he turned his head to look at Zhou Chenyu, only to see that Zhou Chenyu was looking at him too. At the instant their gazes met, Yan Chao felt a burst of inexplicable fluster, and he instinctively shifted his eyes away.

Then he heard Zhou Chenyu smile calmly and say, “High mountains and flowing water meet a kindred spirit. Even Boya had to wait for Zhong Ziqi.”

Footnotes:

[1] “chen-generation juniors” refers to 辰字辈儿, the naming generation within the troupe hierarchy.

[2] “hard results in hand, we smile and watch the mad dogs” keeps the fandom-flavored line 实绩在手，笑看疯狗, where 实绩 means concrete achievements or visible results.

[3] “fenced-in self-amusement” 圈地自萌, meaning fans entertaining themselves within a small circle without breaking into broader public attention.

[4] “stand firm at thirty” echoes 三十而立, the classical idea that by age thirty a person should be established in life.

[5] “a wife, children, and a warm kang” 老婆孩子热炕头, an idiom for a cozy, settled domestic life.

[6] “High mountains and flowing water” is the phrase 高山流水, associated with the Boya and Zhong Ziqi story and used to mean a rare kindred spirit who truly understands one’s art.