Chapter 33: Brother Cheng Is Playing a Grand Game of Chess

Early August in the capital city was just as stiflingly hot as the south.

Gu Cheng had lived for eighteen and a half years, yet he had never tried singing and dancing in this kind of weather at the Workers' Stadium—an open-air venue that, to make matters worse, lacked air conditioning.

Even though it was past 8:00 PM, avoiding the hottest part of the day, after finishing six songs in two separate segments and stepping off the stage to rest, Gu Cheng was practically as drenched as if he had been fished out of water. In his memory, not even the most grueling days as a trainee at SM Entertainment had been this bitter.

According to the original plan, he should have finished these songs in three segments, just like the shows in Hujiang and Qiantang.

The only reason the rotation was compressed was because the singers and dancers had to wash up and change their entire outfits every single time they came off the stage to rest. It was far better to push through in one go and reduce the number of costume changes.

The only bright spot was that this batch of concert tours, requiring his personal appearance, was finally completed.

Having experienced all this firsthand, his admiration for Jolin Tsai and BoA deepened even further. Previously, Gu Cheng always felt that even the most creative stage dancers could not compare in artistic status to music creators. Looking back now, he realized that both paths had their own unique hardships.

Gu Cheng had practiced dancing for two years, and his breath control was much better than Jay Chou's, but tonight he still could not withstand the heat and was forced to use half-playback.

Yet Jolin Tsai and BoA acted as if nothing was wrong, performing intense choreography for four or five consecutive songs without their voices trembling in the slightest.

"For the stops where venues haven't been finalized yet, try to choose indoor ones under equivalent conditions if possible. This weather is simply too much to bear," Gu Cheng said considerately after coming off the stage, finding Lin Chiling to share his thoughts. He would rather forego relatively cheap venue rentals or slightly reduce ticket sales than disregard the hardship of the artists under his agency.

"Alright, I'll go make some adjustments. The performance market is relatively empty in August, so it shouldn't affect the schedule," Lin Chiling said efficiently after glancing at her memo, confirming there were no issues.

After giving his instructions, Gu Cheng drank some cold beverages, took a breather, showered, and then sat down quietly to open his laptop and check on his business.

Aside from preparing for the concerts, he had spent the previous period mingling with Boss Li's team in the project group every day, leaving him with no energy to care about external matters.

It had been a month since China Unicom started installing full-featured CDMA base stations, and China Telecom and China Netcom had also launched their accelerated network upgrade plans.

All the signs pointed to an entirely bright outlook.

Due to the actions and statements of China Unicom and China Telecom, domestic speculation and discussion regarding whether the "internet winter" was coming to an end grew even more fervent. In a few niche sectors closely tied to internet advertising, the worsening trend of financing difficulties had finally halted.

In other words, while the winter had not yet faded, the valuation of internet assets had begun to bottom out.

Gu Cheng was certainly not foolish. Of the three billion yuan he had managed to secure from Masayoshi Son back and forth, after his cooperation with Boss Li, there were still six or seven hundred million left without a specific destination. Right now, before internet stock valuations hit rock bottom, he used those funds to massively acquire NetEase shares sitting at their absolute lowest point—

He had successfully accumulated shares at rock-bottom prices below one dollar, taking several months to complete the acquisition. Nearly two-thirds of NetEase's floating shares on NASDAQ now fell under Gu Cheng's command.

(Note: According to official history, the lowest point of NetEase's stock price was 51 cents on the trading day of July 26, 2001. However, Gu Cheng did not know the historical details and did not enter the market at the absolute bottom. Coupled with the butterfly effect, I believe it was entirely feasible to accumulate massive amounts at an average below 1 dollar.)

Internationally, Western discussions regarding the possibility of the internet winter ending also heated up in tandem. Google was the first to notice Gu Cheng's cooperation with Baidu, beginning to increase its reverse investment in theoretical research in an attempt to crack the content of Gu Cheng and Baidu's partnership.

Meanwhile, the topological architecture proposal for AdSense had originally been put forward internally by Google's Sergey Brin at the end of 2002. Now, "inspired" by their Chinese counterparts, perhaps their exploration progress could be accelerated by two or three months. They might ultimately pierce through the technical route in the fourth quarter of 2002 and produce a Google version of "AdSense" by the second quarter of 2003—though naturally, under a different name.

The project Gu Cheng cooperated on with Baidu might ultimately lead Google by only about four months, and capturing the domestic market first through aggressive expansion would be a victory in itself.

Aside from industrial attention, foreign academia also grew interested in Gu Cheng's speeches and strategic layout.

The Western internet academic community was far more open than the domestic one, showing strong inclusiveness toward the prophecies and theories of successful business figures—otherwise, Donald Trump's "The Art of the Deal" would never have become a bestseller, considering Trump's modest educational background.

After Gu Cheng's achievements gained fame, *Wired* magazine took note of his book *The Long Tail*, published in April. Two of the magazine's heavyweight founding editors, Kevin Kelly and Chris Anderson, carefully studied Gu Cheng's academic forecasting system and were instantly awestruck. They decided to observe quietly for a period, and once some of Gu Cheng's predictions were verified, they planned to invite him to the United States to participate in an internet academic forum.

...

In the backstage area, Gu Cheng spent over an hour reviewing all the recent macroeconomic reports.

The concert in the main arena had also drawn to a close. The performers and dancers hurriedly took a quick shower and changed into clean clothes, gathering in the air-conditioned backstage room to enjoy a lavish midnight snack.

Because it was midsummer, the food was light, sour, and sweet, featuring vegetable and seafood salads, iced cold noodles, vinegar-marinated salmon sashimi, sushi, and a few light hot dishes, fully catering to the need to stimulate appetites.

Holding a modest glass of iced whiskey, Gu Cheng politely toasted everyone: "Thank you for all your hard work in creating such brilliant achievements for the company. Please believe that I, Gu Cheng, am not someone who fails to distinguish between reward and punishment. After this wave of concerts concludes this year, we will not only distribute performance bonuses based on ticket revenue according to our original plan, but we will also allocate an appropriate amount from the earnings of affiliated companies to show our appreciation."

The drink was a typical whiskey-based cocktail, with green tea and ice cubes making up eighty percent of the volume, along with a pinch of salt and a lemon slice, leaving only twenty percent pure whiskey—making it perfect for summer consumption.

"Brother Cheng is truly righteous! For us brothers to work under Brother Cheng is a blessing accumulated over several lifetimes." Hearing Gu Cheng's statement, the regular artists under his agency had stars in their eyes and briskly finished their entire glasses of cocktails.

The major singers, however, felt a bit too embarrassed to accept so easily. After all, they were the most direct beneficiaries of the concerts, and successful shows also helped drive record sales.

Jay Chou was the first to decline: "How could I possibly have the face to accept this? Riding the wave of Brother Cheng's concerts, the anniversary sales of my album *Fantasy* have surged to 2.6 million, with 1.9 million in the mainland alone—three times the 700,000 in Taiwan. If Brother Cheng hadn't paved the way for us, I wouldn't even have dared to dream of this."

"My *Valenti* is the same, selling 350,000 copies in two months, and even last year's old album *No.1* sold 80,000 copies. Previously, East Asian singers had never sold records in China."

"My *Ugly Beauty* is the same..."

Seeing his subordinates continue to exchange pleasantries, Gu Cheng signaled for them to quiet down: "Enough, what are you all being modest for? You guys have record sales backing you up; surely that shouldn't affect the commission of our musician and dancer teachers, right?"

Jay Chou quickly explained: "Of course I didn't mean that. I just meant the few of us won't take a cut..."

"Listen to me finish." With an authoritative glance, Gu Cheng cut Jay Chou off.

The artists under his command still could not comprehend the sheer scale of Gu Cheng's wealth generation.

"Through everyone's hard work, our concerts generate an average net profit of tens of millions per show; everyone is well aware of this. But if you think the hard cash earned from these profits is our greatest harvest, you are gravely mistaken—I am not afraid to tell you today that the reason I decided to keep these concerts going is because our greatest gain is the continuous promotion of 'Alipay.'

"Last year, we grew Alipay's individual users from scratch to 2 million. In the first half of this year, we used promotional subsidies like 'buy a first-time game point card, get one free' and 'buy a record, get one free' to further push our user base to 5 million. According to our original plan, our goal by the end of this year was 8 million.

"However, ever since we added the 'crowdfunded opening' feature to the concert ticketing channel on Dingdang Network, do you know how much our Alipay user growth has surged?

"Previously, internet users in China's third-tier cities were almost entirely outside the 'Alipay' user system. They still relied on the more than 20,000 internet cafes deployed nationwide by Legendary Entertainment in third-tier cities and below, using the cafe owners' top-up systems to sporadically complete purchases on Dingdang Network.

"Now, every third-tier city has tens of thousands of new Alipay users, motivated solely by the simple idea of 'bringing top-tier superstar concerts to their hometown.' They tentatively opened Alipay accounts just to crowdfund a single ticket, hoping their hometowns could gather 30,000 paid audience members and bring everyone to perform in their hometowns.

"Therefore, I have decided that until our crowdfunded concert tour completely ends in October, as long as the registered user count of 'Alipay' exceeds 8 million, for every single person beyond that mark, I will pull out an additional 5 yuan to distribute as a bonus to all musicians, dancers, and backstage staff, with no upper limit. I also hope everyone will do their utmost to share honor and disgrace with the growth of Alipay and Dingdang Network. Thank you."

Five yuan in bonus distributed to everyone for every single new Alipay registration? If the user base surpassed 6 million based on current trends, wouldn't that mean distributing 30 million yuan?

In 2002, the salaries of musicians and dancers generally hovered around a few thousand yuan a month. Even if all the staff required for the concerts were combined into dozens of people, each person would receive the equivalent of three to five years' salary.

Working under such a boss, what else was there to say? Just give it your all.

...

Why do people go to concerts? Is it for the music? Is it to see idols in the flesh with their own eyes?

Gu Cheng had already answered this question in front of audiences nationwide during his speech at the Hujiang stop.

From a psychological perspective, the biggest motivation for attending a concert is "social belonging."

This feeling is just like nationalism and national pride. Every individual has a need for belonging—a desire to prove they belong to a certain group, hoping to find like-minded people, and banding together to form a sense that "we are superior to those outside our group."

(For instance, national pride is the feeling that "Han Chinese are superior to other ethnic groups.")

And hometown pride, rooted in local sentiment, is no less intense than national pride.

For every Chinese person in the world who takes pride in saying "I am from Province XXX, City XXX," there are just as many people hoping to prove that "my hometown ranks higher than neighboring provinces and cities, and we are superior to them."

One only needs to look at the mutual slander between regional haters and regional boosters in the "Chinese Cities" section of Baidu Tieba in later generations to understand just how intense this sentiment could be.

For example, Qiantang, where Gu Cheng was based, back then even went so far as to use illusory indicators like "Qiantang is the third city in the country to open a Häagen-Dazs, so Qiantang is more internationally connected than Guangzhou and Shenzhen" to masturbate mentally just because it failed to rank as a first-tier city.

If even an indicator like "the domestic ranking of owning a Häagen-Dazs ice cream" could drive people with regional belonging to fight over it, how much more so for "the first batch of cities in the country capable of letting the absolute top singer team come to their hometown to hold a concert"?

Originally, ordinary netizens had never enjoyed the privilege of having "their single vote determine the outcome for a superstar." Now, in a place where the populace had never truly enjoyed one-three-thousandths of a say in their own destiny, people were suddenly told they could influence their own fate. Countless individuals felt respected and spontaneously boiled with excitement.

Across China, in every region above the third tier with decent economic prosperity and netizens who still had some disposable income while stan-ing Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai, or Gu Cheng, were stirred by the giant hand of "regional pride," joining the crowdfunding war of regionalism without a backward glance.

Many people who normally wouldn't spare a cent to buy a concert ticket were now swept into the ticket-purchasing crowd by the mentality of: "My hometown probably won't be able to gather 30,000 rich people anyway. If the concert fails to happen, I'll get a full refund; if it happens, it counts as contributing to my hometown's urban ranking in the country."

Especially when this craze entered its white-hot stage, Gu Cheng even instructed the public relations department of Alipay to pay web portals like NetEase, Sohu, and Sina to publish advertorials, or pay unscrupulous newspaper offices to hype up the "ranking of Chinese city crowdfunding results."

For every urban ranking advertorial in mainstream media, Gu Cheng was willing to spend tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand yuan in PR fees. In 2002, newspaper and web portal editors generally did not command high market values; a mere million or so in PR fees was enough to keep this concept passionately discussed across all mainstream media for months.

Even for cities that clearly could never gather the 30,000 or minimum 20,000 attendance required and would inevitably be canceled, their rankings were still listed in the advertorials.

A city with 13,000 pre-paid participants was ranked ahead of one with 12,000 pre-paid participants.

How could regional chauvinists endure this? Since it was a full refund as long as the headcount fell short, they might as well register an Alipay account and back a crowdfunding slot! After all, the money wouldn't actually be spent, and it would still help their hometown boost its city ranking.

This was viral marketing in the truest sense. Even people who disliked Gu Cheng's music and film image were bombarded by those around them with topics of regional pride.

Parents were educated by their children, academic high-achievers were seduced by slackers around them, and millions of people overnight became unpaid volunteer promoters for Gu Cheng, spreading the word for free.

In a mere two months, Alipay's registered user base effortlessly crossed the threshold from 5 million to 8 million, and was projected to break 10 million by National Day.

Even by the end of 2002, the total number of Chinese netizens was only 70 million. With this casual move, Gu Cheng directly converted twenty percent of the nation's netizens into Alipay users—whereas just a year prior, that proportion had been a mere 5%.