This director lacks vision.

Chapter 392 Are all the top influencers in China farming? (Water content level 10)
At 11:5 a.m. on May 21, a young man appeared at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport.

He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, so his face was obscured. He kept glancing around, walking hurriedly without any luggage in his hands, looking rather suspicious.

"Ahhhh!!!"

"They're here! They're coming out soon!"

"Did I really get picked up at the airport? Oh my god!! I'm so excited!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!"

Wu Qian was already panicked, and when he suddenly heard a group of girls shouting, he panicked even more, thinking that his secret return to China had been exposed.

Just as he was thinking about how to get away, he saw a group of girls walk right past him and swarm towards the arrival gate.

Their chaotic shouts eventually came together.

"Stay! Stay! Stay!"

Upon hearing the word "Stay," Wu Qian stopped in her tracks.

The first generation of the 101 group sang the song "Wake" when they were formed, so the first generation group is also called the Wake group.

The second-generation group sang "Stay With Me" when they were formed, so they were also called the "Stay Group".

Wu Qian debuted in Korea with EXO and just released an album, "Addicted," in early May.

The company highlighted its competitors who were releasing albums at the same time, with the most important being the album "Stay With Me" by the second-generation group from Produce 101.

And that was indeed the case later on. EXO's album was completely outperformed by the new albums of the second-generation 101 groups, with a huge difference in sales.

"Addicted" sold a combined 60 copies in Korea and China, and many of those sales were inflated. It didn't sell at all in Japan.

"Stay With Me" was released simultaneously in China, Japan, Korea and other countries and regions, and has sold more than 260 million copies in the past three weeks.

It became the top-selling product in several Asian countries.

Compared to the first generation of groups' entrepreneurship and exploration, the second generation of groups has accumulated the experience and channels of the first generation, and is more mature in operation.

In addition, the album is of high quality and it inherits the label of the 101 girl group, so it is normal for the new album to sell well.

Wu Qian has also listened to the second-generation group's album. He really likes the songs on the album, especially the electronic music song "faded".

However, Wu Qian does not believe that EXO's popularity has been lost to second-generation groups.

He felt that SM Entertainment was incompetent, and that its domestic and Japanese distribution channels had been lost to Fengxing Media.

Now that he's back in China, he's sure to soar to great heights and show the Chinese entertainment industry what a true top star looks like!
Unexpectedly encountering a girl group at the airport, Wu Qian immediately became interested.

He lowered the brim of his hat and blended into the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful girls in the second-generation group.

Through conversations with those around him, Wu Qian quickly learned that the second-generation group had just returned from Japan and were going to continue promoting their album and participating in a series of events in Shanghai.

About three or four minutes later, seven beautiful girls with different styles came out, escorted by bodyguards.

The crowd erupted in cheers, their shouts growing even more frenzied.

Wu Qian was starting to regret it. He was being jostled around by these crazy female fans, and his body felt like it was about to fall apart.

Fortunately, the team leader, Cheng Xiao, stepped forward to speak up.

"Thank you for your love and support, but the airport is a public area, and gathering together can be dangerous and disrupt public order."

Please evacuate in an orderly manner under the guidance of security personnel.

We'll be holding an event at People's Square this afternoon. There's a designated area there where the children can interact with us.

Fengxing Media has specialized training in handling various situations. Cheng Xiao's communication skills are quite good; while guiding the fans, she also informed them of the venue for the next event.

The last sentence, "Babies," was particularly well-received by the fans, who then began to disperse and evacuate in an orderly manner.

After watching the second-generation group leave, Wu Qian exclaimed sincerely, "These beauties are really gorgeous! It's good to be back in China! Hehe!"

As the leader of EXO, Wu Qian has met all kinds of female fans and beauties from Korean girl groups; he is not an innocent boy.

But at this moment, he was still moved by the beauty of the seven girls in the second generation group, sighed that things were better in China, and began to look forward to his new life after returning home.

That's the power of professionalism.

From the very first generation of girl groups, Fengxing Media has always attached great importance to the makeup, styling, and beauty of girl groups.

The company spends a lot of money to maintain a top-notch makeup, styling, and beauty care team, fully leveraging the girl group's good looks.

After joining in the fun, Wu Qian finally felt relieved.

He blended into the fan group without anyone recognizing him, which clearly meant he was very safe.

Once he arrived in China, SM Entertainment couldn't do anything about it.

After taking a few steps forward, Wu Qian was suddenly grabbed by someone—his agent, Zong Shuai.

"Get in the car first, we can talk about it there!"

Upon hearing Zong Shuai's words, Wu Qian nodded.

The reason he dared to return to China was because he and Commander Zong had already devised a plan for the future.

Zong Shuai once served as the co-general manager of Huayi Brothers and managed stars such as Deng Chao and Zhang Hanyu. He is a senior agent in the industry.

The four members who returned to Korea were already popular, and they were afraid of being controlled in Korea, so after returning to Korea, they all found new companies opened by senior agents to work with.

This way, you can have a network of contacts and channels to turn traffic into resources, without being completely controlled by the company and losing your voice.

Zong Shuai has now left Wah Yip and is affiliated with the Hong Kong Island Arts Association, essentially working independently.

Wu Qian and he hit it off immediately when they decided to collaborate.

After getting into the car, Wu Qian took off his hat and sunglasses, excitedly exclaimed "Oh!" and said with a smile, "Awesome! Finally back in China! It's so easy to make money here! A wonderful life is beckoning me!"

Thinking about his future life as a big star, Wu Qian was overjoyed and extremely excited.

He even fantasized about earning hundreds of millions a year, becoming a big boss of an entertainment company, and then acquiring the second generation of the 101 group, and so on.

Zong Shuai's words brought him back to reality: "Let's go to the company first and discuss the contract."

After signing the contract, you'll be joining the production team!

Hearing this, Wu Qian sat up straight and asked, "Joining a film crew? What movie?" "Xu Jinglei's romance film 'Somewhere Only We Know,' written by Wang Shuo."

This movie is a huge opportunity; I even turned down Huang Xiaoming's offer to star in it.

I'll cast you as the male lead, with Xu Jinglei as your supporting actress. How about that? Happy?

At this time, Xu Jinglei's popularity and image were at their peak, and the Beijing entertainment circle's packaging of her was very successful.

Especially after transitioning to directing, her art films won awards, and her commercial films all grossed over 100 million yuan at the box office.

The male lead in Xu Jinglei's new movie is indeed a very good opportunity.

Zong Shuai said this to demonstrate his strength to Wu Qian and to pave the way for the signing negotiations later.

Wu Qian understood, but he was still very happy, after all, the resources were really good.

After thinking for a moment, Wu Qian took out his phone and said, "I'm back in China, and I should let my fans know."

After saying that, Wu Qian logged into Sohu Weibo.

Sina Weibo is now practically dead, and most celebrities have moved to Sohu Weibo.

Wu Qian has 1200 million followers on Weibo, which is quite a lot.

He stuck his hand out the window, turned around and took a picture of Hongqiao Airport, then edited it to read: "I'm Back!"

With a pretentious English phrase paired with a photo of Hongqiao Airport, Wu Qian felt his meaning was quite clear.

He wants to announce to the world that he's back!

Moreover, he posted this Weibo post to demonstrate his strength to Zong Shuai.

After posting the Weibo post, Wu Qian waited for two minutes, only to find that the post only had a few thousand likes and less than a hundred comments.

After waiting another three minutes, the number of likes finally exceeded 10,000.

Twenty minutes later, the number of likes on the Weibo post finally surpassed 5, and that was only after Wu Qian asked her top fan to help like it!

Seeing this, Wu Qian felt very embarrassed.

He originally wanted to show off his popularity, since his previous Weibo posts easily garnered over a million likes.

After all, he has a group of loyal female fans who are willing to be his data workers, each creating a bunch of accounts to like his posts.

In Wu Qian's fantasy, he would post "I'm Back" to indicate that he had returned to China, causing Weibo's servers to crash, and the number of likes and comments on a single post would break records.

I never expected it to be so shabby.

Female fans aren't very active in data collection today!
Wu Qian thought he hadn't explained things clearly, so he posted another Weibo post.

"I have decided to bring my talents back to China. That's right, I will officially sue SM Entertainment and return to China to develop my career!"

This Weibo post makes it very clear: I, Wu, have returned to China, but my online traffic is still not very high.

Only a few die-hard fans are creating data for their idol.

Wu Qian asked indignantly, "Did Weibo limit the traffic to my account?"

Zong Shuai shook his head and said, "No, today is the first elimination round of the 'Let's Farm, Young People' program. Five out of 30 people will be eliminated."

One of the competition's results was based on votes from multiple platforms, including Weibo, Sohu Video, and Panda TV.

Everyone's busy voting for these trainees right now, so your Weibo post won't get any attention.

Wu Qian: "???"

"What is this? What kind of show is 'Let's Farm, Young Man'?"

Zong Shuai explained, "It's about a group of trainees going to the countryside to farm for 100 consecutive days. Today is the 63rd day."

Hearing this, Wu Qian was even more bewildered.

What kind of operation is this? How can farming and trainees be combined?
Isn’t this too magical?
Zong Shuai continued to explain: "This show is currently the most popular show in China. In order to make way for this show, Fengxing Media has postponed all other variety shows."

The show produced many top stars, such as Cheng Yi ("Armor Brother"), Xu Kun ("Chicken Brother"), Wang Yibo ("Neck Brother"), Peng Yuchang ("Cowardly Brother"), and Li Mingqiang ("Little Strong Brother"), and even gave rise to CP pairs like "Ai Qi Yi" and "Chicken Neck One".

Wu Qian patted his face to make sure he wasn't dreaming, then asked, "What's that nickname for 'Armored Bro'? And 'Chicken Bro' and 'Neck Bro'?"

Upon hearing this, Zong Shuai smiled and replied, "These nicknames are just netizens teasing these people; they're kind of derogatory terms."

"Armored Guy" is called that because he was covered in feces, giving him a golden armor-like appearance. Others call him Cheng Yi Gou Sheng.

"What?! Idol Producer was showered with feces?" Wu Qian couldn't accept this. He slapped himself again, afraid he was hallucinating. "And Gou Sheng, what a ridiculous name! Isn't this a total black history?"

Zong Shuai understood Wu Qian's shock. If Jiang Yifeng hadn't actually created the "Let's Farm" program and made it so successful, he wouldn't have believed that trainees could debut like this.

He continued, "Sungye got his name from eating noodles that a dog had left over."

These are all derogatory terms. Although many people make fun of them, their popularity has indeed spread beyond their immediate circle.

Fans have another affectionate nickname for them.

Cheng Yi now has over 3000 million followers on Weibo, and Cai Xukun has over 2700 million followers—these are both newly emerging superstars in the Chinese entertainment industry!

After hearing what Zong Shuai said, Wu Qian was stunned. It turned out that the top celebrities in China were all farming.

Under Jiang Yifeng's leadership, the data on Weibo has not been excessively inflated. There may be cases where one person has multiple accounts among the followers of a celebrity account, but there are no bot accounts or fake data. For example, 30,000 followers are displayed as 3 million, which is an inflation of 100 times.

Therefore, the data on Weibo followers is relatively accurate.

Wu Qian has 1200 million followers without even returning to China, which is already quite impressive.

But compared to the wildly popular "Let's Farm, Boys!" group, it still falls short.

Wu Qian also noticed this; today he notified the fan leader to work on data collection, but some fans weren't very enthusiastic.

It's obvious he went to do something else, most likely to vote for the brothers in the farming forum.

Don't assume that these female fans in the Chinese entertainment industry are very loyal. They can be truly insane when they're being brain-dead, but they also don't hesitate to switch fandoms at all.

(End of this chapter)