Chapter 182
This year's New Town New Year gift was delivered a few days later than usual. Yang Ting waited until the package arrived before filming the unboxing video. As a veteran in the industry, she has collaborated with various artist studios and has a constant stream of holiday and New Year gifts.
Especially after her vlog last year, "Celebrity Studio Gift Box Unboxing," went viral on a certain website, many agents offered to send her gifts. This greatly enriched her video content, and of course, it also exposed some stingy studios.
Just days into the new year, fans are already clamoring for unboxing videos. Yang Ting's website is doing very well. Due to the nature of her work, she often posts footage of celebrities and interesting personal stories. Of course, she occasionally switches things up with some gossip. This has attracted many fans of these celebrities, eager to see more of her content.
Yang Ting has even set aside a storage room in her rented apartment in Beijing to store the gift boxes sent by agencies and artists. She waited to unbox the New Town gift boxes because of her long-standing relationship with New Town and because they have many high-profile artists and therefore a larger fan base.
In a corner of the house, a small Christmas tree stood, stacked beside it with gift boxes—all specially selected for the shoot. Xincheng's New Year gift was placed in the front, an oversized, vintage wooden box. The box itself was inscribed with sharp, rich calligraphy, the words "Xincheng" clearly reflecting Xincheng's heritage.
"Hello, Happy New Year, everyone! This is Yang Ting, bringing you the long-awaited New Year unboxing video!" Yang Ting waved toward the camera. She kept her face hidden during the unboxing video. This not only improved publicity, but also prevented people from seeing her roll her eyes when she opened some perfunctory gift boxes.
Filming videos was a breeze for her. After quickly browsing through some of the New Year's gifts from artist studios, Yang Ting set her sights on New Town's gift boxes. New Town's major and mid-tier artists generally had their own studios, but they were unequivocal about their New Year's gifts.
"Now I'm unboxing a gift box from an old friend," Yang Ting said, moving the camera further away to reveal the entire box's contents. "This box is really huge. I feel like it might be a beautiful piece of junk, hahaha. It's so textured and beautiful, it's something I can't bear to throw away but don't need! But even so, I won't let it appear in my next decluttering video! Okay, I feel like I've dug myself into another hole!"
After reading the cards inside the box and displaying the various luxury brands and gold products endorsed by New Town artists, Yang Ting reached for the large calendar at the bottom. This was a sign of publicity; many agencies would include new artists in their calendars to cultivate their interest and promote their work.
When Yang Ting took out the calendar, she could clearly feel the weight of this year's calendar. When she opened it and saw the "group photo" of the artists on the cover, she was slightly stunned. How many handsome men and beautiful women did New Town recruit this year?
The entertainment industry is full of handsome men and beautiful women. Those who catch Yang Ting's eye must have something eye-catching. She remembers seeing the New Town calendar a few years ago. Although she was referring to handsome men and beautiful women, she was actually referring to them as a general term because she didn't know these ordinary, less recognizable celebrities.
In the calendar, while some big-name artists were still using their studio photos from this year, many newer artists were wearing Metro Entertainment's uniform white T-shirts. To her surprise, Chen Si's photo also appeared to be taken with smaller artists, in addition to some third- and fourth-tier artists.
"This year's calendar is so beautiful!" Yang Ting was lost in thought as she stared at Chen Si on the calendar. But Chen Si's simple top reminded her of her own time as a newbie, when she'd met Chen Si, also a newbie. The image in her mind gradually overlapped with the one before her, yet it was no less stunning than when she'd first met her.
Yang Ting calmed herself and carefully flipped through each page. There were many artists in New Town, and the number of people on each page gradually increased after the third page. As the faces in her memory began to match those on the calendar, a series of thoughts suddenly crossed her mind: "How come I remembered so many this year so quickly after just one glance?" She hadn't realized that these artists she remembered had been commercially promoted by her last year.
She didn't even bother recording the unboxing video. To back up her thoughts, she took a closer look at the two calendars she'd unpacked earlier. But unfortunately, aside from the ones she already knew, the lesser-known artists left a very vague impression on her.
She flipped open the first page of the New Town calendar again. After the distractions of the first two pages, she still couldn't quite recognize the names, but now she had a glimmer of the importance New Town scouts place on recognizability when selecting artists. She continued flipping through the calendar until the last page. Yang Ting smiled as she saw that Ji Shao, this year's biggest star, had been ranked last in chronological order.
But the photo before her was clearly not taken at the same time as the others; it was likely cribbed from a studio or magazine photo. However, the style of the photography indicated that they were all by the same person. Beyond the photos, she began to feel a certain curiosity about the photographer behind the scenes. Especially after unboxing today's gift box, she privately compared the artists from various companies, and New Town, who was in the middle of it all, stood out.
A few days later, a video was uploaded to a website. After a day of going viral, it sparked a huge online discussion. Besides the simple idea that New Town was "easy to make money," the focus of the discussion was the New Town New Year calendar included in the gift box.
——[Entertainment Forum]——[January 5, 2024 evening]
【Topic】Come and see the New Year gift boxes of each studio
[Main Building] It's that time of year again! Let's see what the team has "offered" to the media this year. Let's see if your studio is included.
Note: The screenshots are from a certain site's up master video. You can find it by searching for keywords such as [2024 Studio Gift Box].
[Image]*N
1L
This year, it should still be sponsored by a brand, right? I don't think there's anything new to see...
37L
How can a gift from an artist's studio be so perfunctory? What's that huge ball of raffia for? Is it for someone stranded on a desert island to light a fire? And they even gave me potato chips, OMG, and they weren't even canned. They're so stingy that they made my toes dig into the ground.
89L
Compared with the luxury goods in Xincheng, some people’s gift boxes are not even as good as the ones I brought to my relatives’ homes during the Chinese New Year.
134L
Wait! Was this year's New Town calendar remade? Frog Fun is a quantum leap from the average calendar! How come the normally ugly, unrefined guy is so inexplicably pleasing to the eye?
246L
What is an effective calendar? I suggest other agencies learn this. It seems their looks have improved a lot. Did New Town make their artists line up for injections before the New Year?
…
While the buzz surrounding a video was still building, Dong Xiaoyu received a package from Shanghai. She held the airplane box with a touch of curiosity, wondering if it was a new peripheral product from Zhou Xiaoxin.
Unable to find the right tools, Dong Xiaoyu resorted to forcefully opening the box. A second later, a photo nearly flew out of the box. Seeing the person and signature in the photo, Dong Xiaoyu froze in shock. Then, he transformed into a forest monkey, barking and croaking in the small room.
The person in the photo was none other than Wang Lanying, who had already retired from the entertainment industry. She was leaning against a marble column. Although she was 68 years old, she still looked beautiful, smiling at the camera. Written in golden marker on the photo was the following:
Gift to the Dawn Rain - Wang Lanying
…
When Zhou Xiao accepted Xincheng's invitation to go on a photoshoot, he was fortunate to meet Wang Lanying, who was visiting Xincheng. Having rarely appeared in public in recent years, she was quite surprised to see the camera Zhou Xiao was carrying.
Wu Nian, who was standing nearby, introduced her to a photographer hired by Suncity Group. She then asked Zhou Xiao to take a photo of her and the other Suncity executives as well. Wang Lanying was very affable, and even when many newcomers approached her and asked for a photo, she didn't refuse.
Zhou Xiao hadn't expected his joke that night to actually come true. After the photoshoot, he suggested an autographed photo, and Dong Xiaoyu happily agreed. They left a number of autographs, and the one Zhou Xiao sent to Dong Xiaoyu was one of them.
Unlike Dong Xiaoyu's delighted celebration in the group chat, Zhou Xiao was watching the video sent by the security guard with surprise. In the somewhat blurry video, the iron gates of the original gallery were opened, and a number of luxury cars and nanny cars were parked at the entrance. Ever since she authorized the photo exhibition to Huayao, she had been receiving regular and attentive reports from the security guard.
The security guard would provide Zhou Xiao with a video of the daily opening, just in case. On the second day of Zhou Xiao's photo exhibition, she was originally planning to hire someone to maintain order, but Chen Shenju simply handed Zhou Xiao over to them.
The gallery's tranquility was instantly shattered, but since the security guards were already hired, they continued to perform their duties diligently, even though temporary replacements were later brought in. Zhou Xiao, however, suspected the security guards were simply looking for more work because they felt uneasy about the money they were earning.
Huayao had no idea that Zhou Xiao was the current owner of the gallery, so they hadn't expected security to be keeping a close eye on their actions. What surprised Zhou Xiao was that she seemed to see Ji Shao in the video provided by the security guard.
This suspicion was quickly confirmed. The next morning, Tiaosi, still surfing the internet, saw Ji Shaofa's photo. It was a spliced-together photo of him posing with a "photo waterfall" and a sign-in board filled with fans' names.
It's been over a dozen days since the "Ping Ran Xin Dong" Christmas photo exhibition, but fans, whether they attended or not, are already quite familiar with the content. This is thanks to Huayao's active promotion after taking over, and they also used AR technology to upload the content of the photo exhibition online, which caused a small sensation in the fan circle.
The fan clubs of the other NINE STAR members are all jealous. Someone on the forum revealed that several have already been secretly recruiting multiple fan clubs to organize a joint photo exhibition. They want to focus on one, and they want the same special treatment that Ji Shao gets.
Ji Shao's offline check-in and early morning updates woke up countless fans who had already fallen asleep. After someone in the fan circle restored the photo to a clearer level, they followed the direction of Ji Shao's fingertips in the photo and found that he had also left his name on the sign-in board.
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