Chapter 203: Special Segment - Guess! If you guess right...
The photographer gave the newcomer a close-up shot, highlighting his handsome and refined appearance. Despite his appearance, his words and actions were anything but "refined." Taking advantage of Shang Hanyou's momentary daze, he pulled Li Sishi back with a backhand.
Then, he spread his arms to block Shang Hanyou, who was about to react and make a move, and waved to Li Sishi repeatedly: "Quick! I'll block him for you!"
Li Sishi instantly understood, her feet moved swiftly, and she sprinted after the microphone that had already turned away, singing the last line of the song: "With you—even in my sleep, I'm still smiling..."
As the song ended, along with the surprise of Rong Juezhang's reappearance on the stage of the TVB Anniversary Gala after ten years, the audience burst into extremely enthusiastic applause, with many raising their hands to their mouths and loudly cheering Rong Juezhang's name.
"Hi everyone, it's been a long time! It's also been a long time since I've been back here..." Rong Juezhang released Shang Hanyou, who had given up struggling, and greeted the audience with a big smile. "However, I couldn't bear to leave you all, so I decided to come back!"
"You're back, so why are you helping the girl's side..." Shang Hanyou said, sounding extremely aggrieved, but his voice was full of humor, which caused laughter one after another.
"Although I'm a man, I didn't join the male singers' team tonight. I was just co-hosting with Zhiwei," Rong Juezhang said seriously, his face stern. "Besides, Ah May is my 'little cousin,' and I promised to protect her..."
"Then when I came back, I saw you trying to abduct an innocent woman like this. If I didn't help her, would I help you?"
"She clearly grabbed my microphone first!" Shang Hanyou argued, while simultaneously pushing and shoving Li Sishi, who had run back from the other side. "You always cheat like this!"
"Alright, alright, stop arguing..." Jiang Zhiwei brought over the male and female team captains, who were also giving each other disapproving looks, and started to act as peacemakers. "I just calculated it. Including the last line, Ah May and Hanyou both sang exactly half of it, so this round is a draw between the two teams—how about that?"
"A draw?! Doesn't that give your female singer team a huge advantage?!" Zheng Baixiang feigned dissatisfaction and pointed at Pei Yansang, who was rolling her eyes at him.
“You male singers have the advantage. You’re fast and strong. Our Ah May just grabs the microphone, but you Hanyou guys are just ‘stealing’ people and covering their mouths to stop them from singing!” Pei Yansang has never been one to let others take advantage of her verbally. Now that she’s met her mischievous friend Zheng Baixiang, it’s a perfect match.
After all, their friendship was forged over years of drinking and partying. One of Pei Yansang's three dogs, a husky, even took Zheng Baixiang's English name, "Ah Yeah"—and Zheng Baixiang, of course, wasn't someone to be trifled with. Relying on his sharp tongue, capable of convincing even Africans to buy raincoats as a fashion trend, he popularized Pei Yansang's nickname, "Pei Yanzhu" (meaning "Pei Yanzhu").
Oh, by the way, the nickname "Pei Yanzhu" originated from a moment on stage when Pei Yansang teased a certain "cousin" about his height. The nickname, given Pei Yansang's consistently slender, almost thin, physique, became the subject of this quirky and imaginative commentary.
When a group of close friends get together, sparks fly from their heated arguments. In the end, Jiang Zhiwei, the emcee of the event, tried to persuade them again and again, and even pulled Hou Beihua, the vice-captain of the male singer team, to help persuade them. Finally, they managed to calm the dispute down and achieve a "draw" result for the first round.
“It’s okay. Although this round is one to one, the judges and audience can see for themselves that our Ah May sings and looks great. The judges should know who to give more points to by then… right?” Relying on her experience as captain for five consecutive years, constantly reminding the judges to give points, Pei Yansang decisively seized the opportunity while everyone was scattered preparing for the next round to mention this.
Next came the first round of the annual all-star medley. Li Sishi listened attentively to this round of the medley while resting, and in the end, she could only sigh in her heart: it seems that everything is struggling to ignite one last light when it is about to decline.
Just as the Cantonese music scene in Hong Kong was about to face a generational gap, in the afterglow of the setting sun, Zheng Yixin and Liang Xianhua, a pair of male and female Cantonese singers respectively, were selected from the New Talent Singing Competition.
Of course, the two were still quite green at this time, and their stiffness and nervousness were still clearly visible in the medley of stars—but given time, they will eventually become leading figures in the Cantonese music scene.
After listening to the medley of stars' performance with great emotion, Li Sishi followed Pei Yansang and took up a position on the right side of the stage, facing the audience and waiting for the outcome of the first round.
The announcement of the winner of each round always has to be something new. This time, the men's and women's teams each received a bag of balloons and had to blow up a certain number of balloons within a limited time to tie them to their respective team's cardboard. The team with the most balloons at the end would win.
After Pei Yansang took the balloon bag, Li Sishi immediately began distributing the balloons.
I can't blow up balloons
..."Tang Jingwen tried to blow the balloon a few times with a cool expression, but couldn't inflate it. She glanced at the men's team and saw Shang Hanyou, the human inflatable balloon, and Cheng Erjian, the master player who could play any game. She immediately became anxious.
"It's okay, I'll help you." Li Sishi quickly took the balloon from her, blew it up in one breath, twisted it a couple of times to fix the opening, and then handed the balloon to Tang Jingwen to tie on the cardboard.
Fortunately, the male singer team also had two really bad game blunders – Lingchen was terrible at blowing up balloons and struggled to inflate just one.
Every now and then, he would waste his energy because he didn't pinch the opening tightly enough; as for Huo Gucheng, who bravely followed Shang Hanyou and became a human inflatable machine, he could blow up at least three out of five balloons...
With one team increasing and the other decreasing, the progress of the male singers' team is about the same as that of the female singers' team.
After a bit of commotion, the final result was announced: the female singer team had two more balloons than the male singer team. The female team won the first round, making it 1-0.
The female singers' team immediately cheered, and the male singers' team responded with cheers and booed a few times in protest, creating a lively atmosphere.
The second round of matches began with Chen Weilan leading the female singers in a classic song performance and singing contest against Cheng Erjian leading the male singers in a roller skating performance. This contest, a blend of artistic and athletic styles, was both exciting and moving, drawing continuous applause from the audience.
After this round of matches ended, it was time to announce the results.
The announcement of the results was done in a unique way: members of both the men's and women's teams took turns blowing whistles in front of the microphone. Each whistle blown earned a point, and the team with the most whistles blew at the end was declared the winner.
Now Tang Jingwen didn't have to worry anymore. She was blowing the whistle with great enthusiasm, and her cool and aloof temperament was almost distorted by her puffed-out cheeks, which made her look a little more cute and adorable.
Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, the whistle was a mute, unable to be blown...
Seeing that three of their whistles had failed to sound, Pei Yansang and Li Sishi, as the captain and vice-captain, took the initiative and blew several whistles in a row, managing to catch up on the points they had lost.
However, this time the result was that the male singer team, who were both talented in literature and dance, won a round and brought the overall score back to 1-1.
Although this was the unspoken rule that this would inevitably be the arrangement, the male singers' performance was indeed quite good. It's said that they even fell countless times while performing on roller skates, all because they had to learn quickly and practice simultaneously.
Cheng Erjian, who was new to rollerblading, still has bruises all over his face from falling, which he has to cover up with heavy makeup – so everyone is quite satisfied with the result of this round of competition.
The third round of the competition has begun. This time, it's a "wedding battle" specially set up for the joyous occasion of Kuang Meixing and Lü Shangwei's upcoming marriage.
Kuang Meixing, who had been busy speculating on real estate, finally had time to come up to the TVB Anniversary Gala stage. Moreover, she was about to embark on a new stage in her life. The female singers on the female singer team were naturally happy for her and acted as her temporary sister group, competing with the temporary brother group formed by the male singer team.
Kuang Mei-hing is a former Miss Hong Kong. She entered the music scene by singing behind the scenes for Shang Lan-yu's performance in the next Miss Hong Kong pageant. In the past ten years, she has been regarded as another senior sister of Bao Yi Music, along with Chen Wei-lan. She has friends with many male and female singers on the scene, so she naturally received a warm welcome.
In particular, Chen Weilan and Li Sishi are two people who have worked together in the past. One is a colleague who worked hard together, and the other is a junior who has gained many opportunities because of her concession.
After exchanging a few warm greetings, Li Sishi hurriedly returned backstage to change her clothes in preparation for Pei Yansang's next "backup plan".
Once everything is ready, the first thing to do is the classic traditional activity of "picking up the bride".
The female singers, having changed into traditional red veils and New Year's attire, surrounded Kuang Meixing at the very back of the circle. They then gradually gathered behind a door panel erected on the stage by the staff and began negotiating with the male singers' group about the "opening red envelope" (lucky money for the new year): "If you want us to open the door, that's great—the opening red envelope is definitely not too much, just 99,999 will do!"
"Wow, are you kidding me?! You guys might as well just rob me!" the male singers shouted.
"It's clearly better to just steal it!"
"Our Cally is a real estate speculation queen, beautiful and knows how to make money. You're incredibly lucky to have married her!" Pei Yansang stood on tiptoe and glared at the person opposite, but her hand behind her back was gently waving towards her own people.
"Our Mr. Lü is also a super handsome guy, and he's also an investor!" Unaware that Pei Yansang had other arrangements behind the scenes, Hou Beihua quickly chimed in, praising his own people.
In Hong Kong, weddings are often accompanied by playful arguments over the exchange of lucky money for the door. Now, with singers and artists bringing this to the stage, it's even more amusing.
A group of people, big and small, who couldn't afford the "lucky money" for opening the door
In order to coax the woman to open the door, the group of male singers had no choice but to start doing what she asked.
First, they played a series of quiz games, and because they answered various questions wrong, the bridesmaids drew all over their faces with lipstick. Then, they did various tests as requested by the bridesmaids, such as push-ups and sit-ups, only to find that the bridesmaids had no intention of opening the door at all. The "painted-face cat" brothers were furious: "Why aren't you opening the door?!"
"We've given you a discount! Pay up and we'll open the door—how about this, we'll give you a special discount, a total of 88,888!"
"This is outrageous! Brothers, you're obviously messing with us! We don't need them to open the door, we'll just break down the 'wall'—it's all fake anyway, it's easy to break!" Zheng Baixiang raised his arm and shouted. The male singers who had been tormented for a while responded and rushed in from the side. It seemed that they were planning to continue the "forced abduction" style of the first round and stage a comical farce of forcibly abducting the bride.
But the girls' group probably already knew about the boys' tricks. After the chaos, voices came from three directions: "I got it! Come over here, I'll help you!"
There were even two echoes following the first sound.
The three male singers who had snatched the "bride" looked at each other, their faces immediately turning blank with disbelief.
"Hmph, guess! If you guess right, we'll let the bride go with you—" Pei Yansang waved her hand, and the female singers immediately split into three teams, each surrounding one of the three teams of male singers who thought they had snatched the bride.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
