Chen Bohan never would have guessed that his calm and peaceful weekend would be ruined in its final minutes.
Few minutes ago, Tan Zhen’s assistant Xiao Liu sent him a WeChat1. When the message notification came he was still playing a mobile game comfortably on his bed. His WeChat was set to not display the message content in the notification, this is to avoid any unwanted surprises for his weak heart. But maybe he’s been having it too easy during the weekends that he dropped his guard, he decided to spare a few seconds from his game to look at the mesage.
Xiao Liu sent a Weibo2 link. He hasn’t even finished reading the words after Brother Han, what now?, the name “Tan Zhen” appearing on the link preview already alerted his manager instict. So he quit the game and open his Weibo, sure enough, Tan Zhen is now trending, with a eye-piercing “Flirt King” tag.
A little-known Weibo gossiper “Another Good Guy” has just posted a 10k-word article complete with pictures. Chen Bohan only took a peek at the first picture and his day is already ruined.
Tan Zhen has been referred to as “Flirt King” “King of CP”3 among others, basically all the names that he thought Tan Zhen would never have been called in his entire life, and he managed to obtain all of em’ at once. The article listed down all the CPs Tan Zhen’s been involved in since the start of his acting career. This certainly feels eerily similar to what happened to Salinger back then.4
Chen Bohan cherry-picked the key parts to read:
There are still pages upon pages of text after, he took some time to skim through them but did not find any damning materials. The guy didn’t even manage to expose any of his actual love lives be it before or after his debut, so this is still different from that time with Salinger. The rest of them basically just accuse him of being hypocritical and pretentious, these kind of attacks are commonplace in the industry. As Tan Zhen has little to no bad publicity, these fellas can only make a fuss based on the assumption that he’s a hypocrite. He’s been accused of being “fake” since his debut, so Chen Bohan, even Tan Zhen himself, have long since grown accustomed to these accusations.
He has to say though, OP5 does know their stuff, prefacing the article with a bunch of female celebs that are “involved” with him. This led to the post gaining the attention from all parties within a short time, managing to anger even someone like him, a professional celebrity agent that have seen all kinds of storms.
He continued onto the comment area. After making sure he’s on his alternate account, he proceeded to give likes to all popular comments that supported Tan Zhen and critized OP.
After he’s done liking the comments, he calmed himself down and glanced at the phone, 23:19, this Mr. Tang sure do picked a great time. These gossipers love operating at night, aiming for when the management teams are off work and can’t deal with them.
But Tan Zhen’s fans sure are awesome, while Chen Bohan has always hated them, even he has to admit that these fans, who are on standby 24/7, are more dedicated than themselves, who are paid to do the same job! “Tang’s Gossip”, or whoever this is, even though it’s probably the same user, has used the exact same tricks used on Salinger back then. Once it’s trending, Tan Zhen’s fanclub quickly sorted out a counterattack after an hour, they collected screenshots of various celebs talking about Tan Zhen in the public, which include quite some female celebs, to prove that Tan Zhen is simply a gentleman, so he has a good relationship with the opposite sex, and has absolutely nothing to do with flirting.
Chen Bohan scrolled through the screenshots. Tan Zhen has always acted impeccably whether as a person or for any job and he has plenty of admirers, but to see so many sincere praises of the guy in one go, Bohan still felt quite moved. Male celebrities praised that he’s dedicated to his job and able to handle hardships, while female celebrities said that he’s kind and gentlemanly, and seniors said that his every move showed that he has excellent upbringing. Director Tan Qin has said on record that Tan Zhen has “noble-like etiquette” and director Jie PingAn said that the most precious thing is that he has not been tainted by the bad practice of the showbiz.
The last photo is of Ms Ji’s comment of Tan Zhen, who just received the Best Lead Actor award, in the “Kan Kan” show:
“He really looks like a prince, gorgeous on the outside, but full of innocence on the inside.”
Translator's Comment
Sorry if the terms used aren’t accurate as I’m still new to these internet slangs. Do let me know in the comments if there’s any mistakes! Anyway, similar toGone with the Wind, this novel utilizes flashbacks for majority of the story, expanding on the bombshells dropped at the beginning of the story.
微信 — China’s Whatsapp/LINE/Telegram-like chatting app. ↩
微博 — China’s Facebook/Twitter-like social media platform. ↩
CP — Short for Couple, originally from Japanese doujin’s coupling, Asian showbiz often create and push CPs made out of celebrities under their wing to build their fanbase and promote upcoming productions. They are often times simply acting affectionate in public and aren’t actually in a relationship. ↩
Salinger Controversy – This is a reference to an incident that happened in Soul Vibration, another novel by Dr.Solo. The incident is a major call-out towards Salinger, the bassist of the rock band LOTUS, which exposed all his supposed affairs and threatened to ruin his reputation and ending his career. The person responsible is a Weibo user named “Tang’s Gossip”. ↩
OP — Original Poster, the person who made the original post. ↩
"Chūnibyō King", Former Vocal of West Wind
gone with the wind lose controlBassist of LOTUS, real name is Lin Sai
soul vibration deal or love gone with the wind lose controlTan Zhen's biggest fan, Winner of Best New Actor
lose control"Sullen Prince", Winner of Best Actor
lose control soul vibrationTan Zhen's Agent
lose controlAward-winning Director, friends with Sheng Ye's father
lose controlFemale lead and co-stars with Sheng Ye and Tan Zhen on "Stable Structure"
lose control
Another Good Guy
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When he debuted, he filmed a teen drama 'Creating Love' with fan-favorite Xue Li. At that time, he's still a newcomer from CTR film academy, so his popularity is waay behind Xue Li's. During the broadcast, he cooporated with pushing all kinds of CPs. The moment the show reached its end, when the Sullen Prince reached his peak popularity, he immediately turned everyone away. Later on during a talk show he even claimed he had no contact with Xue Li after the show ended, causing her to get called clingy. And then when filming director Tang Xin's movie, they also pushed CP with his fellow CTR graduate Li En. Tan Zhen's management probably tasted the forbidden fruit of pushing CPs, so whenever he has a show coming out, you can bet there'll be a CP fest coming up...
What's incredible is that in Director Jie PingAn's "Stable Structure", Tan Zhen was paired up as CPs with both Sheng Ye and Gong Lu, causing heated quarrels from fans of both sides, making it a sight to behold in the showbiz. Back then Tan Zhen actively tagged Sheng Ye on Weibo, helping him to forward his posts, leaving out the female lead Gong Lu most of the time. My guy, you're a top-of-the-crop superstar, why are you using Male-Male CP to push your popularity? Have you no shame?
Fortunately for her however, she isn't dragged into his mess thanks to that. Unlike the pitiful newcomer Sheng Ye that mistakenly think Tan Zhen has saw him in a different light and spill his guts to him. Tan Zhen merely brought him to voice a DreamWorks animation, and now he expects him to take care of him in every way? Later, Sheng Ye made a sensational "confession" on Weibo, which scared the hell out of Tan Zhen, prompting him to immediately cut his ties with him and never interact with him ever again.
Sometime after, he collaborated with Gossip Queen Cao Yanna on a major production 'SPEED'. Holy Shit, those two sure are a match made in heaven, I thought at the time. I couldn't wait to see what major news they'll be brewing, whether either team are better than the other. In the end, Cao Yanna's team came out on top. Even though it's a racing movie, her team has already started pushing their CP before the movie is even rated. I even thought the two will have many romantic scenes in the film, but as it turned out, the two have a total of less than 10 minutes of scenes together, heck, they aren't even a couple in the movie! This is so misleading.
At that time, Yanna's in everything, but he ignored it to the point that I thought Tan Zhen has changed his ways. His fans have been scolding Yanna up and down, and then what happen? Tan Zhen personally turned the table on his fans by cooperatively pushing the CP with Yanna, even posting a photo of the two, together! Commenting with each other and a photo together in a single night? Immediate top trending for you! To think it was always his team pushing the agenda and never himself, for him to do this, he might have really met the one. Oh right, I guess he also personally pushed his CP with Sheng Ye, but not to the point of a couple photo..
For a long time everyone was wondering if he and Yanna are actually together, and suddenly he was caught on camera going on a date with a mysterious girl. Even though I don't like him, even I have to admit he has perfectly clean slate of a reputation. Even though he's been pushed in many CPs, there were never any real in them. After all, with this, they can maintain his perfect image, while still creating trending topics, and not losing fans at that. However, all is in the past now with this photo. The mysterious girl was swiftly identified as cellist Xia Qian. Tan Zhen's team clarified that the two are just friends, as he'll be playing a cellist in his next film. All right then, and of course his fans took the bait.
Despite the efforts of his team, Tan Zhen's family manages to hold him back. I heard that it's during his mother's birthday banquet. Let me explain, not many know this, the Tan family is an influential family, his grandfather is a titan-level figure in their field. During the banquet, his father outright called Xia Qian his daughter-in-law! Just imagine the reaction. My god, when your father pulled a joke like this on you.. I can't imagine what face he have on at that moment LOL! Later, Tan Zhen acquiesced it, not like he has a choice anyway, his parents approved it, his family and friends all witnessed it, he might as well put a stamp on it. Truly, one should beware of one's teammates before dealing with the enemy.
Honestly, Xia Qian is worthy of Tan Zhen, as she's able to calmly face the ferocious attacks from his fans, even daring to show off their affections from time to time. Even though he seldom show up in her Weibo, one can still feel his presence there. She's like a Goddess when she's with a cello, and a little sister when she puts it away, what an artist she is. Although I don't know what he's planning, I don't think fans need to despair. After all, every time he's pushing a scandal with anyone, no matter their gender, it all turn out to be driven by profit...
When he first debuted, his team gave him the character setting of a sullen prince. However, he's infamous for his "looks with no skills", always acting as himself in every role. He received plenty of irrelevant awards throughout the years, with zero notable award (He did won Best Actor later on, but that come way after, plus he was only lucky there was no competition), no wonder Tang Dan claims he has zero substance. As he'll be thirty soon, he can no longer be the sullen prince, but the "Most attractive actor for all actress" angle must remain the same, so his team gave him a Hottest Man character to play. He doesn't have Salinger's talent, but still want to followed in Salinger's flirsting footsteps. I wonder who is better, is the Sullen Prince born to be the King of Flirt?
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