1990: Starting from Baojia Street

After hearing Linda talk about the live broadcast, Jessica smiled and said, "I don't know if there is a replay on TV. If there is, we can watch it when we return to the hotel. I believe watching it on TV must feel very different from watching it live."

"Probably not tonight, but there might be some tomorrow during the day. I'll keep an eye on it when I get back. You guys are watching it live, and I've been listening outside."

"Okay, let's go back and pay attention."

"Okay, I don't have any other questions. I hope you have a good time in China."

"Thank you, and I wish you good luck in your work."

Linda didn't catch Jessica and Hardison and keep asking them questions. She wanted to find a local audience member who could speak English.

It’s not impossible to interview foreign audiences, but it’s best if they are not from North America.

Later, as Linda wished, after she interviewed Jessica and others, she quickly found a local who could speak English.

……

By the time most people had left the Taimiao gate, it was almost late at night.

But the reporters can't rest immediately after returning.

For those who work in the news industry, they are fighting a battle of time. Whoever can publish the news faster will be able to seize the initiative.

Therefore, the reporters would not rest after returning home, but would rush to finish their manuscripts.

Some reporters have made preparations in advance and have already written several versions of the manuscript. When they need to use it, they just find a suitable one and make some modifications. This can greatly improve efficiency.

However, Zhou Yan performed a new piece live tonight, and this "Bauhinia March" is related to the country's top priority this year. Therefore, the manuscript prepared before is not very useful and must be rewritten because the theme is completely different.

Linda couldn't sleep when she went back. Although it was midnight in China, it was daytime in the United States and everyone was working.

She had to organize the news content overnight and hand it over to the company for preliminary processing.

The various media outlets also have cooperative relationships. If Billboard is not in a hurry to publish articles, it can consider selling the content to other media outlets first to share the costs.

……

The next morning, the morning news on Yenching Television reported the grand occasion of the Forbidden City concert the night before, which naturally highlighted the "Bauhinia March" and also mentioned the return of Hong Kong.

In addition to Yanjing TV, several other TV stations also reported on this incident.

Among these three, television, radio and print media, radio is actually the fastest.

The next morning, only a few TV stations reported the incident, but quite a few radio stations talked about it.

Moreover, on some channels, the chat starts almost from morning till noon, and every column has to be mentioned.

Especially for some music-related programs, there was no other content arranged at all, and the audience was focused on talking about the Forbidden City Concert.

Because these music-related programs know that these days only programs related to the Forbidden City Concert will be listened to. If they talk about other things, the audience will leave.

After all, if they don't talk about it on this show, there are naturally other shows to talk about it. For the listeners, it is too easy to change the channel.

Print media is the slowest. After all, it takes a lot of time for a manuscript to be written, printed, and then reach the hands of the audience.

But even so, some newspapers still published the news the next morning.

All of a sudden, discussions about the Forbidden City Concert in major cities across the country increased dramatically, several times more than before the concert was held.

The song "Bauhinia March" also attracted much attention from the public. Many viewers who did not watch the live broadcast the night before were waiting for the rebroadcast the next day.

……

After the concert ended that night, Zhou Yan returned to the studio. He rested in the campus dormitory again at night, but tonight Wang Zuxian and the others all returned to the hotel.

But the next morning when Zhou Yan got up and went to the cafeteria to eat, he saw them eating at the same table.

The scene of them sitting together and eating breakfast stunned Zhou Yan.

He stood in front of several people and asked in surprise, "You guys came together?"

It makes sense for Shizuka Kudo, Akina Nakamori and Izumi Sakai to come together, but how did they get together with Joey Wong?

Wang Zuxian said with a smile, "No, we just happened to come together. Go get some food quickly. Today's soy milk is very good, and there are also fresh meat buns."

"The baked sauce cake is delicious." Shizuka Kudo said with a smile.

"The xiaolongbao is also very good," said Akina Nakamori.

"Uh, I'll go check it out."

Zhou Yan turned and went to the window. He did not eat the meat buns and soy milk, nor did he eat the steamed dumplings and sauce pancakes. Instead, he took two eggs and a glass of milk.

He is trying to lose weight during this period, and although his plan is not strict because of the concert, he still tries to eat cleanly.

When he came back with eggs and milk, the girls all stared at him blankly.

"During the fat-loss period, it's like this every day." Zhou Yan explained.

After hearing his explanation, several people withdrew their gazes.

After quickly finishing his breakfast, Zhou Yan went to the large recording studio by himself. He would later discuss yesterday’s issues with the band members.

The girls had nothing to do, so they all followed.

When they arrived at the recording studio, only a few members were there. After waiting for about thirteen or fourteen minutes, the members gradually arrived.

"Brother, everyone is here."

After Fang Xiu passed the ball, he ran over and said to Zhou Yan.

Zhou Yan nodded and said, "First of all, I want to praise everyone. Everyone performed very well in the first Forbidden City Concert last night, which is a good start for this series of Bauhinia City Concerts. Then, we still have to talk about some problems that occurred during the process. Let's start with the first song, "Memories of the Forbidden City". You have played it many times. I'm afraid you can complete it with your eyes closed now, but some problems still occurred on the spot..."

Then Zhou Yan started to find fault with each song one by one. Sometimes it was an overall problem, so he would point it out as a whole. Sometimes it was an individual problem, so he would not hesitate to point it out directly.

This is very normal in the Youth Piano Orchestra, and any problems will be addressed face to face.

There is no such thing as emotional intelligence or roundabout ways.

Anything that reduces the efficiency of the orchestra should be eliminated as much as possible. If members cannot adapt, they can choose to quit.

In fact, this is a bit too rough to lead a team, but because Zhou Yan has absolute say in the band, being more direct like this won't cause any problems.

Because everyone is used to this approach, meetings are very efficient. If there is a problem, everyone will directly raise it and then find a way to solve it. There is nothing to be embarrassed about being called out, just correct it in time.

And everyone knows that as long as you take it seriously, the more you are called upon, the faster you will improve. This is how all the members of the band came about.

Many of the questions Zhou Yan raised might seem like nitpicking to others, but in order to achieve excellence, he would raise even the smallest issues.

Zhou Yan would also point out extremely detailed issues such as if someone's instrument had a slight deviation in pitch.

Therefore, in a concert where everyone performed very well, Zhou Yan spent an hour or two finding faults with everyone.

In other words, he speaks very fast. If he meets someone who speaks slowly, it would probably take two or three hours.

After finishing all the questions, Zhou Yan smiled and said, "I'll ask you questions, just remember them in your mind. You don't have to completely change them on the spot, and it won't affect tonight's performance. In the afternoon, we still have to go to the scene in advance and make good preparations. Today's song is still quite different from yesterday's, which is quite a test for everyone."

"Don't worry, senior brother. I will supervise them." Fang Xiu said with a smile.

Zhou Yan nodded, "I'll leave this to you. I'll go back to the office. Come to me if you need anything."

"Okay." Fang Xiu smiled and winked at Zhou Yan, "What do those sisters say? Should they go with you, or should they stay and I'll be responsible?"

"If they stay, what can you be responsible for?"

"I'm responsible for leading the orchestra to play music for them."

Zhou Yan nodded, "That's fine."

"Okay, leave it to me."

Fang Xiu smiled and walked straight to Wang Zuxian and the others, "Sister Xiaoxian, Sister Shizuka, Sister Akina, and this Sister Sakai, we are about to rehearse, do you want to stay and give us some guidance?"

……

Zhou Yan returned to the office by himself. He did not participate in the rehearsal in the morning. He would join in after going to the scene in the afternoon. Now that he came back, he still had a lot of things to do.

He returned to the office and had just sat down for a few minutes when Liu Hang came to report on his work.

"The distribution income of "Time Traveler" in Japan has reached 1.9 billion." Liu Hang first reported the box office situation of "Time Traveler".

In fact, Liu Hang hasn't reported on the box office situation of "Time Travelers" for several days, but today happened to be the day when the distribution income data for last weekend was sorted out, so he made a special report.

This movie has been released for quite a while. The box office revenue is not that high during the week, but there will be a big surge during the weekend, so it is more useful to look at the box office data for the whole week.

"Nineteen billion? By which day?" Zhou Yan asked.

"To the 28th." Liu Hang replied.

"It's released on the 12th, so this counts as data for 17 days?"

"Yes."

"I remember the data for the first nine days was 1.3 billion Neon coins, but in the last eight days, we got 600 million Neon coins? There should be only one weekend in between."

"Yes, it's only one weekend, so the box office performance in the past few days has been very strong, with some areas showing a reversal of decline. If it stabilizes on this trend, I believe there is hope that the distribution revenue will exceed 3 billion." Liu Hang said with a smile. He is very happy whenever he sees the box office data of "Time Traveler" recently.

Because now "Time Traveler" can be said to be breaking records every day.

Zhou Yan nodded. "That's good news. Is there anything else?"

"Thomson said that many companies have contacted us and want to release the film locally as soon as possible."

"We'll talk about these things after the concert is over."

"Well, this is how I replied to them. There has been some new progress in the recent work on "Yongzheng Dynasty", Mr. Liu..."

Although many things were temporarily put on hold during the concert, there was still a lot of work that required Zhou Yan's attention.

He was busy from morning until lunch time. He took a short break at noon and then followed the group to the Temple of Heaven.

……

Liu Hang's news was not much faster than the media. He got the box office data of "Time Traveler" from Tang Chen in the morning, and the media had already reported the matter in the afternoon.

["Time Traveler" swept Japan, with a box office of nearly 5 billion in two weeks! ]

Such an exaggerated headline appeared in the "At Your Service Newspaper".

"At Your Service" had previously published many articles criticizing "Time Traveler", especially the article "Spiritual Compromise", which almost criticized Zhou Yan as a spineless traitor.

At that time, many magazines were divided into two factions, one faction madly criticized Zhou Yan, and the other faction supported Zhou Yan, and "At Your Service" was the pioneer in criticizing Zhou.

Even now, this war of words has not completely ended. From time to time, both sides will curse at each other.

However, it was precisely the "At Your Service", the main force of the criticism week, that reported very positively on the release of "Time Traveler" in Japan.

The entire report praises Zhou Yan as a representative figure of Chinese directors who has brought glory to the country with his films.

But the data they used is a bit exaggerated.

First of all, the data of "Time Traveler" is seventeen days, not two weeks as mentioned in the title.

Secondly, the allocation income is 1.9 billion Neon coins. Generally speaking, the allocation income is more than 40% of the box office. So the box office with 1.9 billion allocation income should be around 4 billion, not nearly 5 billion as the title says.

Of course, they insisted on roughly saying seventeen days as two weeks and four billion as nearly five billion, and it seemed like no one could do anything about it. This is the charm of words.

Moreover, if someone really checked, I'm afraid the box office has indeed exceeded 5 billion, and there is nothing wrong with what they said.

The reason why "At Your Service" is inconsistent is naturally because they know what kind of content can attract readers.

In other words, their code of conduct has always been consistent, that is, to focus on popularity. As long as the popularity is high, they will report it, and as for the rest, it doesn't matter.

If they can gain attention by scolding Zhou Yan today, they can become the pioneers in criticizing Zhou. If they can gain traffic by praising Zhou Yan tomorrow, they can follow behind and flatter him, using the most expansive words of praise.

In fact, in the same issue of "At Your Service", there was not only one article related to Zhou Yan, but also another one related to the Bauhinia City Concert.

They are one of the few print media that can publish reports the next day. We have to admit that they are really efficient.

The article about the Bauhinia City Concert naturally praised Zhou Yan highly, even mentioning the term "the light of China", which was quite corny.

Some people who had supported Zhou Yan and argued with At Your Service Newspaper before felt ashamed when they saw these words praising Zhou Yan. (End of this chapter)