Entertainment: 1990

Chapter 294 Group Brawl
After being pulled outside.

Li Yapeng forcefully pulled his hand away from Huang Zhizhong's and said excitedly, "What are you doing? I need to explain this to President Zhang..."

"Brother Li."

Huang Zhizhong gestured for him to lower his voice, then said, "Given your relationship with President Zhang, he must have known about this targeted training program for a long time, right?"

"of course."

Li Yapeng nodded, then glanced instinctively into the tent, frowning as he said, "That imposter..."

"It must be because of her!"

Huang Zhizhong said with certainty, "This woman is not from our acting department. President Zhang must have sensed something, which is why he temporarily stopped your recruitment for the Class of '90!"

"But this..."

Li Yapeng said in distress, "If this recruitment falls through, how am I going to explain it to my classmates?"

"be honest!"

Huang Zhizhong offered a suggestion: "Given your relationship with General Manager Zhang, you can get into Yuanmeng even without going through the recruitment process. The most important thing now is to prevent the Class of '90 from misunderstanding Yuanmeng. We need to let them know who is blocking their way!"

After hearing this, Li Yapeng immediately felt reassured. He looked around and spotted the rest of the group—the students from the Class of '90, who had a different mindset than others, hadn't left even after their interviews and were all waiting nearby for the results.

He rushed over and told his classmates what was happening inside the tent.

It was said that because of a fake applicant, Yuanmeng had to temporarily suspend its recruitment of the Class of '90, which caused an uproar among the students.

"WTF?!"

Wang Xuebing exclaimed anxiously, "How can there be someone impersonating a student from our class?! What is she doing?! What right does she have to ruin our plans?!"

"Let's go ask!"

"Yes, if she doesn't explain herself clearly, she shouldn't even think about leaving the school!"

The dozen or so people were indignant. Realizing their dreams was their best and only option at the moment. Who would agree to have their future ruined for no reason?

Not to mention that these are all young people full of vigor and vitality.

Before they could rush into the tent, a young woman with a frown emerged from inside.

"It's her!"

At Li Yapeng's shout, thirteen men immediately surrounded the girl.

"what is your job?"

"Are you a student at our school?!"

"Where's your student ID? Show me your student ID!"

The crowd had mostly dispersed, but the commotion attracted even more onlookers.

Zhang Yan and Chen Hong inside also heard the commotion. They exchanged glances, then each moved a stool to the doorway and peered out through the gap in the curtain.

At this point, a fight broke out outside. Several female students were shoving the imposter, cursing and questioning him.

Seeing that she was outnumbered, two men, though young, who were clearly men of some standing, suddenly stepped forward and shouted:

"What are you doing?"

"Let's see who dares to take action!"

Seeing the two men making a racket and squeezing in, Huang Zhizhong, who was on the outer edge, immediately pinched his nose, lowered his head, and shouted, "These two are accomplices of that imposter!"

Li Yapeng, Wang Xuebing, and a few other boys were just worried about not being able to get involved, but upon hearing this, they immediately turned around and surrounded the two of them again.

Li Yapeng grabbed one of the men by the collar and demanded, "What the hell do you guys do? Why are you ripping us off?!"

"Yes, what are you doing?! If you don't tell me, I'll get physical!"

Pushed and threatened by several students, the two men panicked. One of them instinctively shouted, "Don't do anything rash! We're reporters!"

There was a moment of silence, then someone shouted again, "Which newspaper are you reporters from? Where are your press cards?! Show them to us!"

Having already revealed their identities, the two men didn't hide anything and quickly showed their reporter IDs from Beijing TV.

It seems that the people from Beijing and Taiwan were sent to sabotage us.

Now Zhang Yan finally understood. His feud with Beijing and Taiwan had a long history, but this was the first time they had so blatantly sabotaged him. Fortunately, the interviews were conducted separately, and the number of participants was too small, so Li Yapeng noticed something was wrong. Otherwise, once things settled down, Yuanmeng would have been in a difficult position.

After the two male reporters outside showed their badges, they saw that the students were no longer as angry as before and assumed that they had calmed the crowd down. So they parted the crowd to meet up with the female reporter.

To everyone's surprise, the male students stepped back, but the female students refused to back down. One of them, with tears in her eyes, said, "We're going to Tianjin, to a private company. We're not taking up any of your Beijing quotas. What's wrong with us?! We just want to stay in the mainland. What's wrong with that?!"

As she spoke, she shoved the male reporter hard and roared, "If you won't let us live, you won't have an easy time either!"

This immediately reignited the anger of the Class of '90 students.

While saying they wouldn't let people live is a bit of an exaggeration, the border regions in the early 90s were worlds apart from Beijing and Tianjin, if not heaven and earth.

It's unclear who started it, but soon both male reporters were knocked to the ground and kicked around like balls.

The female reporter fared even worse; several female students swiftly pulled her hair and ripped off her clothes, even finding a pager and Walkman in her pockets.

The Walkman was printed with the advertising slogan "Clear music, clear vocals".

Clearly, she was trying to elicit a confession in the tent, but fortunately, Wang Jinghua was always meticulous, and Zhang Yan interrupted her in time, so she didn't fall for it.

A few minutes later, people from the school's academic affairs office and security office arrived one after another, which stopped the 90th graders from ganging up on the reporters from Beijing and Taiwan.

The head of the academic affairs office stormed into the tent, pointing outside and demanding, "Mr. Zhang, is this the campus recruitment fair you organized?! Look at the state of it!"

In the early 90s, the Central Academy of Drama was still focused on sending talent into the system and had little affection for private companies like Yuanmeng.

Now that this has happened, naturally the first target of criticism is Yuanmeng.

"What does this have to do with fulfilling our dreams?"

Zhang Yan frowned and said, "The people fighting outside weren't from our Yuanmeng team. No matter how you look at it, you can't blame Yuanmeng, can you?"

"If it weren't for your campus recruitment..."

"So you mean it's our mistake that we, Yuanmeng, valued your school's students?"

"That's not what I meant, but this whole thing stems from campus recruitment!" the academic affairs office leader exclaimed angrily. "Beating up a reporter on campus—what will people think of that?! We've never had anything like this at the Central Academy of Drama in all our years! How am I supposed to explain this to the higher-ups?!"

For him, the most important thing was to report back to his superiors.

Seeing his attitude, Zhang Yan simply ignored him.

He turned around, sat back behind his desk, and started making phone calls to call for more people.

"Yes, Tianjin TV must broadcast the news tonight and notify the city. I don't think that's necessary for now. By the way, please wait while I contact the border region."

"Hey, Director Chen, this is Zhang Yan from Yuanmeng Company. Haha, it's been a long time—I've run into this situation..."

Yes, yes, yes, the leader is Li Yapeng. This young man has always cared about his hometown folks and is definitely not the kind of person who forgets kindness.

My original thought was that if these people could stay, they could better promote the frontier region… Yes, yes, we need to go out to attract investment, but unfortunately, some people don't think that way.”

"Hello, are you Director Ge of the Frontier Drama Troupe? I am Zhang Yan from Yuanmeng Company. — Director Chen has already given instructions? Hehe, we were originally planning to give our drama troupe some funds as compensation and, incidentally, establish a pairing assistance relationship."

Yes, yes, we can share resources, and they will definitely give back to their hometown once they achieve success—it's just a pity this time… Could you please accept an interview with Tianjin TV? Sure, sure, sure.”

At first, when Zhang Yan went to make the call, the academic affairs office leader was still stubborn, but gradually he started to panic.

After Zhang Yan hung up the phone with the drama troupe leader, the academic affairs office leader quickly interjected, "Mr. Zhang, isn't this a bit inappropriate? It's better to resolve this internally. If we just broadcast it on satellite TV, then we..."

"I have to prevent anyone from distorting the facts."

Zhang Yan interrupted him, saying, "If you want to resolve this internally, then deal with the situation in Beijing and Taiwan first. As long as they promise not to fire the first shot, we certainly don't want to escalate things too much."

"But...but how could they possibly let this go after their reporters from Beijing and Taiwan were assaulted?"

"That's none of my business, it's not like we were the ones who made the ride."

"This……"

The academic affairs office leaders were furious, but they didn't dare to argue with Zhang Yan anymore.

Although he had heard rumors about Zhang Yan, he never expected that a single phone call from the other party would put the matter on Tianjin TV's evening news.

You have to understand that Tianjin TV's influence is second only to CCTV. If they were to report this...

Finally, he gritted his teeth and stamped his foot, saying, "Mr. Zhang, don't worry, I'll go and invite the school leaders over right away!"

(End of this chapter)