PLT | Chapter 1

The Guest Dropped in at the Last Minute

The official Weibo of The Second Role: When a xiangsheng[1] actor and a sharp-tongued celebrity host swap professions on a variety show, what kind of sparks will fly from their “same-stage verbal showdown”? Zhou Chenyu, Yan Chao

In the guest lounge, Yan Chao stared at the newest Weibo post that had suddenly popped up on his phone and was startled. “What’s going on? Weren’t we told it’d be a boy group idol?”

Manager Wei Lan came striding over to the sofa in rapid, clicking high heels.

She threw the stack of documents in her hand onto the small tea table in front of him with a loud smack and said irritably, “You haven’t seen the news yet? That little idol they’d already settled on got exposed by paparazzi for a relationship today, and his company directly put him on ice.”

Before her words had even fully fallen, Yan Chao had already quickly swiped over to the trending searches page. Sure enough, at the top headline was an orange-red “boiling” tag.

“Fuck,” Yan Chao sighed helplessly. “The show officially starts recording tomorrow, and they pull this today? They’re doing this on purpose to mess with us, aren’t they?”

The Second Role was an original variety show produced by Huanyu TV. This variety show focused its attention on some relatively “niche” professions in the current entertainment field. These professions might have fairly high fan popularity, but they still had not really been understood by the general public, such as trainees, or for another example, esports players.

The Second Role invited celebrity guests from multiple fields and grouped them in pairs, having two guests from different professions swap identities and experience each other’s daily work, then recording this process of experience and learning. That way, it could both serve the purpose of educating the public and, in the process, hype up a little romance, friendship, or “brotherhood.”

As Huanyu TV’s currently popular mc, Yan Chao was good-looking, young, and had plenty of fans, so naturally he had been assigned to the hottest idol boy group of the moment to experience an idol’s trainee life.

Originally, everything had already been prepared, and today they were supposed to shoot the styled promo photos. Who would have thought something like this would happen?

What made even less sense was that, with such an unexpected situation, the recording should logically have been postponed. But not only did the production team not postpone it, they even pulled in a “replacement guest” at light speed.

And they had not notified Yan Chao at all. He had actually only learned through the official announcement on Weibo that his partner had suddenly been changed.

The more Wei Lan thought about it, the angrier she got. With one sweep of her hand across the table, she knocked all the documents onto the floor. “You’re one of the show’s planners and writers no matter what. Does the director team even take us seriously anymore?”

Although Yan Chao also felt somewhat helpless, seeing Wei Lan like this, he could only comfort her. “Wei-jie, don’t get upset yet.”

It was not hard to understand why Wei Lan was this anxious and furious. Ever since she had taken over managing Yan Chao, she had grown used to the feeling of being high above everyone else, of being surrounded by stars and courted by all. No one had ever dared to neglect them like this before.

The reason was nothing else. Yan Chao had a golden finger, the standard cheat ability of a Jack Su male lead. In his twenty-three years of life, whether in academics or in his star career, everything had gone smoothly for him, rising higher and higher with each step.

As for Yan Chao himself, he was handsome, quick to react, smooth-tongued, and talented. Those host-essential basic qualities need not even be mentioned.

The most amazing part was that he had not even come from a broadcasting and hosting background, but had switched into the field halfway through.

Back then, he had gotten into Peking University’s journalism department as the top scorer in the college entrance exam, and during college, he took part in a talk show program and became famous in one shot.

The moment he graduated, he entered Huanyu TV and simultaneously worked as both planner and host on multiple programs, basically all of them major satellite TV galas and flagship variety shows. His resources were so good they made people click their tongues in amazement.

Yan Chao was smart, that was true, but a life experience this outrageously overpowered looked no matter how you viewed it like something no twenty-three-year-old green kid could break into on intelligence alone.

Because of that, there were quite a few people online who hated on him, saying he did not come from a professional background, that his professional ability was lacking, and that he had only fought his way up with that face of his.

All kinds of gossip had also never ceased, and among them, the most widely circulated was exactly the kind of melodramatic plot that gossip spectators loved most, that Yan Chao had been kept by a sugar daddy who supported him all the way to the top.

Yet when it came to a moment of real crisis like this, that supposedly all-powerful “sugar daddy” had no idea where he had gone.

Wei Lan was hot-tempered, but Yan Chao knew clearly in his heart that he was, after all, still one of Huanyu TV’s people. What was more, a great deal of his own effort had also gone into the planning proposal for The Second Role.

Since the production team had arranged things this way, naturally they had their reasons. Besides, the show had already made its official announcement on Weibo, and there was absolutely no reason for Yan Chao to breach the contract. He could only take things as they came and settled in.

Since the production team wanted him to go perform xiangsheng…

No, wait, what was wrong with the production team? Xiangsheng?

They wanted someone like him, a talented young man of only twenty-three?

The key point was that he knew almost nothing about xiangsheng. His only impression was Teacher Ma Sanli’s line, “Dou ni wan’er.”[2]

Was the production team fucking messing with him on purpose?

Besides, weren’t xiangsheng actors all older veteran artists?

With an age span of twenty or thirty years, what kind of brotherhood were they even supposed to hype up? This would have to be father-son affection, wouldn’t it?

Wait, that xiangsheng actor who was going to swap professions with him…

Who was it again?

Only then did Yan Chao realize that he had been so dazed by the sudden guest replacement that he had completely forgotten to pay attention to what exactly this suddenly parachuted-in new partner of his was called.

Only now did he belatedly reopen that official announcement post on Weibo and take a look at the other party’s name.

One look and he nearly jumped.

Yan Chao might not recognize other people’s names, but this person’s resounding name was one no internet-addicted teen of the new era could possibly have failed to hear.

Yan Chao could not help frowning. “Zhou Chenyu? That ‘huaping penggen’?”[3]

Back when Zhou Chenyu had not yet gotten popular, he had not had that kind of title. The one who had mocked that nickname into wide circulation was still his partner.

His partner, He Chenfeng, was also a xiangsheng actor from the Liao Feng Pavilion Quyi[7] Society. Because he had crossed over to act in a low-budget art film and unexpectedly won Best Actor, he shot to fame in one go, and conveniently carried his own penggen along into popularity too.

As they became famous, through the combined efforts of fan wars and gossip spectators, Zhou Chenyu came to possess an externally recognized public persona, as the penggen[5] to an outstanding dougen[4], he relied completely on his partner to carry him. Set against the brilliance of his partner, his own presence was extremely low, and when he performed xiangsheng with He Chenfeng, it practically made no difference whether he was there or not.

Still, there was one point that both fans, haters, and gossip spectators all acknowledged, and that was that his face really was good-looking enough.

So some people said that Zhou Chenyu just stood there relying on his handsome face to attract the audience. Next time, if they just set a flower vase beside He Chenfeng and had He Chenfeng perform a dankou[6] by himself, the effect might even be better than the two of them working together.

It really was not that Yan Chao was deliberately trying to drag him. Yan Chao had never even watched his xiangsheng before. It was just that the title “huaping penggen” had long since become the unified term used by the whole internet, and Yan Chao had simply followed along until it rolled naturally off his tongue.

Yan Chao opened a search engine, just about to learn a little about this vase penggen in detail, when he heard the lounge door knocked twice, neither too lightly nor too heavily.

Before he even had time to lift his head, he heard a teasing voice ring beside his ear. “Talking bad about people without even closing the door, vase little host?”

Wei Lan, standing to one side, abruptly rose to her feet. She looked at the newcomer, then looked at Yan Chao, revealing a trace of embarrassment. “I came in too fast just now and forgot to shut the door…”

As Yan Chao fastened the buttons of his suit jacket, he stood up, and only then did he get the chance to size up the person before him.

He had trendy Korean-style idol bangs, and he was wearing a loud, flashy T-shirt. Between those refined brows and eyes was a trace of sly amusement, as though he were smiling without quite smiling. He was good-looking, but revealed just a bit of improper roguishness.

He was a little like the wildly arrogant, cool-to-the-max male lead from a campus idol drama, and a little like the domineering visual center of a traffic idol boy group.

No matter how one looked at him, he did not look like someone who performed xiangsheng.

If Yan Chao had not more or less seen his photos online before, he never would have believed that this person was the legendary Zhou Chenyu.

In the process of standing up, Yan Chao’s brain and the expression on his face were both spinning at high speed in perfect sync, and very quickly he put on a smile carrying apology.

Given that Baidu had shown he was two years older than himself, Yan Chao chose a form of address that sounded relatively normal. “Hello, Zhou-laoshi. I was joking around, please don’t take it to heart.”

Zhou Chenyu glanced at him, then again revealed a half-smiling expression. “So saying it to someone’s face counts as joking, and saying it behind their back counts too?”

Yan Chao naturally also knew that what he had done was indeed wrong, but just now it had completely slipped out. He had not expected Zhou Chenyu to be so petty, nor that he would speak in such a yin-yang weird tone, making the smile on Yan Chao’s face seem a little awkward.

Realizing that this time he had run into someone hard to deal with, Yan Chao inwardly broke out in a sweat. Just as he was thinking of speaking again to smooth things over, Zhou Chenyu suddenly laughed. “I was joking with you too. Look how badly I scared you.”

He had not expected this man’s face to change even faster than flipping a page. Looking at the way Zhou Chenyu’s moods shifted between sun and storm, Yan Chao thought to himself, was this person just unserious, or was he actually sick in the head?

Zhou Chenyu reached out a hand toward Yan Chao. “Xiao didi, it’s my first time recording a variety show. I don’t have much experience, so I’ll have to ask for lots of guidance from you in the future.”

Hearing that strange form of address, Yan Chao froze slightly. In his heart, he had basically already confirmed it: he really was sick in the head.

He quickly reached out and shook the other man’s hand in return. “What are you saying? We’ll look after each other.”

As he said this, he put on a smile like one of those qq-expression hehe smiles. “But could you maybe not call me… xiao didi?”

It sounded a bit too obscene.

Zhou Chenyu lifted his eyes to look at him, raised a brow, and smiled. Then pinching his throat and speaking in an affected, coquettish tone, he said, “Okay, Xiao Yan-gege~”

Yan Chao: …ouuugh.

Footnotes:

[1] Xiangsheng (相声): Often translated as “crosstalk,” a traditional Chinese comedic performance art centered on verbal wit, timing, wordplay, banter, storytelling, and role interplay. In English, the pinyin is kept here to preserve the cultural and professional specificity of the term.

[2] Dou ni wan’er (逗你玩儿): A famous xiangsheng line associated with Ma Sanli. Literally, “just teasing you” or “just messing with you.” It is culturally iconic enough that someone with only a vague impression of xiangsheng might know this phrase even if they know little else.

[3] Huaping penggen (花瓶捧哏): Literally “flower-vase penggen.” Huaping, “flower vase,” is a mocking term for someone who is decorative and attractive but seen as lacking substance. Penggen is the supporting straight-man role in xiangsheng, the performer who responds to and sets up the dougen. Together, the phrase mocks Zhou Chenyu as a good-looking but supposedly useless supporting xiangsheng performer.

[4] Dougen (逗哏): The comic-leading role in xiangsheng, the performer primarily responsible for delivering punchlines, jokes, and verbal provocation.

[5] Penggen (捧哏): The supporting role in xiangsheng, often functioning as the straight man. This role supports, prompts, reacts to, and sets up the dougen’s humor.

[6] Dankou (单口): Solo xiangsheng, performed by one person rather than a pair.

[7] Quyi (曲艺): A broad category of traditional Chinese performance arts, including forms based on storytelling, singing, recitation, comic routines, and related stage traditions. In the name of a troupe or society, it signals a traditional performance background.