The first buds of April had barely opened before Huaxing Technology dropped a poster onto its silent Weibo feed, snapping the internet awake. Two lines of bold text floated over a midnight-blue backdrop:
"This is our new phone spokesperson—Jay Chou. Watch him, and it, grow together."
Below the words, the young man stood half-turned toward the camera, a black bomber jacket framing his slim shoulders, a low hip-hop cap shadowing thoughtful eyes. In one hand, he held a microphone; the other rested casually on the lavender-glass back of a phone no one had yet seen. Netizens stared, frowned, zoomed, and quickly fired up comment threads.
Who was this Jay Chou? Certainly not the familiar Taiwanese superstar with world tours under his belt; this face was softer, barely twenty-one, handsome in an earnest, fresh-ink way. Within minutes, Weibo sleuths uncovered grainy clips from last year's Treasure Island talent show, New Light Avenue—a shy contestant mumbling song lyrics, knocked out in the top-twenty round for "unclear diction." Screenshots flew across group chats: Huaxing found its spokesperson in the bargain bin! Fourth-tier at best! Even my tone-deaf roommate sings cleaner than this guy!
Memes multiplied faster than the poster's retweets. Users photoshopped anime mascots, penguins, and even animated potatoes into the promotional frame, "fixing" Huaxing's casting choice. By nightfall, the hashtag #JayChouWho had crossed ten thousand comments, most derisive. Huawei fans jumped in, scoffing that Huaxing couldn't afford real celebrities. Green Factory devotees joked they would "lend them a spare influencer." Rival marketing departments toasted the misstep.
Yet inside Huaxing's headquarters, Lu Heifeng scrolled through the mockery with a calm smile. Traffic was traffic; negativity still amplified brand reach. And he knew what the critics did not: talent blooms on its schedule, and Jay's schedule was about to accelerate.
Two days later, Huaxing struck again. Instead of text, the company uploaded a short video—just a black screen at first, a single line of white characters fading in: "I'm Jay Chou. I'm new, not bad." Soft piano chords shimmered out of darkness; a bright acoustic guitar answered; and then the voice arrived—husky, melodic, humming more than enunciating:
"One step, two steps, three, four, eyes on the sky, hands intertwined.
One star, two stars, three, four, draw the lines that guide our minds…"
The melody felt nostalgic and novel, like a lullaby hiding a drumline. Viewers who had clicked only to sneer found themselves leaning closer. The chorus rose on a feather-light falsetto, dipped into a murmured rap, then soared again, guitar strums glittering around it. Three minutes later, the screen faded and silence rushed in, broken by racing heartbeats on both sides of the glass.
Within an hour, the tide turned.
"Am I crazy, or is this good?"
"He sings like he's chewing words, but the vibe is magic."
"Replay button broken. Where's the full track?"
Music-blog accounts dissected chord progressions, praising the "humming-style phrasing" as oddly addictive. Reaction clips popped up on Douyin, creators lip-syncing the refrain under starlit ceilings. Even the loudest skeptics quieted, replaced by curiosity: was Huaxing's mystery rookie the next big thing?
Behind the scenes, Heifeng had already placed Jay in Studio A—full band, seasoned producer, unlimited coffee. He sharpened clumsy lyrics, tightened rhyme schemes, and insisted every take be recorded on the upcoming Hongmeng S3 prototype to prove the phone's mic array was broadcast-grade. The marketing hook wrote itself: "Recorded on the phone you'll soon hold."
Honor and Huawei, meanwhile, watched the unfolding buzz with tight-lipped concern. They had volleyed one handset after another into the market, fueling a spring price war, yet a three-minute song was hijacking the conversation. Green Factory quietly slid its April launch to May, unwilling to share oxygen with two giants trading headline blows.
Other domestic brands followed, pushing release dates out of April's blast radius. Retail analysts joked that the calendar now holds two seasons: "Before Huaxing" and "After Huawei/Huaxing finish fighting." Investors called it prudence; smaller OEMs called it survival.
April ticked forward. Comments under Huaxing's poster broke ten thousand, then twenty. Half were still memes, but the ridicule had softened, replaced by memes showing Jay wearing a crown or standing atop charts labeled "Future King of C-Pop." Bloggers who once mocked the "fourth-tier idol" now uploaded side-by-side clips comparing his raw audition to the polished MV teaser, marveling at the growth.
Inside Huaxing, Heifeng watched the metrics climb: click-throughs, shares, playlist adds. Each number translates to launch-day foot traffic. Still, he refused to gloat. Public opinion is a matchstick—bright, brief, fickle. The real test lay ahead: April 5, when the Hongmeng S3 would step from rumor to retail shelves.
To prepare, he green-lit a final budget burst: extra ad slots on metro screens, a midnight Douyin takeover synchronized with Jay's full MV drop, and a rooftop projection on Jiangcheng's tallest tower—the lavender silhouette of the S3 rotating behind lyrics in sky-blue neon. Rival CFOs would call it waste; he saw it as insurance. A winning product deserved a stage equal to its ambition.
Three a.m., two nights before launch, Heifeng walked the silent hallway outside Studio A. Through the glass, Jay stood beneath a single warm spotlight, cap brim low, guitar cradled against mint-colored phone shells stacked like dominoes beside him. He tapped the mic, glanced at the control-room clock, and sang the chorus one last time—soft, particular, wholly his.
Heifeng closed his eyes. The voice filled the corridor, mingling with the faint hum of production lines stamping S3 chassis seventy kilometers away. In that harmony of art and engineering, he heard the shape of victory.
He opened his eyes, headed for the elevator, and drafted one final Weibo post on his prototype:
April 5, 10:00 a.m.—Listen first, then choose your future.
No hashtags, no exclamation marks. Just confidence distilled to a single sentence.
At dawn, the sun rose over Jiangcheng's river, catching the mirrored windows of Huaxing's campus. Workers arriving for shift change looked up to see a faint holographic projection fading from the eastern sky: lavender glass, mint frost, words trailing like stardust—"High performance, high specs, high value—made for you." Some snapped photos, some walked on, but all carried the image into the day. In forty-eight hours, China would decide whether a newcomer's melody, married to a new phone's promise, could drown the roar of rival giants. Lu Heifeng believed the answer would be yes.