Chapter 600: 407. Towards a Bigger World_2
"In the end, whoever can bear it will come out on top."
Lu Jincheng smiled and gave a thumbs up.
"So, what I really want to say is congratulations to you all."
"Tonight, feel free to vent, because after today, there won’t be a Worry Relief Store where the boss personally serves you."
"Then I won’t hold back~ I can’t compete with champion Sister Miao Miao; she truly knows how to endure hardships."
"Hahahahaha..."
Sun Xin turned her head and looked at Mou Keyan’s helpless expression across from her and started chuckling.
"At the beginning, neither crying nor laughing felt appropriate."
She didn’t dare get too close to the popular contestants she liked, afraid fans would misunderstand her as trying to ride their coattails.
"Two popular ones being friendly is called a ’cp,’ but when someone with low popularity gets along with a popular one, netizens accuse them of clinging."
She found that the only thing distinctive about her was the heart-shaped braid on her head.
So she didn’t dare change her hairstyle, afraid everyone would forget her if she did.
But later someone said, how could you always have the same hairstyle, so for a week, Sun Xin woke up half an hour earlier each day to change her hairstyle.
What pained her the most was a public performance.
For the sake of two eight-counts, she argued with another contestant over who should stand in front for three hours; neither wanted to give in.
"If there weren’t any cameras, I really wanted to curse!"
In the end, she couldn’t win the argument, and after returning to the dorm, she cried in the bathroom until two o’clock in the morning.
"Actually, losing that battle wasn’t the most important thing; what’s crucial is feeling that I’ve become a terrifying person, just because I argued for three hours over two eight-counts, I started wondering if I had become bad."
In terms of singing and dancing ability, Sun Xin was undoubtedly a burden compared to most of the girls.
When she first appeared on the show, she miscounted the beats and messed up the dance moves.
As for her singing, the vocal teacher’s evaluation was: giving her zero points is fine, negative points even better.
She couldn’t tell when to enter the beat, relying solely on intuition, silently counting one, two, three, four, and starting to sing on four, whether correct or not was mostly up to luck.
She couldn’t distinguish Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si, only guessing whether the pitch was going up or down.
When others worried about not having any popularity, Sun Xin surprisingly coasted through the initial stages by holding onto Mou Keyan tightly.
Her Hunan-accented Mandarin was quite funny, paired with a round face, she was extremely endearing to the audience.
Supporters felt that Sun Xin stepping on stage meant that no matter how poor one’s condition was, there was hope to compete with the strong, to "fulfill my dream."
Despite facing mockery for her lack of skills, Sun Xin’s ranking paradoxically climbed higher.
Fans frantically voted for her, proclaiming their protest against public opinion.
Amidst the whirlwind, Sun Xin became increasingly timid.
Each random reshuffling of dormitories was a moment of fear, worried about ending up with contestants vastly different from her.
She once shared a room with the reigning champion but insisted on going to Mou Keyan’s dorm to sleep on the floor.
"Going back and seeing their shoes, clothes, and expensive bags all over the place while I had a 59-yuan bag on the table made me feel... this isn’t my world."
She liked being with Mou Keyan.
Because she felt that although Sister Miao Miao also lived lavishly, she was easygoing and adept at spotting others’ strengths, always validating her.
"The pace on ’Goddess 101’ was too fast; Sun Xin couldn’t keep up."
When she first arrived, she chatted with Mou Keyan in the dorm without caring about rankings, just wanting to see the world.
To see how impressive others were and learn a bit.
But she discovered that not only was her roommate a dance wizard vast beyond her expectations.
Many were already skilled before the instructor taught anything.
Learning the theme song, some could sing it after just hearing it twice.
"Mr. Lu, at that time I thought to myself, oh my god, what kind of people are they, divine beings!"
Speed was the common feeling shared by contestants and staff alike.
Training was fast, elimination was fast, forming the group was fast, completing within a few months what would traditionally take two or three years.
In essence, accelerated growth was one of the core aims of ’Goddess 101.’
Chief Director Sun Li once said: "In just two or three months, all resources intensely bombard them, allowing quick recognition, remembrance, understanding, and affection towards them."
The previous method of launching someone in one or two years... who knew them?
As time passed, they’d quickly be overshadowed.
Normal growth versus the benefits of quick fame, one can really only choose one.
Photographer Xiao Ta, the official photographer for Mango TV, visited the ’Goddess 101’ castle bi-weekly to capture the girls’ daily states.
Back in 2005, he was in Sun Li’s crew, following the same group that included Brother Chun in ’Super Girl.’
Over the years, he reflected that while the filming method hadn’t changed much, people had.
Back then, shooting two or three months slowly revealed a contestant’s gradual change, but now half a month feels like capturing different people.
He expressed this sentiment at the celebration banquet.
"They unconsciously accelerate their maturity, but often after maturing, they lose the most precious things without even realizing."
This is a bit regretful but depicts the reality for artists in the entertainment industry.
As a professional photographer, he didn’t want to shoot something shiny but detached from people’s hearts.
But on his second visit, he already noticed it was hard to capture the previous pure expressions in the girls’ eyes.
Facing a camera, they immediately switched to a star-like state.
In some way, this signifies the success of their intensive training.
"She knows what the photographer typically wants, and she knows what she should be giving."
Extreme environments transform individuals; some girls quickly realize and accept it.