"When I was young, I was naive and simple, thinking that some things only happened to others and not to me. Later I realized that ordinary people, regardless of whether you have fame or are a painter, are incredibly powerless in the face of a dark society, chaos is the breeding ground... You have no way out, there will be no Buddha, Jesus, or Holy Mother Mary descending from the heavens, nor will there be mercenaries or Rambo firing away to turn the villains into a honeycomb... You have nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape. But whether to resist, has nothing to do with whether you are a boxing champion. The punch thrown out of desperation by an ordinary person towards Tyson is also a punch of courage."
--- "Singapore Biennale Interview: From the Zone of Chaos"
-----------------
One week later.
"A 'Myanmar Mirror', please."
Sneakers stopped by the stones.
Gu Weijing stood in front of the newsstand, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, and spoke to the somewhat dark-skinned stall owner.
Morning runs have always been his habit.
A healthy body helps sustain a longer artistic life, a painter is inherently an industry with intense emotional fluctuations during creation.
Historically, not many of those great painters lived long lives.
During holidays without school, he would run every morning from the calligraphy and painting shop, with French podcasts playing on his phone (a minor language that art classes are required to study at the international school), along roads paved with bluestone until he reached the embankment by the Yangon River.
After jogging along the banks of the Yangon River for twenty minutes, he would return to the calligraphy and painting shop, buying a 'Myanmar Mirror' from the newsstand on the way.
As one of the only two national newspapers, many old Yangon people have the habit of reading the Mirror.
For example, his grandfather, even in today's increasingly developed world of electronic media.
Gu Tongxiang still habitually reads a paper newspaper every day.
"Brother Xiao Gu, I'll pay."
A non-mainstream young man with dyed yellow hair shuffled over in slippers, making a 'tadatada' sound as he walked.
He casually picked two crumpled Myanmar Kyat notes from his pocket, tossed them to the store owner, and then snatched an oil-printed newspaper from the newsstand.
"First, I'm not Brother Xiao Gu, I'm just a high school student. Second, I can't help Brother Hao with matters, thank you."
Gu Weijing placed a hundred Kyat on the newsstand, nodding to the stall owner.
He ignored the dark-faced subordinate beside him and turned to leave.
Since that day.
Bald has never appeared in front of him again.
Now, during morning runs, he often meets these characters with nowhere-to-hide, the so-called kill youth, who only pester him without doing anything else.
This is evidently Bald's new strategy to recruit him.
No matter what Gu Weijing thinks, he has given others the impression of being entangled with them.
People have inertia, and over time, under others' gossip, if you're not with them, you become one of them.
Report to the police?
First of all, for what reason should he call the police? A non-mainstream person constantly pays for him? Or Bald shows up during Spring Festival to give him a red packet?
Secondly, if patrol officers were useful, why would there be a need for gangsters?
All kinds of conflicts gather in this city, breeding a certain unrest. Ethnicity, culture, and so on.
This country is not a stable place, and perhaps has a trend toward becoming increasingly unstable.
The reason Bald remains restrained and conciliatory is mainly due to the advantageous location of Gu's Calligraphy and Painting Shop.
The Yangon River Basin is a vital tourist area for welcoming friends from Dongxia, Japan, or European foreign countries, generating a large amount of foreign exchange each year, while also being the area with relatively more stable security in the whole of Myanmar.
Creating an unpleasant scene would be unacceptable.
This is also the reason for Gu Weijing's confidence in having a certain tacit 'tug-of-war' with the other side, after all, it is a big city. Otherwise, on the first day the other party came to visit, Old Gu may well have already carried the calligraphy and painting shop, leading the entire family to escape.
If one goes north for hundreds of kilometers, without even entering the jungle, as long as they leave the government army's control area and enter the territories of warlords and big drug lords.
Then it is no longer a question of whether one has the courage to refuse the gangs...
Otherwise, with the supreme courage of the movie 'Escape from Amazon', he starts to flee, hoping to gain help from the border locals while playing wild survival, or else the whole family perishes, with no third option.
Of course, no one of talent would foolishly open a calligraphy and painting shop in the Golden Triangle.
Bald's method is simple and effective, mixing young painters with counterfeit antique dealers...
Rumors are naturally fear-inducing.
No matter how Gu Weijing defends himself, he has realized that the other cultural and antique merchants on this street look at him with a different expression than before.
He shook his head and headed home.
...
Meanwhile.
The other side of the world.
United States, San Francisco, it's dusk.
Thomas, who had just received the "Honorary Citizen of San Francisco" title from the Mayor at a banquet, was being driven home by his own bodyguard to his home in the "Pacific Heights" neighborhood.
San Francisco - Pacific Heights.
It is one of the most famous luxury residential areas in the United States, with prices over fifty thousand dollars per square meter, comparable to the star-studded Beverly Hills in Hollywood, but more understated and youthful.
Most of those who can make their home here are either owners of Silicon Valley tech unicorn firms with net worths exceeding ten billion dollars or heirs to global top energy giants.
However, Thomas is neither a new tech tycoon nor a rich second-generation waiting to inherit a family consortium.
He is a video blogger.
A so-called YouTuber.
If there must be an epithet added to this title, then he is the most famous video blogger worldwide in recent years.
No exceptions.
If you were to ask who Thomas Sebastian is?
Most people would be confused, but if you see his face with the fresh stubble, most people would immediately recognize his online name on the video site — [Hephaestus].
[Hephaestus] is known for shooting the world's most interesting and eye-catching short videos.
His videos have included spending millions of dollars on a yacht giveaway amongst fans, and live-streaming giving a villa as a tip to a delivery guy.
Currently, on his YouTube channel, he has more than 150 million subscribers.
This number is approximately equal to five hundred Icelands, thirty Norways, seventeen Switzerlands, three Spains, or half the population of the United States.
According to data company analysis, the "viewership" of his videos exceeds that of the flagship talk show under the All-American ABS Television Network, which is valued at over one hundred billion dollars, and his subscriber count is roughly equal to the combined following of top Hollywood stars Al Pacino and Daniel Washington.
Each year, his video creation revenue from YouTube alone, based on subscriber view counts, approaches one billion dollars, and he has his own website, fashion brand, merchandise, and commercial collaborations.
The New York Times named Hephaestus's personal account as "the greatest internet miracle in history."
Thomas himself is currently browsing his phone, preparing to shoot the new installment of his "from one dollar to one million dollars" series of short videos.
[From one dollar to one million dollars.]
This is one of the most-watched series on his channel, with past videos amassing over three hundred million views.
It's an entire series special.
The content of the whole series of short videos is about choosing a theme and then progressing step by step in consumption.
As the name suggests.
From one dollar to one million dollars.
For example, what kind of toy piano can be bought for one dollar, whether a ten-dollar piano can produce sound, what the tone of a hundred-dollar flea market second-hand piano is like... all the way to spending one million dollars to acquire a Steinway piano once used by Queen, to show the audience what kind of sound it can produce.
Fans are interested in such comparison videos.
Thomas has already completed the one dollar to one million comparison on topics like pianos, computer special effects, cars, and maritime sports.
He intends to return to an art element in his new video — themed around painting.
To the global audience, a career in painting and the arts carries a certain air of mystery.
People know that the prices of different painters' works vary greatly, but may not have enough appreciation to discern the differences.
Or possibly, there may be no difference at all.
Even if there is.
Ordinary viewers can only sense that a piece is well-drawn, beautiful, but don't understand why it's beautiful, specifically where the beauty lies, or why this painting is a thousand times more expensive than another seemingly similar piece.
In his new video, Thomas plans to commission works at seven different price points: one dollar, ten dollars, one hundred dollars, one thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars, and one million dollars, from various unfamiliar painters and invite world-renowned masters to conduct blind evaluations and score these pieces from lowest to highest.
"The program will certainly have explosive points,"
Thomas thought to himself.
The one million dollar, one hundred thousand dollar, and ten thousand dollar commissions already have fixed candidates.
Namely, Jean Arnou, who has won art awards such as the Turner Prize, the César Award, and the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, internationally renowned illustrator Jean-Julien, and Peter Rosen, a new illustrator graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts.
For one dollar, he randomly found a street painter in San Francisco.
As for the mid-tier prices like ten dollars, one hundred dollars, and one thousand dollars, he plans to find suitable freelance artists on various gig platforms.
Thomas casually opened the Nutshell app on his phone, selected the Art · Painter category, input the amount "ten dollars," and hit filter.
As the page refreshed, a poster of a fat cat with a monocle jumped onto his phone screen.