Chapter 28: Boss, Are We Going Viral?

"Boss!"

Sun came over and sat beside Chen Yan, holding his phone mysteriously. "Guess what I just scrolled past on my way here?"

"What?" Chen Yan didn't even look up as he flipped through yesterday's ledger.

"Look!" Sun excitedly unlocked his screen, swiped a few times, and shoved the phone right in front of Chen Yan's face. "Someone posted our scenic area on Notes! There are hundreds of comments, and a ton of people are asking for the address!"

Hearing this, Chen Yan paused. He took the phone and began to watch.

On the screen was a Notes video. It was a bit shaky, clearly filmed while walking. The video started at Li's Tea House. The girl filming seemed to have just walked out of the tea house, strolling slowly along Qinghe Street toward Yongtong Bridge. As she walked, she chatted with a guy beside her. Most of their conversation revolved around the topic of "tea bowls."

A moment later, they arrived at Miss Yu the Third's stall by the bridgehead.

The video suddenly cut to a close-up, showing a skewer of golden, crispy, deep-fried Guduo on the screen. At the same time, a voiceover played in the video:

"At the time, we didn't think much of it and just thought these skewers were really tasty. It wasn't until we went home and looked it up that we found out this Guduo is actually a street food from the Song Dynasty! It eventually evolved into the wontons and dumplings we eat so often today!"

Chen Yan raised an eyebrow at this, finding the girl who filmed the video quite interesting. In fact, he had recognized it right from the beginning—the video was posted by the young couple from yesterday, as the girl had specifically shown him the raw, uncut footage. He just hadn't expected her to go back, look up the history of Guduo, and include it directly in her video.

To that, he could only say one thing—she was meticulous. Absolutely meticulous!

Continuing the video, it displayed a very complete panoramic view of Yongtong Bridge. Unfortunately, many people had already posted this view before, so it wasn't particularly novel to look at. But soon, the couple returned to Li's Tea House after finishing their tour of Yongtong Bridge. Notably, this time they managed to capture the entire process of Si whisking the tea.

With that, the video ended, and the comment section below had completely blown up.

"Ning'an Ancient City? Weren't they blocking off the street for construction just a few days ago? Did it open this quickly?"

"The stylistic leap for this scenic area is a bit huge, isn't it? A Ming and Qing Dynasties Ancient City completely overhauled into a Song Dynasty Old Street?"

"Not gonna lie, I felt nothing watching those old videos of West City Street. It was too fake. But this remodeled Qinghe Street... it's really got that vibe!"

"Wait... is that Guduo really that delicious?"

"The guy whisking the tea is the real badass here! Good lord, his hand spins like a motor. I want to go grab a cup just to see that unique skill in person!"

"Didn't you hear the video? You don't drink whisked tea from a cup, you drink it from a tea bowl."

"What bullshit whisked tea? Isn't it just handmade matcha? Trying to be mysterious with a classic bait-and-switch. How low!"

"Exactly. And what about that deep-fried Guduo? To put it bluntly, isn't it just deep-fried mini wontons? Coming out to rake in cash just by changing it to an ancient name. This scenic area has zero morals, right?"

"How many times do I have to say that the illiterate shouldn't be on the internet? You don't even know where those islanders stole their matcha from, and you have the nerve to spout nonsense here?"

"If a skewer of Guduo sold for eight or ten bucks and you called it a cash grab, I wouldn't argue with you. But two bucks! It's two bucks a skewer, and it's freaking stuffed with lamb! If this shop dared to open downstairs from my apartment, I'd eat them into bankruptcy, believe it or not!"

"So where exactly is this place? Is there an address? I want to take a stroll there this weekend."

"Also asking for the address!..."

As he kept scrolling down through the comments, Chen Yan frowned slightly, leaving Sun completely baffled by his reaction. A moment later, having more or less finished reading the comments, he handed the phone back to Sun.

"Boss, this video is about to break ten thousand likes!" Seeing that Chen Yan had virtually no reaction after finishing the video, Sun grew a bit anxious. "Plus, there are dozens of new comments under our Note Official Account! I'm not kidding! Are we about to go viral?"

"I don't know about going viral." Smiling, Chen Yan instructed, "But we both need to sharpen up. I received several calls bright and early this morning asking about our opening hours. We're probably going to have a lot more guests today."

Hearing him say this, Sun finally understood why his boss was able to remain as steady as a mountain. Without another word, Sun placed his backpack into the cabinet behind him and sat down at the ticket booth, earnestly beginning to inspect today's tickets.

At eight o'clock in the morning, the Ancient City officially opened for business.

Contrary to Sun's expectations, an hour after opening, the ticket office still had zero sales. The CAW CAW of a crow echoed from a distant branch, as if mocking the blind confidence in his heart.

On the other hand, Chen Yan, the boss, was completely relaxed, leaning back in his chair and scrolling through his phone. He was on the Ning'an Ancient City Note Official Account, diligently replying to comments from netizens.

Finally, just as Sun was growing so restless that he wished he could run out into the street to drag customers in, a middle-aged man walked over. Wearing a gray tracksuit and carrying a black backpack, the man crossed the small plaza, approached the ticket window, and knocked on the glass.

"Give me one ticket."

Looking at the man outside the window who was pulling out his phone, Sun froze for a moment before hurriedly getting to work, issuing the ticket at top speed. After issuing the ticket, he remembered something else. He pointed to the Money Shop exchange counter next to him and said, "It's like this, our scenic area just underwent a scenery upgrade..."

"I know." Before Sun could finish, the man waved his hand dismissively. He took the ticket, walked straight over to the Money Shop, scanned a code with his phone, and exchanged one hundred bucks for copper coins from Xu Ping.

"That guy... he really did his research." Watching the man in the tracksuit carry a whole bag of copper coins through the turnstile and into the Ancient City, Sun opened his mouth and laughed awkwardly at Chen Yan, who hadn't said a word the entire time.

"That's the benefit of generating traffic through short videos," Chen Yan finally looked up and said after replying to another netizen's inquiry.

In the past, the fatal flaw of their Ancient City was that it could only rely on traditional foot traffic. It was fine when there was little competition around, but the moment a competitor appeared, foot traffic would plummet rapidly. The most critical part was that there would be no new traffic to replenish it.

But with the advent of the short video era, for small, somewhat unique scenic areas like theirs, people mostly discovered them online. Long before tourists even arrived, travel guides and itineraries would be shoved in their faces. They couldn't ignore it even if they tried.

And the arrival of this middle-aged man acted like a key that unlocked a flood of visitors to the scenic area.

For the rest of the morning, Sun, who used to spend his days killing time by playing mobile games, didn't get a single chance to start a match. Every now and then, a few tourists would come over and ask him for tickets.

Xu Ping was even busier. Coming from a background in traditional banking, Xu Ping believed that accounting was a matter of paramount importance. There was absolutely no room for error. And precisely because he counted every single transaction with extreme diligence, the small plaza by the ticket office—which was normally a ghost town—unprecedentedly formed a short line.

This "spectacle," unseen for many years, only temporarily paused at noon.

"Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four... twenty-four! Boss, we actually sold exactly twenty-four tickets this morning! Twenty-four!" Having calculated the numbers back and forth several times until he was sure he hadn't made a mistake, Sun was so excited he practically jumped into the air. He reported this to Chen Yan with unparalleled thrill.