I am a Big Player
Chapter 619 - 610, Joseph_1

Chapter 619: 610, Joseph_1

Seeing Joseph in that moment, Ren He felt that the committee for this piano competition really went all out. Joseph was no stranger to serving as a celebrity judge on foreign talent shows, but his appearance fee started at $120,000 each time, which was about 960,000 RMB when converted to the domestic currency. Now, even the top-tier celebrities in the country probably wouldn’t fetch higher than that for a commercial performance, unless they were an exceptional few, like Yang Xi.

Yang Xi’s appearance fee had been raised to 2 million RMB per event, and that was just for singing two songs. Keep in mind that other stars might sing for over two hours at a concert and only earn between 200 and 600 thousand RMB.

For instance, in his previous life, Jay Chou would take home 6 million RMB per concert, and his team of over a hundred people had to stay in the best hotels locally. The cost for a typical concert to the organizers would be roughly between 8 and 12 million RMB, although this didn’t account for special cases, like Faye Wong’s exorbitantly priced concerts.

However, since they had invited Joseph, it meant that the competition was truly fair and just. It was evident that the organizers had put their hearts into it.

But wouldn’t it be better to spend a bit more of the money on inviting guests on the prize money instead? Such a big competition, and the first prize is only 100,000 RMB...

As Jiang Haoyang put it, if it weren’t for the internal monetary rewards for such honors within the Qinghe Club, they wouldn’t really care much for this kind of competition. Liu Jiamin explained gently on the side, "Even the prizes for international competitions are quite modest. It’s just how the piano field is. After the competition, you can have a solo concert and make money from ticket sales, or you could sign endorsement deals."

Liu Jiamin wasn’t lacking in looks; she used to be too thin, so she resembled a match girl, but now that her nutrition had caught up, she looked like a completely different person, indeed counting as a beauty.

As the most popular young pianist in the country, it was normal for some brands to seek her out for endorsements. So, in fact, Liu Jiamin didn’t need to rely on the Qinghe Club’s prize money anymore; she had just held her own solo concert in Capital last month and received nearly 900,000 RMB, which really wasn’t a small sum.

Liu Jiamin discussed with Jiang Haoyang about not taking the Qinghe Club’s scholarship anymore, but Jiang Haoyang stoutly disagreed, "Back when the club president established this scholarship, he didn’t say that we couldn’t receive it if we had our own income. We haven’t even graduated from our senior year of high school yet. There’s so much money every year; it would be silly not to take it."

This was a down-to-earth way of thinking. For Jiang Haoyang, enlightenment or whatever could come after getting rich. Where are we now anyway? No matter how rich one becomes, could you compare with the club president? The Qinghe Group owned by the president was the real deal...

Besides, the scholarship programs within the club were now very finely categorized: freshman, sophomore, senior, liberal arts, science, first place this much money, second place that much, third place another amount. All these had been redefined. Thus, as long as one worked hard enough, obtaining a scholarship was a very normal thing. Qinghe Club would never have more than 20 members; an elite club needed to look the part. More than that would dilute the quality, inevitably leading to some underachievers.

Upon seeing Joseph, Ren He’s first reaction was to find a way to avoid him for a bit. To be honest, up to this point, he still felt a sense of guilt towards Joseph, like owing money but being unable to pay it back. Joseph certainly wanted him to continue teaching at the Juilliard School of Music, and Ren He’s inbox still had about a dozen of Joseph’s emails urging him to come back to work. But the problem was that Ren He might visit the US for fun, but settling down there was never going to happen.

He also didn’t want strangers to learn about his identity as a young professor. If someone took his photo and posted it online, he’d truly become a star, the kind people would ask for autographs just walking down the street.

Those who played the piano actually didn’t have many fans, at least not compared to entertainment celebs, but the identity of the young professor was somewhat different. Having become a Master Level performer at a very young age, proposing new theories, and on top of that, the composer of four songs renowned in the classical music field—previously, the domestic media had put the young professor on a pedestal, and that was before the Qinghe Group gained such powerful control over public opinion.

So Ren He was very clear now that if he started a microblog under the name of "Associate Professor" and got it verified, he would easily amass millions of followers, and reaching the celebrity status with tens of millions was also possible.

When other people upload photos and get them shared, you can’t just delete them all, right? Microblog itself is a place for free speech; if you keep doing that, it would attract negative attention. If someone took advantage of the situation to create something just like microblog, the loss would not be worth the gain.

Therefore, Ren He planned to privately invite Joseph to visit his Courtyard House rather than publicly staging a reunion with him now.

"What’s with the president, do you know him?" Liu Jiamin asked curiously when she noticed the way Ren He was looking at Joseph.

Know him? Know him too well! Ren He whispered, "That’s the chairman of the Juilliard School of Music. With him here, this competition will definitely be fair and just. Go ahead and play with confidence."

"Aren’t you going to meet him?" Liu Jiamin always felt that Ren He seemed to be avoiding the other party...

"Cough, no, wait until the competition is over and ask him for his phone number. Just say the Associate Professor wants it. I’ll contact him," Ren He murmured, having no idea what Joseph’s phone number was after he arrived in China. Since the latter had come, Ren He felt obliged to be an appropriate host, and he was more than willing to show such friendly foreign friends the beauty of China.

With that explanation, Liu Jiamin and the others became even more curious about why Ren He didn’t want to meet the person here. Could it be that they had a bad relationship as colleagues... What Liu Jiamin and the others didn’t understand was that Ren He didn’t leave his former job in the standard way; he had left without notice, so now he had the feeling of encountering a creditor...

When the competition officially started, Joseph was already sitting in front of the stage with his back to the audience. Ren He quietly followed Jiang Haoyang and others to their seats in the audience, silently listening to the competitors play the piano.

There were only 12 contestants who made it to the finales today, and after casually listening to two of them, Ren He realized that he had wrongly underestimated Yang Xi before. He always compared Liu Jiamin’s level to Yang Xi’s, which made him think Yang Xi wasn’t quite ready for the competition. Only now did he recognize that actually, Yang Xi was quite good among the younger generation. After all, Liu Jiamin was someone who could get into the Tao Essence Class at No.4 Middle School based on her piano skills alone; of course, Yang Xi couldn’t compare.

Moreover, Yang Xi’s specialty was vocal music. Expecting her to excel in everything was indeed too much to ask.

Without the Divine Punishment System, Ren He himself would definitely not be better than Yang Xi.

When it was Yang Xi’s turn to perform fifth, everyone else was watching the judges’ expressions. But Yang Xi, that guy, kept glancing around in the audience and only returned her focus to the piano after spotting Ren He, reassured.

The audience was somewhat puzzled; why did it seem like Yang Xi was looking for someone?