Chapter 98

The meeting over, Li Lan went to the café below the chemistry building to organise Professor Auren's suggestions. The shop spared her the hardest step, which didn't mean she could develop an insulin analogue with no preparation; a great deal of groundwork was unavoidable. Term not having started, her laboratory pass couldn't be issued, so experiments had to wait for it.

Fortunately there was plenty to do. Since choosing the topic, she'd been working through the insulin literature. Since its discovery in 1921 insulin has been through three stages: animal insulin extracted from animal organs, human insulin synthesised via recombinant DNA, and finally the insulin analogues made by genetic engineering — and after nearly a century of development, yield and quality remain considerably limited.

For instance, the representative new insulin on the market is Sanofi's insulin glargine, which lets a diabetic control blood glucose with one injection a day — at a hundred and eighty yuan a pen, five thousand a month. Beyond the pain of injection, that price is a serious burden for most ordinary people. Cheaper ones exist, and work less well, needing two or three injections a day to hold glucose steady.

Which is why Auren James and Alexander looked at her in disbelief when she said twice a month. Against Sanofi's glargine that is a fourteen or fifteen-fold improvement, and if she genuinely produced it the insulin market would take a severe blow — excellent news for patients, naturally.

Having read Auren's references straight through, she opened her computer and organised her thinking. Thanks to a memory that keeps everything, she recalled his suggestions and checked them one by one against what she'd taken from the literature and the shop's methods. Thanks to the typing speed the novels had given her, a new research report had a skeleton inside an hour — and without experimental data it remained a plan. Once the data existed, the work would properly begin.

Writing a research report does not finish an insulin analogue. As her doctoral topic, she'd privately set herself three years: finished before graduation. Privately, because of how long drug development takes. In organic chemistry, pharmaceutical work especially, most people who successfully identify one new targeted drug produce enough for a doctorate, and a number of doctorates are earned exactly that way; developing a new drug in three years is talking in one's sleep. Her confidence rested on the shop, which cut about seventy per cent off the time — the proof being the anti-inflammatory target she'd found in Wang Xin's team.

Report written, she looked at the clock and found it was four in the afternoon, which explained the hunger; the meeting had ended at eleven. Five hours gone. Hungry and elated, and unable to get into a laboratory yet, she looked at the document and wanted to run straight to the laboratory and start.

Carrying that impatience, on the first day of term she got her pass and stayed in the laboratory until eleven at night. Without a lecture the next morning she'd probably have stayed later.

---

Beijing, Cerulean's head office.

After a month of testing, Rejuvenate had cleared its quality reports, and Feng Jiang and Zhang Lin sat in the meeting room with the marketing and laboratory managers.

Today was the launch. The laboratory people opened their slides and began on the development, and had barely reached the comparison against luxury-tier creams when the marketing director cut in. "Forgive me, Director Zhang — I see you're comparing against internationally known creams. What price have you set?"

"Two thousand two hundred and ninety-nine. Sixty millilitres."

"Isn't that far too high? It's a face cream. No domestic product currently sells at that price. A thousand to two thousand feels right to me." He frowned.

Zhang Lin shook her head. "There are plenty of thousand-yuan creams on the market, and on figures and on performance Rejuvenate is not remotely behind the first-tier brands — it has advantages. Below two thousand is too low and doesn't match its position, and once the price is low, improving the impression of the product later becomes far harder. If we want Rejuvenate established as high-end from the start, launching high is the right thing."

The marketing people conferred quietly, plainly hesitant. As he'd said, no domestic product had ever carried a price of 2,299 — never mind that Cerulean was under five years old.

Zhang Lin knew what the hesitation was, and in her view the cream was entirely worth it. Partly the figures said so; partly she was its earliest user. She'd used a jar before the quality reports came back, meaning to test it on herself, and after one day had become a devotee. The remarkable thing about it is that it doesn't take long — one use and you feel the change.

Running the laboratory, she'd been under sustained pressure, and with the company growing fast, overtime was unavoidable. She wasn't young, and over time her skin had suffered; she had no shortage of international creams, and it stayed dull, and the lines at her eyes only increased.

But.

The second day she noticed her skin was brighter, and assumed she was imagining it — and having taken a photograph beforehand, found there was a change, and realised what had caused it. She kept at it for five days in some excitement, and even her wholly unobservant husband noticed and said her skin looked much better.

A second photograph, and set against the first, it wasn't a little better. It was a great deal better.

Having shown the others in the laboratory, she watched the light come on in the women's eyes; quality reports notwithstanding, they volunteered to be test subjects, and some of the men diffidently asked the same. As for quality — their own company's product; who would know better?

She knew what they were thinking, and with the human efficacy trials still to be done, she refused most of them — and as the first volunteer her own change was visible enough that before any external recruitment, part of the laboratory had become the first cohort.

Beyond what was visible on a face, Rejuvenate's figures were well above other creams on the market, and 2,299 was a price she'd settled on reluctantly and only because Cerulean was new. Otherwise she'd have paid three thousand for it herself. She was a devotee beyond recall.

Figures notwithstanding, marketing had other considerations, and today was about launching — publicity and a pile of other things to follow. Stalling on the basic question of price wasn't what she'd expected.

Seeing her impatience, Feng Jiang coughed, drew the room's attention, took the laptop and jumped to the human efficacy section, and pointed at the photographs. "That is why Rejuvenate can charge 2,299."

The room went quiet at the two comparison photographs and then broke into low discussion. The marketing director's eyes lit up. "Director Zhang, is that a volunteer using Rejuvenate? Not retouched?"

Zhang Lin nearly rolled her eyes. "Old Zhao, what a question. In an internal meeting? Do I need to retouch anything? That is exactly what it does."

She took the laptop and clicked, and more photographs appeared.

She stood and pointed at two adjacent ones. "Old Zhao — and old Liu, look. That is one day's change; you can plainly see the improvement. Now this one, a week. And this one, a month — which is the comparison pair from earlier. Against the first, is that not nearly five years younger?"

Old Liu was Liu Xianyi, the marketing director, and rather than take offence he leaned in and studied them, and grew more excited the longer he looked. "Is this real? Rejuvenate does that? You and Director Feng aren't having us on?"

Feng Jiang had no answer to that, and fortunately Liu Xianyi knew he'd said something foolish and sat back down. "Director Zhang, if these are all genuine cases, 2,299 isn't quite right."

Before she could be annoyed, he went on. "I'd say 2,999 is about it."

In the end, after discussion, the price was set at 2,599, with the launch two months out — New Year's Day, 2014.

Price settled, publicity followed, and beyond the usual, marketing produced a list of Weibo creators, all with over a million followers.

After some filtering and some removals, everyone left was within Cerulean's negotiating range. Li Cheng's name was among them.

---

Li Cheng collected a parcel on her way back from lectures, humming. She was a third-year now, and filming in a dormitory being impractical, she'd rented a flat near the university. Cerulean's invitation had come a few days ago — a face cream, they said, which she recognised as whatever Li Lan had produced before leaving for England. This soon? She'd agreed without much thought, the advertising fee to be settled as usual; she was aware her fee from Cerulean ran above other creators', and there was nothing to be done about having a back door. Today's parcel would be the product.

The box was about the size of a shoebox, larger than expected. Back at the flat she set the camera up by habit, found her angle, and opened it to find, besides a square box, a good many extras and a sheaf of printed material. She laid it all out, filmed a segment, and read the documents first: the product information. She didn't examine the figures closely — she wouldn't have understood them — and gathered they were well above other products. The price line surprised her. Two thousand and something for a cream? Nobody but the international brands dares charge that.

Seeing the product still unopened, she started the camera again for an unboxing.

The outer packaging alone showed what Cerulean thought of it: the choice of board carried a certain quality, with gilt lettering on silver, plain and confident. The bottle was silver and gold too, nothing cheap about it — from the outside, at least, not far off the thousand-yuan cream she used. The packaging earned a good review. What it did was another question.

Unboxing filmed, she read the information again and grew anxious. Rejuvenate is for anti-ageing and improving the condition of skin, and she was twenty-one, with skin at its best; it would, in all likelihood, merely gild a lily. How to film the effect at its best? Never mind satisfying the client — this was her own family's product, and warranted care.

She opened WeChat, where somebody in the pinned group had already said they'd had the same invitation and was wondering how to film it. She'd set the group up after deciding to start a company; the members were creators she thought had potential.

After a while she opened the window to Li Lan, who had been part of Rejuvenate's development and would know it thoroughly, and might have an idea.

Li Lan, I've had the brief from your company.

No reply. She pulled a face; she'd expected that. Conversation with Li Lan had always been a matter of leaving messages, and since England it was worse — a day without an answer was normal.

Resigned to waiting, she opened her computer and started drafting the shoot, which went badly, and at ten in the evening the reply came.

---

In England, on her way to lunch, Li Lan saw the message and calculated that at ten at home Li Cheng would be up.

Rejuvenate?

The answer came straight back.

Yes. The information says it's mainly anti-ageing, correcting dullness and so on. Just talking about the texture and the figures is too ordinary. I've been at it for hours and I can't work out how to shoot it.

Li Lan thought and had nothing much. Rejuvenate is aimed at people over thirty. On you the effect will be moderate. Not that it does nothing, only that Li Cheng was right — it would gild a lily.

Nothing came back, and after lunch a photograph arrived.

Li Lan, have you got the unretouched version of this comparison?

Blurry, and clear enough to recognise as Rejuvenate's efficacy image. She was in England and hadn't lost touch with Feng Jiang and Zhang Lin — the three of them still spoke weekly — and she'd seen it.

Puzzled by the question, since as far as she remembered this was the original: What do you mean, original? That's the original. Blurry as it was.

The reason for the question was simple. Li Cheng's first instinct on seeing it was that it was retouched; the before and after was startling, and photographs being photographs, some post-production to exaggerate the effect couldn't be ruled out — television advertising is worse. She'd taken it for granted that it had been worked on.

And trusting Li Lan and Cerulean, she assumed a cream priced that high had something behind it; the brand was new, and Cerulean's reputation among customers was good, and this presumably wasn't a cream designed to fleece people. She'd sent the comparison hoping for an unretouched version, so she'd have some idea what it really did.

Told it wasn't retouched, she didn't believe it. That's impossible. Let me see it, I promise I won't pass it on.

Li Lan didn't know whether to laugh. Rejuvenate worked so well her own sister didn't believe it. She fell back on her subject. It's genuine. The core active in Rejuvenate is resveratrol, a natural antioxidant whose main characteristic is repairing skin cells and slowing the cell ageing cycle — and the resveratrol content in this cream has been tested repeatedly for the concentration best suited to human skin, and the formulation also—

Faced with that much text, a string of question marks appeared above Li Cheng's head. Every character individually she knew. Assembled, she didn't.

Presumably finding typing too slow, Li Lan sent two voice messages before she'd finished reading.

Li Cheng played them, understood nothing, and found them very convincing. What she couldn't have known is that in years to come there would be a whole category of people who read ingredient lists. It simply hadn't arrived yet.

In short, don't worry about what Rejuvenate does. The photograph is entirely real.

Of a long explanation, that was the sentence she retained.

She hadn't followed it, and Li Lan having said so, she believed her — and looking at the image in the product information, she suddenly knew how to shoot it.

Once inspiration arrives there's no stopping it. She opened her computer to draft, and messaged first. I know how to shoot it. I'll have a lot of questions later, so remember to answer.

---

A fortnight later the creators' finished videos began arriving with Cerulean, for release if nothing was wrong; ordinarily, provided nothing is outrageous, nothing is.

"Oh, Achy Orange's has come in. I follow her — I wonder what she's made." The reviewer opened it curiously, and found Li Cheng had sent two videos.

Achy Orange is Li Cheng's Weibo name; by her own account she'd meant Sweet-and-Sour Big Orange, her input method slipped, and she'd never changed it.

The first video was unlike the others: Li Cheng had built a short scripted piece around it, which is what brands like best, being a great deal better than a couple of remarks about how well something works.

It opened with an unboxing, normal enough — and at the product information it diverged, because Li Cheng held Rejuvenate's efficacy photograph up to the lens with open disbelief, said nothing about whether it was retouched, and announced that to test whether it was real she would run the experiment herself. Then the scene changed.

She hadn't used it on herself. She'd used a middle-aged woman, whom she addressed in a way that suggested her mother, and having handed the cream over, recorded her mother's changes across a fortnight. Less dramatic than a month's image, and it was plain that the woman's skin had improved by considerably more than a little. Against a simple pair of photographs this was filmed from every angle, close-ups included, and to eliminate any suspicion of lighting she'd shot a set outdoors as well.

The reviewer was satisfied. It was the most conscientious piece she'd seen — a fortnight of comparison — and it tempted her to try the thing herself.

Pleased, she opened the second, which was straight promotion: an analysis of Rejuvenate's ingredients. Li Cheng had plainly done a great deal of preparation and had gone properly through the key components and what they do. By rights a video full of terminology should be dull, and she knew it, so the second was much faster and much shorter, which made it both technical and not remotely boring, and oddly persuasive; with the first video behind it, the urge to buy increased.

Which is the power of the ingredient-readers: whether or not you follow the terminology, an ingredient breakdown feels authoritative, adds plausibility, and produces some inclination to buy.

The reviewer forwarded both to her manager. As advertising, both were excellent, and might do as flagship material.

Her manager evidently thought so too, and having got a yes, she gave Li Cheng one.

Li Cheng breathed out. The first video had cost her a great deal of time and effort; the second looked laborious and, editing aside, wasn't as troublesome as it appeared — and as for the technical material, she had Li Lan.

She messaged, humming. Videos approved. Thanks for the second one. Oh — Mum's asking for Rejuvenate. She and Dad have nearly finished the jar you sent me. Send them some if you have it, and one for me.

As the person filming it, Li Cheng had watched her mother's skin change by the day, and while it did little for her own, an effect that obvious made her want it badly, and there were another two weeks before she could buy. She could wait. Chen Ying could not. Everybody wants to look well, and as the person actually experiencing it she was delighted — and since Li Quan was using it too, the jar was nearly gone, so she'd stopped letting him near it and kept pressing Li Cheng to buy more.

She even agreed to 2,599 with only a wince — a woman who until then had used Olay. Li Lan and Li Cheng had bought her plenty of luxury skincare and she never replaced it herself, and wouldn't let them either: what's the difference, they all do the same, my face isn't so precious it needs a thousand yuan smeared on it, it's extravagant. So when what they gave her ran out, she'd quietly buy an Olay cream — or rather, running a supermarket, take one off her own shelf.

If that was Chen Ying, one can imagine the rest. Li Cheng could already picture what people would be like once they'd used it.