“Ten tycoons, nine with stomach problems”

“Ten tycoons, nine with stomach problems” is Shen Tang’s sardonic observation about the bodily cost of the supposedly invulnerable tycoon. It turns Gu Huaian’s digestive illness into a comic pattern: wealth and authority do not protect him from the ordinary consequences of overwork, irregular meals, and excess. Within the story, the expression also becomes a compact bridge between Shen Tang’s knowledge of the novel’s plot and her attempts to intervene in Gu Huaian’s life.

Origin in Shen Tang’s Plot Knowledge

The expression appears when Shen Tang carefully recalls the novel’s description of Gu Huaian. His demanding work schedule and irregular eating have left him with a bad stomach, a detail that alarms her because she fears the consequences for herself if she is dismissed. Her response, “Ten tycoons, nine with stomach problems,” is not a medical diagnosis but a dry generalization: the glamorous image of the wealthy male lead is punctured by the familiar weakness of gastric illness.

The line also reveals Shen Tang’s practical way of reading the fictional world. She does not treat Gu Huaian’s condition as distant background information. Instead, she immediately converts a plot detail into a problem that can be managed, anticipating food and care as a way to alter the expected course of events. The expression therefore carries both mockery and urgency, preserving her irreverent voice while motivating concrete action.

From Stereotype to Domestic Routine

The concern leads to an attempt to regulate Gu Huaian’s eating. The household’s care is framed through prepared food and attention to diet, while Shen Tang herself has difficulty controlling her own eating even when Tao Sister prepares an elaborate low-fat meal intended to support weight loss. This parallel makes the expression broader than a joke about one man: bodily discipline repeatedly collides with appetite, pleasure, and ordinary weakness.

The same domestic setting contrasts with the formal rules surrounding Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s marriage. Their supplementary agreement prohibits approaching Party A within three meters except when necessary and forbids physical contact except when necessary. Against that rigid contractual distance, food becomes one of the few practical forms through which concern can be expressed. The stomach problem belongs to Gu Huaian, but its management draws Shen Tang into a daily relationship of observation, intervention, and care.

Confirmation Through Gastritis

The expression receives its clearest narrative confirmation when Gu Huaian eats too much and too haphazardly and is hospitalized with gastritis. Shen Tang repeatedly encourages him to continue eating because she wants to watch him enjoy the dishes she cannot eat herself, even placing a brown sugar cake into his bowl after he is already stuffed. His attempt to reassure her by claiming that he is not full contributes to the excess, and the consequence is hospitalization.

This reversal gives the expression an ironic force. Shen Tang initially invokes stomach trouble as a predictable weakness she can prevent, but her affectionate intervention helps produce the very medical crisis she fears. She feels guilty and recognizes that, had she not kept picking food for him, he might not have ended up in the hospital. The joke about tycoons therefore becomes part of a causal chain: overwork and irregular habits create vulnerability, domestic indulgence intensifies it, and gastritis strips the powerful figure of his apparent untouchability.

Comic Deflation and Narrative Function

As an expression, “Ten tycoons, nine with stomach problems” compresses a familiar romance convention into a bodily punchline. The tycoon is not presented only through status, control, or financial power; he is also a man who must eat properly and can be brought down by an irritated stomach. That deflation allows the narrative to make Gu Huaian more approachable without erasing his authority.

The phrase also establishes Shen Tang’s characteristic method of resistance. She answers the grand scale of the fictional world with blunt practical reasoning: contracts become distance rules, celebrity life becomes hostile messages on Weibo, and a powerful man becomes someone whose meals require supervision. Even when the surrounding plot expands into tightly controlled filming, injuries requiring emergency surgery, family conflict, livestreaming, and hidden intentions, the expression preserves this everyday register. Its lasting significance lies in that contrast between the image of the tycoon and the fragile body beneath it.