Shu Ya Group

Shu Ya Group is the country’s largest daily-chemicals company and a powerful commercial institution whose products are instantly recognizable. Its brief appearance nevertheless clarifies how the entertainment industry converts personal relationships and public reputation into market value: an endorsement from the group could materially advance Shen Tang’s career, yet her scandal-ridden image also makes her a potential liability to the brand.

Corporate Identity and Public Reach

Shu Ya Group is presented as a national daily-chemicals giant rather than an obscure private business. The text emphasizes the immediate recognizability of its products, establishing the company’s broad consumer reach and prestige. Its name on an endorsement contract is therefore enough to make Shen Tang wary: the offer carries the authority of an established household brand, while any controversy involving its spokesperson could spread into consumer reaction and affect the company’s products.

Connection to Huo Yingying

The group enters the narrative through Huo Yingying, who offers Shen Tang an endorsement contract after asking whether their variety show will have another season. Huo Yingying reveals that her mother is Shu Ya, making the company her family’s business. This disclosure redefines Huo Yingying’s friendly gesture. She is not merely passing along an ordinary professional opportunity; she has access to one of the country’s most influential commercial enterprises and can have her mother approve an endorsement for a friend.

The offer also gives concrete shape to Huo Yingying’s otherwise understated wealth. Shen Tang already knows that Huo Yingying comes from a rich family, but the scale of Shu Ya Group exceeds what she had expected. The contract makes the family’s resources visible within the entertainment economy, where a major corporate brand can provide credibility, income, and exposure that a low-status actress would ordinarily struggle to obtain.

The Endorsement Offer and Shen Tang’s Refusal

Although Shen Tang is tempted, she politely declines the contract. Her refusal is not caused by indifference to money or opportunity. Instead, she argues that her current reputation could damage the brand: if online users began boycotting Shu Ya Group’s products because she endorsed them, the consequences would be serious. The scene therefore treats celebrity endorsement as a reciprocal exchange rather than a simple reward. The company would give Shen Tang professional value, but she would also transfer her accumulated scandal and visibility to the corporation.

Shen Tang’s judgment reflects the unusual structure of her public image. She is a Z-list celebrity and an ever-trending scandal figure, burdened by rumors and hostile labels, while her company’s public-relations team pairs her with male celebrities to exploit attention. Her visibility produces clicks and potential income, but it does not automatically produce trust. Shu Ya Group becomes a measure of the distance between being famous and being commercially safe: Shen Tang can attract attention, yet she believes that attention may be too destructive for a mainstream consumer brand.

Reputation, Labor, and Narrative Significance

The company’s role illuminates the novel’s recurring portrayal of celebrity labor as emotional and reputational labor. Shen Tang must endure abuse while maintaining a professional smile during a livestream, because hostile attention still raises the stream’s popularity and increases the money she will receive through the company’s revenue split. Her employer likewise treats her scandalous visibility as a resource by pairing her with every male celebrity she has worked with. Shu Ya Group represents the opposite side of that calculation: a corporation with enough public standing to benefit from a recognizable face, but enough to lose that it must avoid reputational contamination.

The endorsement scene also contrasts commercial opportunity with Shen Tang’s material vulnerability. She has considered leaving entertainment, has invested her savings in caring for an eight-year-old orphanage sibling with leukemia, and is nearly penniless apart from money recently provided by her contractual husband. Her manager urges her to prioritize her career and not rely on men, while the Shu Ya offer arrives through a friend’s family rather than through a neutral professional channel. Against that pressure, Shen Tang chooses neither cynical exploitation nor passive gratitude. She refuses because friendship makes her unwilling to expose the group to the risks attached to her name, turning Shu Ya Group into a concise emblem of the story’s larger tension between money, care, public image, and personal responsibility.