Above the Waves

Shi Lan, born in the 1995 generation, originally worked in the key-account strategy department of an internet company, but an "organizational restructuring" dissolved her department overnight, wiping out all her prior efforts and forcing her to start from zero. Thereafter she moves through the 3C, beauty, and jewelry industries, from humbling herself and navigating involution to regaining her footing through solid performance, encountering along the way hostility from former colleagues, open and covert struggles among executives, poaching by rival company Tianmai, and an olive branch extended by Fang Mingyuan, the man she has feelings for. Working hand in hand with more than a dozen colleagues and mentors of widely different personalities, she grows the livestream e-commerce business step by step, pushes it overseas, and uses traditional culture projects such as ceramics to help increase income in impoverished regions. Just when fate seems back in her own hands, her choices push her onto the crest of controversy. In thirty-three chapters, through the dual trials of performance competition and interpersonal maneuvering, the novel sets out the workplace survival logic of "being useful, and being usable by others," and also the path of a young person refusing to become dust swallowed by the giant wave amid an industry winter and the tide of capital. The story draws on the internet-industry experiences of the author herself and those of friends and relatives around her, and many business cases have real prototypes.