September 21, Beijing time.
When Chinese fans woke from their sweet dreams, many of them were still lying in bed as they eagerly reached for their phones, opened the apps they used most often, and browsed the news and trending topics that interested them the most.
It might have been a news app, Weibo or WeChat, or perhaps a question-and-answer website like Zhihu...
But no matter which app they opened, the first message almost everyone received came from distant Spain. At Riazor Stadium, a place whose name many of them might not even have been able to identify, Yang Yang, who had just torn through the World Cup for China Team, had scored five goals in the nine minutes after coming on as a substitute.
Domestic media outlets were exceptionally talented at coining phrases, and overnight they gave this achievement of his a resounding name.
Nine-Five Supreme!
Nine stood for nine minutes, five stood for five goals, and Supreme stood for Yang Yang!
Any football fan who saw those numbers would surely be stunned at first.
My God, how could this be possible?
After that, they frantically searched the internet, major forums, and apps for all kinds of news and videos, desperate to learn every detail.
Many of them were surely filled with regret, lamenting that they had failed to resist their sleepiness the night before and had not watched the match live, missing such a classic spectacle.
But all that regret and remorse was transformed into action online.
On Weibo, Yang Yang appeared on seven trending searches at the same time. This was unprecedented. The Nine-Five Supreme topic in particular remained overwhelmingly hot, shooting straight to the top and sending the entire internet into celebration.
Across major video websites, compilations of Yang Yang's goals sprang up like bamboo shoots