Maybe I haven't reached the limit
In which Aja has too many thoughts on Yibo and mountains
I really intended to get this week’s newsletter out on Wednesday as well, but instead I just kept writing and writing, so please forgive the length and the lateness; you probably signed up for a weekly newsletter about Wang Yibo because you wanted quick fun highlights, and alas here I am with so many thoughts on Yibo and mountain climbing. We shall forge ahead, nonetheless: It’s What Yibo Would Do!
Competitive crocodile coiffed in cool Lacoste!
Our fave competitive crocodile got his outing beside (not on! boo!) the Great Wall of China this Sunday in a truly delightful event in which, yes, he did indeed play tennis against Novak Djokovic — though it was less a proper match and more Djokovic graciously letting Yibo win despite Yibo being a proper nervous fanboy who couldn’t even serve without hitting himself in the face with the tennis ball because he was so excited, which sounds cringe but was in fact one of the most adorable things you will ever witness in your entire life.
You can watch the official match stream (of which the game starts about 9 minutes in and only lasts about three minutes), but you definitely should watch the fancams of Yibo bouncing around onstage in the rain, mirroring Djokovic by making cute little grunting sounds, apologizing sheepishly whenever he makes a bad shot, and of course, hitting himself in the face and laughing it off like the prince he is.
The most wonderful part of all is that when he “wins” the set, heavy air quotes, even though he knows very well he’s being allowed to win, he reacts with as much giddy glee as if he’d really genuinely won, because in his competitive little heart it’s just as monumental and exciting a moment as if he really had. Look at his face.
The event itself, despite being delayed (possibly due to rain?) and being weirdly short and generally chaotic, was a big deal, with tons of media coverage and loads of promos from Yibo, who changed outfits roughly 35 times and gave us dramatic wall poses like so:
He spent lots of time posing alongside Djokovic with yet more giddy fanboy excitement. Here he is showing off his new autographed tennis racket like it was a gold medal he’d won himself:
Then there was this adorable interview where, in the middle of giving his typically awkward brusque one-word answers, he admits to watching Djokovic play on August 4, but not August 5 because that’s his birthday, and then he SMILES SWEETLY ABOUT IT, YIBO DID YOU HAVE A GOOD BIRTHDAY?
It’s hard to overstate how joyous an event this was, entirely because Yibo was just glowing the whole time. I doubt that was the intended focus of the Lacoste event at all, but it was a bonus they won’t be overlooking. We’re starting to see Yibo’s sponsors more and more frequently designing entire events around the concept of “let Yibo play and have fun” and that’s ALL ANY OF US WANT FOR HIM EVER.
Oh, also, the Lacoste host asked him during the pre-game interview about how his infamous high kick came about, and he told her that the set director that day kept asking him to kick higher and higher until finally he just… did that. Honestly I don’t know what this director was on to reject the first few high kicks as not high or kicky or crocodile enough, but bless them and their apparent galaxy brain. Also they need to release ALL of this footage immediately, come on, Lacoste, do it for China. #releasetheyibocut
He also released a new fun ‘I love you China’ song, and I have to say that surprisingly, given just how many similar songs he’s released, I don’t find myself growing tired of them. One reason is that the engineers for these productions rarely autotune him, so we get to hear him singing in his sweet simple natural voice, and I just love to hear him sing. Plus, that spring-green Loewe blazer is a fun touch!
And speaking of fetching outfits, lest you think that this was going to be a newsletter installment refreshingly not full of gratuitous fashion nattering, I am here to disappoint.
Jeans West let’s try this again
Two newsletters ago I raved about this JeansWest photoshoot but didn’t realize that when I tried to ensmallen the images so they wouldn’t take up so much bandwidth that Buttondown’s editor would distort the aspect ratio. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a fix for this without emailing support, but in the meantime if you’re like “why are Aja’s images all enormous” it’s because I can’t figure out how to easily resize them without upgrading to unlock html formatting, which is alas a fee. And I love you all and Yibo, but not enough to pay for this, at least not yet. However, lucky for all of us, JeansWest just posted more from the shoot, so I can try it again!
He’s just shocked everyone by strolling up to the theatre club auditions for Grease after losing a dare, and it’s supposed to be humiliating, but surprise, nobody knows the reining cool king of high school can actually sing…
No really I’m dying to know how many more photos from this shoot Jeans West are just sitting on. I am going to slurp up every single one of them. I don’t know where this sudden craving for Abercrombie-like nostalgia came from except that Yibo makes everything exciting? Bring on the fleece jerseys, I want it all.
Exploring the Unknown goes straight to the psyche
Exploring the Unknown is rounding the curve into its final two episodes; a neat thing is to read through the comments from passersby watching the show; many of the top posts seem to be by wilderness enthusiasts who are commenting on Yibo’s tenacity and willingness to try new things. It’s clear that lots of casual viewers (not just Yibo’s fans) are watching this documentary, and that makes me so happy as someone dedicated to spreading the Gospel of Our Kiddo.
In the most recent episodes, 9 and 10, he goes rock climbing, and I was honestly totally unprepared for this because when the cave episodes came out and showed him rappelling down the mountain, my brain somehow tricked itself into believing that was the extent of his mountain climbing, and I had this whole moment of relief because he was only going down and not up! So then I got to be panic-stricken ALL OVER AGAIN about these new episodes, and that was before I actually watched them, because holy shit that is one high ascent — 110 meters, or 360 feet, or exactly one U.S. football field high, to be exact.
Supposedly, this mountain’s difficulty level is just a 5 out of 17 on the climber difficulty scale, whatever that means, but they threw in a twist by having Yibo and his instructor, Ah Bang, apparently be the first two people in China who have “bolted” this mountain, meaning they create the path to ascent and leave bolt hooks in the mountain for other climbers to follow. This also means Yibo gets to name the route himself once he’s ascended it, which is objectively the coolest. However, this leaves me with the burning question, How do they know it’s a 5 out of 17 if NO ONE’S EVER FUCKING CLIMBED IT BEORE, especially since near the end Ah Bang says it’s the most “extreme” climb he’s ever done?!?!?!?!?!?!?!! EXCUSE ME?! But it’s clearly a challenge Yibo loves, even though rationally he should surely be training for months, not a grand total of three days, for something like this!
These episodes are really interesting and enlightening, though, because they show us so much of the learning process. Most of the other episodes have tended to do a quick explainer montage and then, voila, Yibo has mastered the techniques in roughly five minutes. With climbing, though, it’s evident both that he really struggled and that he had a whole new skill set to absorb and master. He had to learn to strengthen and control his upper body, reorient his sense of gravity, overcome all the physical pain, do all of that one-handed while working with rope hooks, and then do it all in the rain, at one point battling hypothermia because he was just stuck in the cold and wet for ages, and had to do it all while remembering to breathe!! He even had to increase his finger strength?! how the hell do you build strength in your fingers? It’s not like Yibo’s doing Hanon piano exercises everyday! [blinks guiltily at my high school self who never practiced]
Earlier this year, fans were really concerned because in various event photos it was clear that he’d wounded the back of his hand and it looked like it might be a serious injury. It now seems apparent that this was a byproduct of the injuries he sustained from rock climbing. The sheer mental toll of having to try this new skill, which he really did only have a few days to master, in this new environment, while being in constant pain from the cuts and blisters on his hands… it’s just really shocking what he put himself through for the sake of having this experience and being able to master this adventure.
Let’s not disregard just how few people could pull this off — how few people have the concentration and cleverness that allow them to learn so deeply, so rapidly. “In any pursuit he undertakes, he’s very serious about learning,” his climbing-laoshi tells us in episode nine, and while people say that kind of thing so often about Yibo it’s almost a cliché, it’s crucial here because this is insanely difficult, even for a 5-out-of-17 challenge. We know how strong Yibo is, how much stamina he has, but these cliffs totally kick his ass over and over again. Unlike the other episodes, which all end with Yibo completing that day’s task, episode nine ends with a literal cliffhanger, with Yibo dangling halfway up a cliff in the middle of trying to finish the training he needs before he can even get to his real challenge. He even tells us he wants to give up and go home — which I’m guessing is one of the only times Wang Yibo has ever thought that.
But Yibo’s mind is the kind of mind that can go deep into concentration. He tells us he prefers not to think about consequences and instead chooses to focus on the immediate challenge in front of him, which makes rock climbing the perfect foil for him, because you literally can’t do anything else if you want to make it to the top. Even when he’s making a tent in mid-air and the bottom of the tent thingy falls off, he’s completely chill, he’s laughing and making jokes (which is adorable, Yibo stop being adorable when you’re dangling a hundred meters in mid-air above certain death, ARGH) because he’s so focused on the challenges in front of him, not the possible worst-case scenarios. It’s like he’s capable of completely shutting off the risk-averse part of his brain long enough to get to where he needs to go.
He tells Cheng Er in episode ten that this causes people to call him a “simple” person, and that he thinks simplistically, not complicatedly — but as a lifelong overthinker, I think this trait is the core of his genius. It’s far too easy to get overwhelmed by ‘what if’s and let these paralyze you into inaction. It’s also just fucking hard to know what you want out of life to start with, let alone to then go do it. It takes real determination, clarity of purpose, and an innate sense of self-confidence and self-awareness to be able to not only have the visions and dreams Yibo has, but to pursue them with such intensity and power of actualization. The name he chooses for the route when he’s finally made it to the top reflects that, as well — “Rain or Shine.” It’s simple, clear, bespeaks determination and persistence.
“I think that we should first recognize our own strengths, understand ourselves, and then plan every step that needs to be taken to get you to that place,” Yibo tells Cheng Er in episode nine. That is an extraordinary amount of self-awareness and perspicacity for someone so young (is 27 still young? He just seems so perpetually young to be so wise.) I am almost 20 years older than he is and I don’t think I have come close to mastering this trick. But this is one of Yibo’s rare qualities: He can see the route ahead and all the steps along the way, and he can concentrate fully through each one.
There’s a book I love and rec to people all the time called Deep Survival that looks at real-life wilderness survival stories and tries to glean something about the type of personality or behavioral traits that can help a person survive and persevere in extreme circumstances. One of the points the author, Laurence Gonzales, makes is that many of the survivors have in common a sense of wonder, even amidst the most dire circumstances. One woman survived falling from an airplane, and in the middle of her fall, she was noticing the beauty of the landscape all around her.
I think about Yibo in relation to this observation all the time, because he seems to come alive the most, and to have his most keen sense of wonder, when he’s in the middle of the biggest challenges. Case in point: The instant he finally reaches the last bolt on his training climb, he relaxes and immediately focuses on the scenery around him. He’s totally unbothered by the pain or all the hardships he just endured on the way up.
(This show really has given us incredible scenery throughout; what a wonderful way to get to know these beautiful regions of China! I also keep thinking what a slick marketing trick this is on the production team’s part: People are going to be flocking in droves to the mountain that WANG YIBO charted the first known route for. That will then boost tourism, which Yibo will receive credit for, which will then increase his public reputation and standing as a good citizen while also boosting his name recognition throughout China and his marketability within yet another consumer sector. This specific challenge but really the whole show is just this brilliant promotional ouroboros. Then there’s the equally genius idea to have Cheng Er guest star, which makes the whole thing backdoor marketing for Intercross. I really think Yibo’s team, and quite possibly Yibo himself, possess some of the most savvy marketing brains in the industry.)
The most startling part of these episodes for me, though perhaps it shouldn’t be, comes when Yibo is talking to Cheng Er and he says that he wasn’t sure if he understood his own physical limits. This is a boy who just got done telling us that the key to success is knowing your own strengths, and now he says that he isn’t sure he understands his own limitations. “Maybe I haven’t reached the limit,” he says.
I imagine this must be a kind of phenomenon that happens to serious athletes, where they surpass their own physical limitations so often that they aren’t sure where their limitations actually are. We see that — or at least the editing and Yibo’s performance cleverly suggest that — happening to Yibo over the course of the rock climbing sessions: He goes from being unable to move his hands because they’re so swollen to not even feeling the pain as he’s climbing. He goes from being nervous about rope safety to chilling on the side of a mountain, nbd. He overcomes every struggle and keeps climbing.
You really see why mountain-climbing is such a cliché, ubiquitous aspirational metaphor, because it’s fucking difficult and it seems to require a hell of a lot of focus, intensity, and leveling up. Yibo takes over the role of lead climber — a genuinely dangerous position, because if you fall you’ll have fewer bolts to catch you and the climber who’s below you won’t be able to support you and could get caught in your gravity and fall too. And of course Ah Bang says after Yibo’s first section as lead climber that Yibo is the fastest learner he’s ever taught. We have heard this so often by now it’s a cliche, whether it’s rock climbing or underwater bear fighting, and at some point it will have to stop being a surprise and we really just have to stop thinking about Yibo as primarily an idol and an actor and start thinking about him as primarily a brilliant polymath who applies a set of logical, absolutely fearless procedures to everything he touches until he excels in whatever he does. As always, he’s not the most physically strong, he’s not the most superhumanly skilled person in his orbit — he’s just the one with determination and faith in himself, the one who knows that his mind, body, strength, and passion are all enough to get him to the top. And honestly, just watching it happen is extraordinary.
Of course, he is an idol and he does like being hot and adored lol. His climbing teacher kept calling him “shuai (handsome/hot)” while encouraging him up the final asecent, and Yibo mentioned how helpful all this cat-calling was; we all know how much our little panther loves being fawned over. I will also just note the way Yibo talked about being snug and safe and secure when he was sleeping because his anchor rope was taut around him, which is significant fodder for all those bdsm theories that fly around Yibo’s fandom. I am just saying, this is a boy who now canonically likes being tied up. I am just saying.
What will Yibo do next?
For our final two Exploring the Unknown eps, episodes 11 and 12, Yibo heads into the desert where he apparently crashes another vehicle, and this has got to be some sort of record he’s courting for most car crashes in a year?! I don’t like it. I mean he’s fine, but he flipped the vehicle, that cannot be good?! I personally feel like ending with a desert trek will be a bit of a low point, but knowing Yibo he’ll turn it into something profound.
Beyond this week, though, we don’t really have much of an idea what’s next for our Yeebs. He’s supposedly about to start filming the Stephen Chow Shaolin Soccer sequel soon, but there’s still no official word that he’s even been cast, so that’s purely speculative. I’m guessing we’ll be getting a release date for Intercross any day now, but who knows when the actual film will appear — hopefully soon! Likewise, HBO will supposedly be regionally broadcasting Exploring the Unknown, but again no word on when or where.
Still, I remember well that this time last year, just as we thought we were coming off a jam-packed summer into a content drought, Yibo instead hit us with non-stop public appearances and events, kicking it all off with his legendary platinum blond appearance at Paris Fashion Week. He skipped that one this time — going to Milan FW for new sponsor Jimmy Choo was clearly the priority, and two European trips in two weeks is a bit much — but I feel confident that he’s going to drop plenty of surprises on us soon.
And if not… well, this documentary has already given us enough* Yibo content to slake our thirsts for some time to come.
*it hasn’t; there can never be enough. WE HAVEN’T REACHED THE LIMIT, EITHER, YIBO.