Umbrella
谭艺曲,阳光的雨伞, Mr. Umbrella, Sophie's husband. (Not to be confused with the "umbrella" that protects CAPA as mentioned by Li Xuezheng.)
Biography
Male, 50s, retired/unemployed. In 1999/2000, he wrote papers on Internet financial services for a master's degree (can be found on CKNI). This is information that Umbrella previously revealed publicly about himself:
Umbrella owned a number of investment and real estate companies dating back to 2004. These companies have all been deregistered. His one remaining active company is an Internet technology company that he owns with his wife, Sophie (Internet technology and media are both monikers used by water army companies).
In 2018, Umbrella worked for the Sinic Group, a real estate development company. He is no longer employed with them.
Umbrella has a daughter and a son with Sophie. According to posts Sophie wrote on Tianya, Umbrella refused to marry her until she gave birth to a son. In 2014, Sophie posted on her son's social media revealing that she was angry with Umbrella for losing money in the stock market.
Fandom Activities
Umbrella first appeared in the Word of Honor fandom in April 2021. After August, he began using a second account claiming to be a solo Zhang Zhehan fan.
In October, Umbrella encouraged fans to write to the NRTA. He also hinted that something would happen with Zhang Zhehan in November.
Umbrella operates his own chatgroup for Zhang Zhehan fans. In it, he offered investment advice to fans, claiming to be making profit of 5-figures daily.
Umbrella is involved in a number of different chatgroups with Summer, Sandy, 秋玲, 本区女子, and other solo fans. They tell fans that they are in contact with Zhang's "team." In one of these chatgroups, Umbrella was the source of the opinion that the fan art created by YDS was done by a professional team and cost over $1M USD. Later, this opinion was posted as fact by 本区女子 during the height of the attacks on YDS.
In another group of chatlogs posted by 秋玲, Umbrella and Sandy solicit the advice of fans on creating a business plan for EHzZ. In the last screenshot, 秋玲 introduces 回车诺比的梦 to Sandy as photo editor. This account is later to become one of the main ZSJ photo editors and took over posting material after most of their blue V verified accounts were muted or nuked. Summer is also in this group.
English translations of the above chatlogs:
Relationship with Xie Yihua and Teashop
In early December, before the vast majority of fans were aware of Xie Yihua's existence, Umbrella posted defending Xie and linking her to Su Shifu, insisting that they are not working together. He also claimed that Xie was not involved with CAPA (no one had yet publicly accused her of any of this).
On January 10th, the day that Li Xuezheng was muted, Umbrella posted an essay defending the teashop. This essay is the origin of the roast duck meme, in which he claims that Zhang Zhehan owes an astronomical amount in reparations to brands. He also states that Zhang cannot register his own company and must pursue "entrepreneurship" through roundabout methods (the EHzZ brand would not be announced for another 3 months, though Wangmengmeng previously revealed that Xie Yihua had intended to announce the brand immediately upon Li Xuezheng's muting, and was discouraged from doing so by fans).