The Cybercafé Hackathon Vindicates West Lake Fish in Vinegar Gravy

"Not Bad, Actually"

The beautiful weekend before last, ZangAI and MuleRun hosted the second Internet Café Hackathon in the scenic, talent-rich city of Hangzhou.

As the world-renowned capital of OPCs, Hangzhou; a premium all-private-room internet café, Pipi Cat Esports. The density of legends and the intensity of their energy at this event far surpassed the Beijing Internet Café Hackathon.

Seems the West Lake vinegar fish of Hangzhou really does nourish a person!

Not only did the West Lake vinegar fish competition at the internet café front desk conclude successfully — the crew polished off five whole fish, and not a single one died in vain.

At the event itself, they also devoured 4 cases of instant noodles, 5 cases of large bottled iced black tea, and 3 cases of honey peaches. They organized 3 rounds of League of Legends solo matches, and somehow still produced 40 game demos. Most unhinged of all, several people spontaneously invented the diabolical practice of soaking West Lake vinegar fish in braised beef instant noodles!

From this we can conclude: 1) Hangzhou really doesn't have much good food; 2) The Hangzhou crew's appetite is as fierce as their passion for gaming.

Below, the battlefield report.

01

MuleRun Is Great

In our original vision, the main sponsor MuleRun would provide contestants with ample tokens.

What we didn't anticipate was whether MuleRun was simply too good or everyone just loves a freebie — all 100 redemption codes were used up. Keep in mind, we only had 59 contestants.

This left a flood of people DMing me for tokens. At that rate, I figured they'd kill me if I didn't oblige, so I urgently ordered another batch of MuleRun codes the next day. Those got snatched up instantly too.

During production, contestants repeatedly expressed surprise that MuleRun could make videos and generate art assets. That's right — you truly never know where this thing's boundaries lie.

One contestant asked me for tens of thousands of MuleRun credits. I told the man he'd better produce something absolutely unhinged, or there'd be consequences. Fortunately, he used MuleRun to craft an incredibly sick game PV:

I sent this PV to the MuleRun team, and they asked if MuleRun was gunning for LibTV now too?

In the end, 30 MuleRun-assisted works were produced. Truly worthy of the UGC capital!

02

Calling Him Daddy

Among the 30 entries in the MuleRun track, the winner was RainFly, who made a motion-controlled game called Iron Head Bump. The core mechanic: constantly twisting your neck to catch falling objects, a bit like a breakdancing battle.

Interested friends can click through to dance: https://ntwygqyq.mule.page/

After winning the grand prize PS5 from MuleRun, RainFly excitedly scanned the room and shouted, "Where's my sugar daddy?!"

As it happened, MuleRun founder Yusen Chen was right there in the internet café gaming. RainFly burst into his private room, ignored the man pulling off his headphones with a bewildered look, and shouted "Thank you, Dad!" (Unclear whether "I love you" was included.)

Then they recognized each other.

Pure coincidence — RainFly is a former employee of Chaitin Tech (Yusen Chen's company). These two were former colleagues.

I guarantee zero rigging was involved. Truly, it's a small world.

After winning, this man also performed a yellow-robe coronation. Very swaggering.

03

West Lake Vinegar Fish Instant Noodles

Thanks to our generous sponsors, we provided ample "hobo combo" provisions for the internet café: 12 cases of instant noodles, 5 cases of iced black tea, 10 cases of Nongfu Spring water, 3 cases of honey peaches, and 5 West Lake vinegar fish.

That's right — we ran the West Lake Vinegar Fish Competition literally. Qiu Mu ordered five West Lake vinegar fish via delivery, and the contestants swarmed in and finished them all.

Hard to say whether eating three buckets of instant noodles or demolishing West Lake vinegar fish is more reminiscent of Liangzi reincarnated.

More outrageous still, the crew spontaneously invented West Lake vinegar fish instant noodles. More than one person loaded several chopsticks of the fish into their Kangshifu braised beef noodles.

I interviewed them on the spot. One was a Hangzhou local, the other from Shandong. Both declared the combination genuinely tasty.

The Hangzhou person I understand. But Shandong has plenty of good food — how did it come to this?

Though honestly, West Lake vinegar fish isn't that bad.

Mainly because Qiu Mu's delivery order wasn't authentic — the fish was fried. But it wasn't good either. My tasting notes: sweet-and-sour fish with too little sugar and a faint foot-odor note. Inferior to fried fish with salt.

04

Premium Big Guo

Out of respect for internet café culture, I also splurged on three bags of premium big guo.

Not encouraging anyone to partake — purely for the bit. Everyone at an internet café is an adult with the right to choose unhealthy lifestyles.

For example, me. While everyone else firmly declined, I ate two betel nuts myself. Result: oral mucosa mercilessly shredded by betel nut fibers, mouth hurting for two days.

Mainly want to tell everyone: seriously, don't eat betel nuts.

05

Fief Knights

Before the event even started, Qiu Mu observed that Hangzhou isn't just the capital of OPCs (one-person companies), but a holy land for UGC games (game individual operators).

A gathering of illustrious unemployed legends, plus the vast, new, spacious, and empty Future Sci-Tech City office district. This made the crew exceptionally enthusiastic about participating.

This internet café hackathon received over 200 applications, while beautiful Pipi Cat Esports only has 59 stations. We had to convert masses of applicants into audience members.

The specific filtering method: in Raft, I called the Qwen 3.7 Max model through an Opencode instance named Mule-Horse, to screen for applicants with outstanding game skills. So if you didn't make the cut, blame those three products.

However, our internet café hackathon is extremely free. Audience members can participate in all activities and compete for all prizes, minus guaranteed station access.

Later realized we named this wrong, because people kept asking if audience members could do this or that.

After some thought, I've decided: next internet café hackathon, we'll rename participants and audience members to "Knights" and "Fief Knights." The gist being — if you coordinate or snatch a station, you've claimed your fief.

Fortunately, zero physical altercations occurred on-site, fully demonstrating the high caliber of Hangzhou's crew.

When several people asked me what to do without a station, I suggested they sneakily occupy stations while everyone was out front listening to AI companies present their PPTs.

They apparently succeeded, because I later noticed these folks had all acquired fiefs.

06

Airborne Baymax

For this Hangzhou event, we also invited hardware bros from Shenzhen to join.

Coincidentally, Moya the hugging robot's founder is a Hangzhou native heading home, so he brought Moya to the venue. Thus, numerous internet café crew members took turns hugging the big white robot, even attracting the net café attendant to join in.

The following image is unrelated.

07

Tripo Referral

The outstanding AI 3D model company Tripo also provided ample credits and a Switch 2 for the Hangzhou Internet Café Hackathon.

The internet café crew showed none of the legendary hobo's transcendent slacker energy — during demo presentations, they eagerly extolled how amazing Tripo was, unanimously declaring it the world's best AI 3D model.

In any case, one crew member who used Tripo models to create an interactive mini-game called Fire Punch won the Switch 2 and a "God of 3D Models" banner.

https://6x7c72e4.mule.page/

Wonder if this person, like last year's winner, added "God of 3D" to their bio.

Besides contestants being eager to get ahead, the Tripo representative was equally eager.

After the event, this person not only shouted on-site to contact them for Tripo referrals, but also posted a referral code in the WeChat group, attempting to lure everyone into the AI 3D industry.

Suggest they drop the referral code in the comments too.

08

Streaming Competition

Qiu Mu and I share a conviction: in the AI era, intelligence gaps are flattened. What matters are ideas and execution.

Any idea can easily become a decent-looking demo with agents. The key is simply whether you're willing to tell the agent and let it execute.

One crew member named Zai Zhi had serious execution.

He'd already pulled an all-nighter at the first Internet Café Hackathon — pure addiction, loves gaming — winning two cases of instant noodles. This time he specifically traveled from Beijing to Hangzhou, pulled another all-nighter, and won the ZangAI All-Nighter Competition's fixed prize: an Atour pillow.

As an aside, actual college students also infiltrated the internet café.

At 2 AM Saturday, when we busted into every private room for documentary filming, someone had absolutely no idea what this event was. When asked, they said a classmate brought them to game for free.

During the awards ceremony, the all-night prizes (instant noodles and pillow) had already been distributed. This guy showed up late saying he'd been too immersed in gaming, asking if any prizes remained.

No worries — happiness itself is the prize.

Back to Zai Zhi.

Upon hearing the Bilibili streaming competition had prizes, he specifically built a bullet-comment spinning wheel machine. Viewers could toss coins to spin the wheel of fate, randomly generating tasks for him to execute. The man streamed like this for 20 hours.

https://danmu-destiny.virxact.com/

While we absolutely don't encourage this level of grind at internet café events, Zai Zhi's execution is unmatched. Through sheer effort he won the magnificent Bilibili streaming prize: a DJI Pocket 4 and a "Bilibili Streaming Immortal" banner.

Oh right — Zai Zhi also won the instant noodle competition prize by eating three buckets of noodles, taking home two more cases. Liangzi would be proud.

09

Miàn God King of Fighters

One final reflection of the internet café's divine energy: despite zero prompting from organizers, no fewer than four or five demos were related to the great LibTV.

The most complete was a King of Fighters game. Players could select characters like Miàn God, Kunkun, and Lao Da, with the Lovart office as a stage, for passionate two-player combat.

The creator asked us to call him Miàn Disciple. He'd nearly joined Lovart, and crafted this game carrying reverence for Miàn God. The man works detailed — he specifically asked for MuleRun credits multiple times to meticulously polish the game scenes.

He specially designed two moves for Miàn God: a light attack called "N+1" and a super called "Big Money Spray."

Unsurprisingly, Miàn God King of Fighters received the highest vote count. No one could keep a straight face during the demo, with crew members scrambling to play. It ultimately won the ZangAI Choice Award, taking home a Bambu Lab printer and a "God of Gaming" banner.

If you want to play, click this MuleRun link: https://tt33v57g.mule.page

You can also watch the director's cut video easter egg (official version still in intense production 😭):

However, it's regrettable that this event received not a single cent from LibTV.

Here we thank the even greater sponsors MuleRun, Tripo, and Bilibili Live — may the three-pointed star forever illuminate your path.

With everyone's generous support, we believe our Internet Café Hackathon has the opportunity to become a regular occurrence ❤️

(This article's cover image was generated by ChatGPT; purely human-written)

⬇️

Subscribe to our Substack funeralai.substack.com