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Canadian Kyle MacDonald with his famous paperclip, which he traded for a two-storey house.

Few people had heard of Ai Qingqing before she announced online that she would trade a paperclip for a house within 100 days. That was on October 15, 2006.

"I have no money, but I have heard about a young Canadian guy (Kyle MacDonald) who traded a paperclip for a two-storey house. I want to achieve the same kind of miracle in 100 days. Will you help me realize my dream?" read her posting.

People soon began to react. More than 1,000 people said they would like to exchange articles with Ai. Photographs and cellphones, old wine and jade bangles were tossed into the ring. Ai started trading and the value of the articles she got started to grow... and grow... and grow.

Another Internet "miracle" was about to happen. TV stations and newspapers began following the website "miracle" with enthusiasm. Millions of netizens, TV viewers and readers were glued to screens and searched newspapers for the latest on Ai.

But, as we all know, things are not always what they seem. It turned out, Ai's was not a spontaneous act; an invisible partner had scripted it carefully. The trading ended on January 23 this year with Ai signing a contract with a record company to become a singer.

Then came the shocker: she broke up with the man who had masterminded the operation.

Yang Xiuyu, nicknamed Li Er, later revealed that he had masterminded the plan to repeat the "Canadian miracle". He wrote the blog and chatted with netizens under the name of Ai Qingqing. In real life, Ai Qingqing was Wang Xiaoguang. The act was not difficult for Wang, for she was an actress in the plays that Yang produced and directed.

The 34-year-old discovered the money-making potential of online advertising and promotion four years ago while working in a Shanghai-based foreign company and surfing the Net, like so many other white-collar workers, to kill time. Yang says he had planned to act as Wang's manager after she became famous. "I could have earned more than 1 million yuan ($131,000) from this operation."

Ai Qingqing poses with her paperclip on January 23 when she announced that she had signed a contract with a record company to become a singer.

"More than 30 newspapers and TV channels covered the online bartering. Those companies would have spent more than 5 million yuan on the coverage," Yang says. Several companies and small businesses, including a bar, a jewelry firm, a wine producer and a publishing house clamored to provide goods for Wang to barter.

Yang says several other companies had called to offer their products but were turned down because their goods were "not suitable for the drama".

After his "actress" split with him, Yang's profit dropped considerably from what he had hoped it to be. But the operation nevertheless was a "success", from which he made a cool six-digit profit. "I should have signed a formal contract with her. I'll do that next time," says Yang. But still, he is proud of his creativity in what was his debut on the "Internet promotion stage".

Before setting up his own studio, Yang used to work for another cyber world promoter, Yang Jun, the driving force behind cyber star "Tian Xian Mei Mei" or "Fairy Girl". The "Fairy Girl", a member of the Qiang ethnic group, is said to have come from a remote village in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. She was promoted as a pure beauty who never knew about or had seen the outside world.

In reality, she was a professional dancer in a local ensemble. And after becoming famous, she was chosen by Sony Ericsson to promote its new mobile phone models.

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