Chapter 59

After understanding the general situation in Huazi Village, the three of them didn’t dare to linger there any longer.

Fortunately, modern people rarely carry cash when going out. Wei Sheng and Zhang Zexuan had less than 3,000 yuan in their wallets combined. Although it was a pity to lose that money, it wasn’t worth staying there for a few more days just for the sake of a couple of thousand yuan. They had no choice but to swallow their frustration and head back home first.

When Zhou Mingxing heard that they had been robbed by a gang of professional beggars the moment they entered the village, he almost died laughing. Wei Sheng felt embarrassed under his laughter, but after a brief moment of frustration, he suddenly realized—

“It’s so late, Zhou, what are you doing in my house?”

Zhou Mingxing coughed and pointed to Hu Qianqian’s room on the second floor of the Hu family’s house, explaining in a low voice, “Yinuo’s class started some kind of knitting club, but she couldn’t do it properly and was so anxious that she cried. I’m a grown man—I have no idea how to knit! Luckily, your mom said she knows how, so I brought Yinuo here to learn.”

“Then Yinuo definitely found the right teacher. My mom’s knitting skills are well-known in the whole neighborhood. From childhood until now, all my sweaters and wool pants have been handmade by her,” Wei Sheng said proudly.

The two of them chatted for a while, and soon, Zhou Yinuo came downstairs, holding a newly knitted little scarf that Hu Qianqian had helped her fix.

The little girl held up the pure white scarf like a treasure, showing it off to Zhou Mingxing. “Daddy, look! Auntie Hu even knitted some roses into the scarf for me!”

“Zhou, your Yinuo is really smart! She learned so quickly! We’re short on time today, so she can stop here for now. If she gets out of school early another day, bring her to my shop, and I’ll teach her how to knit clothes, hats, and all sorts of little shoes and socks for her dolls,” Hu Qianqian said with a smile.

Zhou Yinuo’s eyes sparkled as she looked at Hu Qianqian, as if she wanted to move in with her right away. Seeing this, Zhou Mingxing felt both a pang of sadness and amusement.

His Yinuo had grown up without ever experiencing the warmth of a normal mother’s love. Thinking about that, he realized that even though Wei Sheng had an unreliable father, at least all the fatherly love he lacked was made up for by Hu Qianqian’s abundant motherly care.

Noticing that Zhou Yinuo was reluctant to leave, Hu Qianqian also felt a little reluctant to part with her. She busied herself, planning to make some late-night snacks for them before they left. Zhou Mingxing nodded in agreement, then pulled Wei Sheng aside to ask about the situation in Huazi Village.

Wei Sheng was no longer an ordinary person. If Huazi Village was truly dangerous, Zhou Mingxing would have to seriously consider whether to arrange some bodyguards for him.

Hu Qianqian ran a shop near the school, and when he was too busy to pick up Yinuo, she had helped take care of her more than once. Since this mother was looking after his daughter, Zhou Mingxing figured he should also look out for Wei Sheng in return.

“Bodyguards aren’t necessary. There are so many people in the production team, and at most, we’ll just lose some personal belongings. What concerns me more is that the people in Huazi Village have gotten used to relying on begging for a living. They just sit on the roadside doing nothing, yet they can make thousands of yuan a month. Over time, they’ll lose the ability to work—who would still want to toil away farming?” Wei Sheng sighed.

“True. Forget farming—even working in the city without any skills won’t earn them that much. There are plenty of restaurant waiters who work exhausting shifts for only two or three thousand yuan a month. Why work so hard when begging is easier?” Zhou Mingxing scoffed.

Seeing Wei Sheng frowning so much that he wasn’t even eating his fruit, Zhou Mingxing chuckled. “Don’t stress too much. This is the production team’s show, not just yours. If there’s a problem, everyone should brainstorm solutions together. Why should you carry the burden alone? What are the director and producers getting paid for?”

He had a point!

Wei Sheng thought for a moment and decided to trust in collective wisdom.

Hadn’t the ancestors said? Many hands make light work!

What he didn’t expect, however, was that the ancestors forgot to mention—sometimes, the “wood” others bring to the fire is damp and only produces smoke…

The next morning, in the conference room, the so-called “brainstorming session” organized by the director turned into a mess, with everyone offering all sorts of terrible ideas—

One person suggested changing the villagers’ career path. Since they were already wandering the streets, why not encourage them to be self-reliant? Instead of begging, they could collect recyclables along the streets and sell scrap materials to make money.

This suggestion was immediately shot down by Wang Qun. “Do you not know that cities have had waste sorting for years now? Anything valuable gets taken by the garbage trucks. Where are they supposed to find recyclables? Are you telling them to rob the garbage collection trucks?”

Someone else suggested following the example of Huangjiabao Village by promoting specialty farming and livestock breeding, but the reality of Huazi Village made that impossible.

Wei Sheng simply played the photos and videos he had taken in Huazi Village. Looking at the vast farmlands left abandoned, overgrown with weeds, the room fell silent…

“How about… livestreaming sales?” someone hesitantly suggested.

Everyone: “…”

Wang Qun sneered. “Livestream what? How to beg on the streets? Or should they play the erhu and sing folk tunes for the viewers?”

So, Director, why did you insist on picking such a hell-level challenge in the first place?

Are you worried we aren’t losing enough hair already?

The production team’s planners were on the verge of pulling their hair out when Wei Sheng carefully suggested—

“How about a prize-based idea contest? Before we officially start filming, we can do a preliminary livestream showcasing Huazi Village’s situation and then open a nationwide call for poverty alleviation plans.”

“Just because we can’t think of a solution doesn’t mean nobody else can. If someone’s idea is selected, they’ll not only receive a large cash prize but also be invited to participate in the final episode of the show, where they can witness the transformation of this beggar village firsthand. That would be pretty meaningful, right?”

“Let’s do it! The planning team should draft the proposal immediately. Everyone else, start preparing. We’ll go live at noon on Friday and release the contest link at the same time!” Wang Qun decided.

At that moment, no one in the conference room expected that this seemingly unreliable proposal would end up leading Huazi Village to a truly reliable path out of poverty.

At this moment, everyone was more worried about whether the hard-earned good reputation from the first season would crash and burn at the start of the second season.

After all, most people find it hard to sympathize with someone who has the ability to work but chooses to be a beggar.

Not to mention—why should we toil away, working exhausting jobs for just three or four thousand yuan a month, while they just lie by the roadside, cry a little, sell their misery, and end up buying houses and cars?

Especially since this was supposed to be a poverty alleviation program—shouldn’t it be encouraging people to work hard to build a better life? But instead, was it promoting professional begging?

Wouldn’t the audience just tear them apart for this?

“If you knew the history of Huazi Village, you wouldn’t say that,” Director Wang Qun sighed. He had someone project a historical document that had just been sent from W County, where Huazi Village was located.

It turned out that decades ago, Huazi Village wasn’t called that at all.

Back then, it had a beautiful name—Hua Hong Village (Flower Red Village). Reportedly, from the Ming and Qing dynasties onward, every household in the village made a living by growing Chinese roses.

These were the “monthly red” roses, known for their large, beautiful blooms and strong fragrance.

Before foreign roses flooded into China, native Chinese roses were the primary cut flowers used by wealthy families to decorate their courtyards and create bouquets and floral arrangements.

At its peak, Hua Hong Village was filled with blooming roses in every color, and the air was thick with their sweet scent. The villagers made good money from their flowers, building large houses and living just as well as the well-off town dwellers.

It was said that during its most prosperous times, the roses from Hua Hong Village were even used as tributes in the imperial garden, admired by the emperor and his consorts.

But everything was destroyed by a treacherous scholar who bit the hand that fed him!

According to legend, in the late Qing Dynasty, there was a severe drought in the region. The land was scorched, crops failed, and to make matters worse, government relief grain was embezzled at every level, leaving people with nothing to eat. Many had no choice but to flee their homes to survive.

A destitute scholar, along with his widowed mother, ended up in Hua Hong Village during this time.

A wealthy family in the village, seeing that the scholar was refined and well-mannered, and that he had brought his elderly mother along despite their dire situation—showing great filial piety—decided to take them in. Not only that, but they also betrothed their beloved daughter to him and even sponsored his education so he could take the imperial exams.

And this, folks, is why people say, “Spending money on a man brings misfortune for three generations!” The wisdom of netizens truly comes from history!

If the wealthy villager hadn’t paid for the scholar’s education, perhaps his daughter and son-in-law could have lived happily as affluent flower farmers in Hua Hong Village.

But the problem was—once the scholar achieved official status, his former landlord father-in-law was of no use to him politically. Worse, his wife’s background as a merchant’s daughter became a source of ridicule in court circles.

This scholar was scheming. He bided his time for over a decade until he became a county magistrate. His father-in-law’s family was secretly thrilled, thinking that now that their son-in-law was an official, their family’s good fortune would only grow.

Good fortune, my ass.

That year, the south was hit by a month-long torrential downpour. As the floodwaters threatened to submerge the county town, officials debated how to mitigate the disaster. Someone suggested opening a section of the riverbank to release the floodwaters, sacrificing a small area to save most of the county’s farmland and grain supplies.

That’s when the scholar shed a few fake tears and, in an act of supposed selflessness, ordered the riverbank to be breached—right at the section leading to Hua Hong Village.

The raging floodwaters swept away countless homes and fields in an instant. Hua Hong Village, deliberately left out of the evacuation notice, had no chance to escape. Nearly every man, woman, and child perished in the flood—including the scholar’s father-in-law’s family, his wife, and their three children, who had been visiting her parents.

What a perfect case of killing with a borrowed knife!

The scholar wiped out his wife’s entire family without leaving a trace of suspicion, and in the end, he even earned a reputation as a selfless, public-minded official!

“I’m fuming! What happened next? Don’t tell me that scumbag went on to marry some official’s daughter and rise to the peak of success?” A few young women in the meeting room were so angry their faces turned red.

To modern minds, if you don’t love someone anymore, just break up peacefully! There are plenty of men in the world—no woman has to cling to just one!

The father-in-law saved this man and his mother’s lives, funded his education, and gave him a wife. Even if he didn’t repay the kindness, how could he be so cruel as to destroy his wife’s entire family?

That’s beyond human. Even animals wouldn’t do that!

Wang Qun sneered, “Oh, he did exactly that! With his newfound reputation, not long after the flood, he married the illegitimate daughter of a provincial governor. I heard he later became a prefect.”

“Did no one expose him?”

Everyone was furious. This was worse than the infamous Chen Shimei, who merely tried to kill his wife—this guy massacred an entire village just to cover up his past as a refugee!

“Of course someone did! Otherwise, how do you think this story got passed down?” Wang Qun smirked.

Hua Hong Village was utterly destroyed by the flood. But a village of over a thousand people—how could there be no survivors at all?

The few who managed to escape lost everything—their homes, their means of livelihood—and had no choice but to roam the land as beggars.

From then on, the once-prosperous Hua Hong Village became the destitute Huazi Village.

In those days, even begging required skill. Without some talent, you wouldn’t get a good meal.

Over time, the beggars from Huazi Village used their talents in singing, storytelling, and performance to spread the tale of the scholar’s betrayal and mass murder throughout Jiangnan.

“That heartless bastard—he wouldn’t have retaliated against those beggars, would he?” The team couldn’t help but worry.

At this point, the beggars of Huazi Village were no longer seen as despicable professional panhandlers but as tragic avengers.

“Hah! He certainly wanted to! Look at this—this is a scanned record from the county annals,” Wang Qun said, bringing up another document. “That treacherous scholar wasn’t in office for long. Not long after he became a prefect, he was caught embezzling disaster relief funds, his house was raided, and he was executed. His entire family was exiled.”

“You still want to take revenge on the Hua Hong villagers? Pah! If you’ve got the guts, go complain to King Yama! Let’s see whether he sides with you or the innocent villagers of Hua Hong Village who died because of you!”

Hearing that the villain got what he deserved, everyone laughed heartily. The wealthy Chen Mengjie immediately picked up her phone and ordered a round of “Grand Slam” milk tea for everyone.

This kind of ending was just too satisfying—it called for a milk tea celebration!

After hearing this story, the entire production team gained a new perspective on Huazi Village.

At the end of the day, it was all caused by a despicable person!

Otherwise, Huazi Village might still be a well-known traditional Chinese rose cultivation hub today.

Everyone knows how lucrative flower cultivation is nowadays, right?

Just look at the Dounan Flower Market—how many flower farmers make a living from it?

“Wait! Since Huazi Village has such a glorious history, why hasn’t anyone tried to organize the villagers to grow flowers again? Flower cultivation is quite profitable these days,” someone suggested.

“You think the local government hasn’t considered it? Back when poverty alleviation efforts first started, the officials assigned to help the village uncovered this history and tried to organize the villagers to plant seedlings and flowers. But… sigh! The reality is, more than a hundred years have passed. The original flower farmers are long gone, and the current villagers of Huazi Village have no idea how to grow flowers!”

The real issue is that flower cultivation requires both technical expertise and financial backing. Roses, in particular, are notoriously difficult to maintain—anyone who’s ever grown them knows!

Even if the government provided free rose seedlings, the maintenance still costs money. You don’t see returns in a year or two, but people need to eat. So, gradually, the villagers ended up picking up their begging bowls again.

At noon on Friday, just as everyone was getting off work for lunch, the official social media account of the show posted a live broadcast announcement.

Along with it, they released a prize-winning solicitation for ideas on “Saving Huazi Village.”

After reading the details, even the most experienced netizens were at a loss for words.

“My mind is blank! I have no idea where to even begin.”

“Honestly, this show is really pushing the limits!”

“I can’t think of a way to help a village of professional beggars become prosperous. What, are they supposed to collectively take to the streets and perform?”

“Perform? Besides banging bowls, do beggars even have any other skills?”

“Of course they do! I remember when I was a kid, beggars in my village had all sorts of tricks—playing the erhu, singing folk tunes, performing monkey shows…”

“For some reason, talking about beggars reminds me of how my grandma used to scare me when I was little. She’d tell me to stay away from beggars because they’d steal children.”

“No joke—child trafficking was actually a major source of income for beggars in ancient times.”

“I don’t get why the show is choosing to help a village of professional beggars. There are so many impoverished villages in need of support—why go for something so bizarre? They better not mess this up.”

Longtime fans started worrying that the show would ruin the goodwill it had built up in Season 1, while onlookers flooded in out of curiosity.

This was unheard of! No one had ever attempted poverty alleviation in a village entirely made up of beggars.

Could a bunch of lazy freeloaders even be helped? Did they even deserve help?

That question was answered in the program’s first live broadcast, “Uncovering Huazi Village.”

Once female viewers learned about the village’s tragic past, they immediately empathized—

“Our ancestors never lied! Date a man, and you’ll suffer for three years. Sympathize with a man, and you’ll suffer for a lifetime. Spend money on a man, and you’ll suffer for three lifetimes!”

“Wow, even a variety show can reinforce my resolve—thank you, production team! My parents wanted to find a live-in son-in-law for me, but I’m sending this video to the family group chat. This isn’t a son-in-law; this is a harbinger of doom!”

“I can totally relate! I worked my ass off to support my boyfriend through his postgraduate exams and civil service tests. Ha! The moment he passed, his first move was to dump me. He hadn’t even reported to his new job for a month before breaking up with me.”

“Never fall for that ‘he’s filial to his parents, so he’ll be good to you too’ nonsense. I fell for it and married a foolishly obedient son. Now I’m a divorced mother of two. Ladies, remember: you are NOT his mother! Just because he treats his mother well doesn’t mean he’ll treat you well!”

“Reality truly inspires fiction! I just finished reading a novel about a female lead who was wiped out by the male lead’s betrayal, only to be reborn and take her revenge. Someone needs to write a Huazi Village fanfic—I’ll definitely read it! This heartless scumbag makes my blood boil!”

Director Wang Qun never expected that their announcement—originally meant to solicit ideas—would unexpectedly attract a flood of attention from the online novel community. Suddenly, keywords like “scumbag,” “massacre,” and “revenge” skyrocketed in searches, and “Huazi Village” became a hot topic online.

Even though historical records ultimately proved that the story was just a local legend—there was never an actual heartless scholar who became a magistrate—the hype had already taken off.

Some fast-handed authors couldn’t wait to start writing…

Who cares if it’s true or not? If they start now, their novel will be trending just in time for the show’s premiere!

Besides, these writers felt that the methods ancient beggars used to tell stories and punish scumbags were way too tame. No way! They had to step in personally and make that scumbag suffer for three lifetimes!

Ideally, the scumbag’s entire family would meet a miserable fate while the abandoned heroine rose to the top and found a man ten thousand times better than him!

“This has to be a publicity stunt! Why didn’t we think of this before?” Competing production teams were green with envy.

Everyone agreed that this was a new kind of marketing genius. Where had J Province TV Station found such a PR mastermind?

Without spending much money at all, they had somehow managed to attract top online fiction writers to voluntarily create fan works for the show!

Only the program team and Director Wang Qun knew the bitter truth.

They weren’t trying to pull a stunt—they genuinely wanted ideas from the audience.

But it was obvious now. The netizens were far more interested in writing revenge stories than in winning that gleaming 100,000 yuan prize.

This… this just didn’t make sense!

With a stomach full of grievances and anxiety, the production team had no choice but to bring their backup plan as they arrived at Hanzi Village, which had already gone viral online, just in time for the program recording.

As soon as they entered the village, they spotted the old blind man who had previously joined other beggars in robbing Wei Sheng and Zhang Zexuan.

“It’s him! Driver, don’t stop! Just drive past him! He’s definitely faking being blind!” Zhang Zexuan pointed at the old man indignantly.

The old blind man was already standing in the middle of the road, leaning on his cane, shaking slightly as he held up a broken bowl and loudly begged, “Have mercy, kind souls, spare some food for an old man~”

Luckily, county officials were accompanying them on this trip to the village!

Two people quickly got out of the lead vehicle, helped the old blind man to the side of the road, and even stuffed a few small bills into his hand. After whispering a few words to him, the old man indeed stopped blocking their way.

“Old Zhang, look!” Wei Sheng nudged Zhang Zexuan’s arm.

Zhang Zexuan glanced outside and almost jumped up in excitement. “Aren’t those the little brats who stole our stuff before? They must be working with that old blind man!”

In the poplar grove by the roadside, a few boys wearing old school uniforms were peeking in their direction. The moment they noticed someone in the car looking back, they immediately scattered and ran away.

“Forget it,” Wei Sheng sighed. “Kids who don’t turn out well are either poorly raised by their parents, or they don’t have any parents at all. At the end of the day, kids this age—even if they drop out to work—won’t find anyone willing to hire them. Remember that kind-hearted milk tea shop owner? He got fined tens of thousands just for taking in a girl under eighteen.”

In many impoverished and underdeveloped areas, these teenage kids were actually the most pitiful.

They were no longer small children, so they didn’t receive the sympathy or care that society extended to young kids.

But at the same time, they weren’t yet old enough to meet the legal working age. If they went out to look for jobs, people would turn them away for being underage workers.

Yet, these were the years when they had the biggest appetites. If their families had no food, and they couldn’t work to earn it, they were incredibly vulnerable to being led down the wrong path.

Sometimes, it wasn’t that these kids wanted to do bad things.

But if they didn’t, they’d starve to death.

What else were they supposed to do?

(End of Chapter)

—————

“Becoming a prefect” refers to being appointed as the 知府 (zhīfǔ)—the prefectural governor of a 府 (fǔ), which was an administrative division below a province

—Chen Shimei is a famous villain in Chinese folklore. He was a poor scholar who married Qin Xianglian, but after passing the imperial exam, he married a princess and tried to kill his first wife and children to hide the truth. Judge Bao Zheng discovered his crimes and sentenced him to death.