Chapter 76

“Workers, Charge Ahead!” went viral!

Overnight, it outshone even the renamed Retracing the Road to Poverty Alleviation in terms of popularity!

The reason was simple—people tuned into poverty alleviation programs because they resembled feel-good web novels. Watching one impoverished, backward village after another get transformed into trendy internet-famous destinations under the magic touch of the production team’s “golden finger” was like reading a satisfying fantasy. Viewers enjoyed a kind of god’s-eye-view catharsis as the villagers began living better lives.

But “Workers, Charge Ahead!” was different. Jin Yannan truly lived up to her title as the most profitable director and producer in the history of J Province TV. With her delicate language and cinematography, she depicted the struggles and resilience of ordinary people grappling with housing loans, car loans, marriage, and family under the weight of a sluggish economy.

Put simply, everyone living at the bottom—or those who were once middle class but had since fallen—couldn’t help but deeply relate to the show!

At first, when the show was announced, the top comments in the fan section were mostly from the fans of the guests like Shen Yi. But now, you could barely see any fan comments on the front page.

It wasn’t because fans had abandoned Shen Yi or Wei Sheng. It was because fan-powered likes and reposts simply couldn’t compete with the overwhelming organic traffic from the general public!

Now, if you visited the show’s official account and clicked on any post, you’d find passionate comments flooding every thread—

> “I seriously suspect the production team has installed a surveillance camera in my home—this is my life exactly! Yuan is me! We emptied out six family savings accounts to buy a house, ended up deep in debt, and now the developer’s run off! The place hasn’t been delivered, my kid can’t get registered to attend school, and we still owe over 5,000 yuan a month in mortgage! To make it worse, my wife worked in training services, and after having our second child, tried to go back—but the whole company had shut down! Just last week, layoffs started at my company too. I haven’t been let go yet, but my manager already called me in—either accept a severance package or agree to a 40% pay cut. Now I’m taking home less than 7,000 a month. After the mortgage, there’s just over 2,000 left for a family of four! We had to stop all my daughter’s extracurriculars, and I don’t even know where next semester’s tuition is coming from. Sigh!”
> “Tian Mi? That’s literally me! My mom brainwashed me from a young age, always saying, ‘You can’t rely on your husband. Support your brother—your maternal family is your true home.’ And what happened? Hah! My brother has awful grades, and my parents insisted on sending him to expensive schools. My mom even moved to live with him and accompany his studies! But then she turned around and told me the family couldn’t afford to educate two kids, so I had to drop out and work. Fine! I supported myself, worked for ten years, started my own business, bought three properties in a major city—and now my mom says a girl making this much will just hand it all to her husband after marriage. She’s been scheming to transfer my company and properties into my brother’s name. Ha!”
> “Girl above, wake up! Don’t fall for your parents’ BS! Your brother can’t even support himself—how’s he supposed to be your support? You’d be better off hiring two bodyguards! If you ever end up with a domestic abuser, your brother back home won’t help you—but a bodyguard will show up in minutes!”
In all her years producing shows, Jin Yannan had seen viewers emotionally connect with content before. But for this many people to relate this intensely? That said a lot about how hard life had become for low-income urbanites under the current climate.

Some people were likely worse off now than rural residents who had just been lifted out of poverty.

No matter how poor a rural household was, at least they didn’t have mortgages. They had land to grow food and vegetables—at the very least, they wouldn’t starve. And if things got too bad, they could apply for minimum living allowance.

But people like those featured on the show—many new urban poor—were dirt poor and still ineligible for government aid, simply because they owned property. Even if it was a half-finished, abandoned building, as long as their purchase contract had been filed, they were officially “homeowners worth a million” on paper, and couldn’t claim to be poor.

Yet these people often lived worse than rural households in poverty.

Jin Yannan let out a silent sigh of relief. Thank goodness she had supported Wei Sheng’s original program tone—focusing on realism without excessive sob stories. Otherwise, the show might’ve already been taken down. In an already bleak economic climate, it would’ve been political suicide for a state media program to wallow in despair and “undermine confidence,” making people lose hope. That would be like stabbing leadership in the lungs.

But now it was perfect—the first half of the show built empathy, and the second half fired people up. Both the audience and the higher-ups were satisfied.

After just two episodes, Zhou Mingxing gained a promising young fanbase, and Jin Yannan received near-unanimous praise from both viewers and superiors!

Viewers praised the show for being grounded, sincere, relatable—and most importantly, for resisting the temptation to wallow in misery. Instead, it turned the bleak lives of unfinished-building homeowners into an inspiring ensemble cast of a real-life feel-good drama!

The leadership was even more thrilled. The official overseeing economic matters personally invited Jin Yannan in for a meeting and expressed strong support for “Workers, Charge Ahead!” as a positive, workplace-oriented variety show. Furthermore, they noted, apart from the unfinished building issue, J City had many other struggling sectors that needed attention.

Like physical retail shop owners clinging to life.

Like laid-off tech workers or stay-at-home moms unable to find work again.

You couldn’t just classify all these people as “freelancers.”

That word used to sound trendy. But after the downturn and waves of unemployment, the moment the public sees “freelancer,” they get a headache.

The term’s reputation had tanked. Nowadays, “freelancer” was practically synonymous with “unemployed.”

The leadership didn’t care whether the audience empathized with the show. What they cared about was “Workers, Charge Ahead!”’s plan to reboot the Mingzhu Garden project.

It was almost unbelievable that such an unorthodox yet effective revival plan for an abandoned housing project had come not from expensive experts but from a TV production team.

It was far more practical than any expert proposal they’d paid for.

In the second half of “Workers, Charge Ahead!”’s first segment, the show transitioned from the personal struggles of four families to the collective effort of “cutting losses to survive” at Mingzhu Garden.

To show developers the potential value of the project, all the homeowners signed and fingerprinted an agreement to support the show’s revitalization plan.

With cooperation from the local government and departments like city management and utilities, large vegetable plots in Mingzhu Garden were cleared and paved into parking lots. Spaces were painted, and during the day, parking fees were collected. At night, the lots transformed into bustling night markets.

Now, homeowners at Mingzhu Garden not only received a monthly rental dividend of over a thousand yuan but also found jobs right at their doorsteps.

The young and able worked as parking or market security. Older folks took jobs in cleaning or fee collection. Others rented their own booths and set up shop—earning anywhere from a couple thousand to over ten thousand yuan per month!

What left the production team and audience utterly stunned was that the ones who made the most money and turned their lives around the fastest weren’t the invited guests of the show—but a couple among the owners of the unfinished housing project, selling lamb offal soup.

The couple hailed from Ning Province. They used to run freight services transporting fruit. Back when the fruit business was booming, they could earn tens of thousands a month during peak seasons.

If it weren’t for the money they made back then, they never would’ve considered buying a house in J Province.

Their plan was simple: the educational conditions in J Province were better than back home. If they bought a house there, they could bring their two kids over and eventually give them an advantage when applying for college.

Who could have imagined that a string of misfortunes would bring this once middle-class family back into poverty overnight?

First, the pandemic over several years tanked their freight business. Then, the residential community they poured their life savings into—Pearl Garden—was left unfinished. On top of that, during a trip to deliver essential goods out of town, the husband unfortunately caught the virus. While he was hospitalized, with no income, their mortgage was about to go delinquent. In desperation, the couple sold off their truck and moved from their rental into the unfinished housing unit.

When the show’s team decided to launch a night market in Pearl Garden, the couple discussed it. They had a little money left, just enough to keep paying off the mortgage—but doing nothing would only drain it away. So they bit the bullet and rented a stall, deciding to sell their hometown specialty: lamb offal soup.

To everyone’s surprise—it went viral.

People in J Province liked lamb, but when it came to lamb offal soup, the real deal was from Ning Province. They used freshly slaughtered lamb every day, simmered it in a large pot all afternoon, scooped out the meat, then tossed in ingredients like lamb head meat, tripe, blood, liver, and omasum to soak overnight, allowing the flavors to infuse.

The next day, they’d bring the pot to the night market, light a coal stove underneath it, and let the soup bubble away—emitting the unique, pungent-yet-aromatic scent of lamb.

Customers could choose their preferred cuts, which were scooped from the pot, sliced, and placed into a large bowl. Then came ladles of steaming hot broth. Seasonings like pepper, chili, and cilantro could be added to taste.

In addition to the soup, the couple also sold their homemade sesame flatbread and steamed buns. If one bowl of soup wasn’t enough, customers could buy a bun, tear it into pieces, and soak it in the broth. The soup-soaked bread, many said, tasted even better than the meat.

There’s a certain magic to night market food. When you see someone slurping a bowl with sweat on their brow, you simply can’t resist—you have to try it.

And once people tried it, they were hooked. Some became diehard fans, returning daily and bringing friends along. When the tiny tables were full, nobody minded. Customers would grab a bowl, plop down on the curb, and sip their soup while chatting away.

In front of this steaming bowl of lamb offal soup, there was no distinction between big bosses and migrant workers. Everyone was just a foodie. Once the meal was done, they’d wipe their mouths and head back to their respective battlegrounds, bellies full and hearts satisfied. That was the real flavor of everyday life.

Thanks to their modest night market stall, the couple was now earning more than they ever did in their freight days. In one particularly good month, they landed several large orders—making lamb soup for local wedding banquets—and earned nearly 100,000 yuan!

Isn’t that the definition of inspirational?

Who knew a night market stall could be this profitable?

In no time, Pearl Garden’s once-abandoned lot, now transformed into a buzzing night market, was drawing huge crowds. People were even driving in from neighboring provinces just to visit.

Jinyan Nan, who had previously produced a show promoting local intangible cultural heritage, saw an opportunity. To elevate the night market’s image, she had someone contact local heritage inheritors, offering them free stalls to promote their crafts at the Mingzhu Square Night Market.

The Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism also supported the initiative, issuing an official statement and designating the event as part of “J Province’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Promotion Month.”

Suddenly, students from major schools across the provincial capital were coming to check in.

Everyone knows—it’s easiest to make money from women and children. If the kids were there, their parents wouldn’t be far behind.

And when a family of three showed up to visit the heritage exhibits, of course they’d also buy a few souvenirs and try the night market snacks.

Before long, the Mingzhu community’s night market became the hottest check-in spot in J City, with business booming like crazy.

Even the officials in charge of economic development were stunned. Who would’ve thought that a workplace reality show—meant to be purely entertainment—could breathe life back into an abandoned real estate project overnight?

Rumor had it that several real estate developers in the province were already eyeing the Pearl Garden project. After years of being left for dead, the development might actually come back to life. When the officials saw this, they were like—this show is really something!

They quickly invited the core production team over to explore whether other industries in the province could replicate the same success.

Especially the tourism sector—which had been absolutely devastated in recent years.

If other sectors had taken a hit at the waist, tourism had been chopped straight through the ankles. The only thing left was a pair of feet.

Then, someone brought new program material directly to their door. And it wasn’t just anyone—it was the Vice Governor in charge of the provincial economy!

At that moment, Jinyan Nan finally believed what her old colleague Wang Qun had told her: that little Wei was truly the lucky charm of their station.

Originally, she thought just getting the support of the Provincial Housing and Construction Department was already incredible. It would’ve been enough to qualify the show for year-end award consideration.

But now? Someone slap her awake! The Vice Governor was not only watching their show—he wanted to be involved in its planning?

God! This was the kind of material she wouldn’t even dare dream up in her wildest dreams!

With provincial leaders backing them, Jinyan Nan instantly perked up. But thinking back on how the Retracing the Road to Poverty Alleviation team had almost flopped in Huazi Village, she forced herself to suppress her excitement, gulped down a giant cup of iced Americano, and tried to cool her overheated brain.

The provincial leaders hadn’t yet named a specific industry for the team to support. That meant the production crew still had the freedom to choose.

But where to begin?

Just then, Wei Sheng happened to wander into the breakroom looking for some tea—and was immediately roped in by Director Jin to serve as cannon fodder.

(End of Chapter)