Chapter 124

That night, while editing footage, Director Wang Qun got teary-eyed again when he came across the segment featuring Aunt Huang and Lang Dongyang.

It was a shame his good friend Wang Yang wasn’t around this time—otherwise, the old duo would’ve been hugging each other and bawling their eyes out again.

“Leave two crews behind—one to film how Huangbai Village is adapting to settling in Langshan, and the other to follow Aunt Huang and Lang Dongyang. I’ve got a feeling the audience will really take to their story,” Wang Qun said, wiping his eyes.

Wei Sheng nodded. Truth be told, he was pretty invested in Aunt Huang’s group too.

After all, unlike other families who moved with their spouses and children, Aunt Huang’s husband had already passed away, and her only son was a total ingrate. Since he couldn’t squeeze any money out of his own mother, he treated her like she didn’t exist. Counting on him to take care of Aunt Huang in her old age? Not a chance.

As for Lang Dongyang’s background, the crew had done some digging in town. Apparently, his village was quite different from the rest—it was somewhat like an ancient matriarchal society. Even today, they still practiced a form of “walking marriage.” In most households, women were the heads of the family. When a woman wanted a child, she’d find a man she liked, invite him to stay for a while, and that was that.

If she ended up pregnant, the man could choose to stay and help raise the child, or he could leave without any strings attached.

Women there didn’t expect men to take responsibility for them. Likewise, they didn’t take responsibility for men. The children they bore, regardless of who the father was, always took the mother’s surname. Daughters stayed to carry on the family line, while sons were either sent to live with their fathers or, like Lang Dongyang, raised to eventually marry into another family.

So, to make her son more “competitive” when it came time to marry in, Lang Dongyang’s mother had trained him from a young age to be independent and self-sufficient. Don’t be fooled by his age—he could farm, raise pigs, hatch chicks, patrol the mountains, gather herbs, and harvest honey. There wasn’t a single chore he couldn’t handle.

In Langshan, the competition to marry into a household was fierce.

Lang Dongyang never could understand why men down the mountain felt like paying a bride price to get a wife was such a bad deal.

Women in the mountains didn’t ask for a bride price, sure—but their standards were way higher! A man had to know how to farm, cook, and ideally take care of kids. Basically, he had to do everything around the house except give birth. When Lang Dongyang was little, he thought all boys in the world were raised like this.

It wasn’t until he grew up and started working outside that he realized men down the mountain just had to earn money and save up enough for a bride price, and they could easily marry a wife—bring her home, no less! Not like in Langshan, where you married in with your bags packed and could be kicked out by your wife at any time.

He couldn’t help but shed tears of envy, jealousy, and resentment.

Aunt Huang saw how good he was at housework and thought it was all thanks to his mother’s great parenting. Little did she know, in some parts of Langshan, this was just standard training for a “husband-in-waiting.”

If a guy couldn’t farm, cook, or take care of kids, which girl would want him to marry in?

At the end of Episode 2, when viewers learned that Lang Dongyang’s village still preserved some matriarchal traditions, the female audience went wild with envy.

“I hereby declare myself an honorary resident of Langshan Village! This place is way too friendly to women!”

“I already bought a high-speed rail ticket to Langshan tonight. I make 100k a year, have a stable job, own a house and a car. I just want a kid, not a baby daddy. Langshan is perfect! Anyone know the residency policy?”

“Take it from someone who’s been there—married women really do raise kids and earn money on their own. Men just slow us down.”

A flood of comments echoed the sentiment, and countless women online started tagging Wang Qun like crazy, begging him to make a Langshan Village special.

Forget poverty alleviation—just focus on how to skip marriage and still have a baby… *ahem*!

Even though this kind of content probably wouldn’t make it past the censors, they didn’t mind if the director released it on a paid streaming platform. They were more than willing to pay to watch it!

Wang Qun, now tagged across the entire internet: “…”

Playing dead. Don’t @ me.

Come on! The current climate is all about encouraging people to get married and have kids. If he went against policy now, he’d be digging his own grave. The show might get pulled before he even knew what hit him.

Wang Qun was a little spooked, but anyone with eyes could see that after Episode 2 aired, what really caught the audience’s attention—especially the overwhelmingly female audience—was the walking marriage custom in Langshan. Sitting on a goldmine of viral content and not being able to use it? It broke his heart.

“The main show can’t use it, but livestreams aren’t as heavily censored. Director Wang, you could hand this segment over to the folks from Huangbai Village and let them livestream it themselves. Then we just ‘share’ it from the show’s account. Don’t turn it into some big social issue—just present it as a local folk custom,” Wei Sheng suggested.

Wang Qun gave him a resentful look. “So *this* is why you’ve been investing in internet companies? Planning to play the edge game all along, huh?”

Wei Sheng rolled his eyes.

“How is that playing the edge? I’m preserving endangered folk traditions of Chinese civilization!”

At the time, only Wang Qun and Wei Sheng were in the office. Wang Qun glanced at him, sighed, poured him a cup of wild Langshan tea, and asked seriously—

“I heard you’re still prepping for the civil service exam. What’s your plan, kid? You do know that once you get into the system, you can’t run a business or engage in profit-making activities, right?”

“Even your immediate family—by regulation, they can do business, but not in any field related to your job.”

“If you really pass the exam, have you thought about what’ll happen to your company? Word is, people at the station are already gossiping about your business ventures. If you’re serious about taking the civil service route, don’t say I didn’t warn you—clean up your assets now, before someone grabs your weak spot and reports you.”

Wei Sheng hadn’t expected Wang Qun to bring this up. Zhou Mingxing had already talked to him about it privately. Still, Wei Sheng wasn’t too stressed. After all—

“Director Wang, do you all really think I can just waltz into the civil service? The competition’s insane. I heard that in this year’s provincial exam, the most competitive position had a ratio of 2800:1. And next year’s graduating class is supposedly even bigger, so the competition will be even worse.”

“I’m working and managing a company at the same time. I barely have time to study. You really think I can casually skim a few books and beat out thousands of people who are studying like their lives depend on it?”

Wang Qun: “…” Fair point.

“Then why are you always carrying study materials around? Everyone knows you’re taking the civil service exam. What if you don’t even pass the written test? Aren’t you afraid people will laugh at you?”

Oh, that hit a nerve.

“As if those trolls online would leave me alone just because I’m not taking the exam,” Wei Sheng said, rolling his eyes.

Back when he first entered the industry, he had a bit of a glass heart. But now? He could calmly face the hate comments and trending smear campaigns bought by his rivals.

To people who already dislike you, nothing you do will ever be right. So why live your life trying to please them?

Besides, he wasn’t taking the civil service exam because he *had* to pass. It was more to put his mom’s mind at ease. Anyone who’s ever been nagged into taking the exam by their family would understand.

Let’s put it this way—these days, in the eyes of parents, the ultimate life goal is passing the civil service exam. If their kid doesn’t make it in, then no matter what happens—career troubles, failed blind dates, even midlife unemployment—they’ll always trace it back to one thing: “It’s all because you didn’t try hard enough to become a civil servant!”

But if he tried and didn’t make it, his mom would just feel sorry for him—not blame him.

*Ahem*—that last part, he didn’t need to tell Wang Qun. Who knows what kind of secret middle-aged group chats they had going on?

Seeing that Wei Sheng had his head on straight, Wang Qun didn’t press further. And since the kid didn’t seem obsessed with passing the exam, Wang Qun felt a lot more comfortable assigning him work.

“After tonight’s final episode airs, that’ll wrap up this season. We’ll have to clear the schedule for other shows.”

“But, considering the ratings war between all the major satellite channels at the end of the year—well, you get it, right? The higher-ups want us to prepare a few Spring Festival specials. The idea is to revisit a few of the guest families from Season Two and give our station a bit of a popularity boost.”

“I heard Zhou Mingxing’s lined up quite a few gigs for you in the second half of the year. When would be a good time for you to work with the production team on the Spring Festival specials? I can’t spell everything out too bluntly, but when you go back, tell Old Zhou the station’s putting a lot of weight on these specials. If something needs to be pushed back, then push it. No need to please everyone.”

“If someone really makes a fuss at the station, the leadership will have your back.”

This year, Wei Sheng was on fire. Saying he single-handedly carried half the traffic for J Province TV Station wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Because of that, Wang Qun had heard that a lot of departments wanted Wei Sheng to make guest appearances in their New Year programs. Afraid the poor guy would be worked to death, Wang Qun had to pull him aside and quietly warn him to plan ahead.

Wei Sheng blinked, silently digesting Wang Qun’s words. Once it clicked, a wave of warmth welled up in his heart.

So Director Wang was worried he’d be overbooked before the New Year and drop dead from exhaustion. That’s why he was hinting that Wei Sheng could use the excuse of “preparing the station’s Spring Festival specials” to get Zhou Mingxing to ease up on his schedule?

“If it’s for the station’s Spring Festival specials, then of course I’ll give it my all. Thank you, Director Wang. I’ll talk to President Zhou when I get back and ask him to review my schedule. I’ll try to carve out enough time for the shoot.”

Talking to smart people is always a breeze. Wang Qun nodded in satisfaction. Seeing it was about time, the two of them headed downstairs to clock out, each going their separate way, ready to go home and watch the final episode of Season Two with their families.

But when Wei Sheng saw the traffic jam outside during rush hour, cars packed bumper to bumper, he made a snap decision and turned toward the nearby food street.

He stopped by his usual braised goods shop to pick up two braised pig trotters and a pound of pepper-salt shredded duck necks for his mom. For his grandpa, he got a pound of pig intestines and a box of braised beef perfect for pairing with liquor. Then he grabbed his grandma’s favorite—roast duck—and for himself, some pickled chili chicken feet and spicy duck collarbones… These were the family’s must-haves for watching their favorite shows.

That night, after dinner, the four members of the Hu family each claimed a corner of the couch, munching on braised snacks, sipping Pu’er tea from Grandpa Hu’s prized stash, as the familiar theme song of *Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation* played from the TV.

Damn! The final episode of Season Two started off with a bang: Aunt Huang’s newly adopted godson, Lang Dongyang, publicly beat up her biological son, Huang Kang!

(End of Chapter)