Chapter 181

As it turned out, Nine Streams County didn’t just blindly trust Wei Sheng—they went all in. The entire county threw their full support behind the Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs cultivation base that Wei Sheng was investing in, offering help from every angle.

All the approval processes were fast-tracked. The county even assigned a deputy mayor specifically to handle any issues that might arise during the development of the project. Their goal was simple: minor problems resolved the same day, major ones within the week. As long as it was something the county had the authority to decide, they wouldn’t make Wei Sheng’s team run around for it.

While other places might promise “no more than one trip,” Wei Sheng’s project didn’t even require that in many cases—if it could be handled online, it was done online.

Even the technical development team that had been giving Wei Sheng headaches was sorted out with the county’s help.

Wei Sheng had guessed right. While Nine Streams County might not be able to outmaneuver the cunning medicinal herb merchants in the industry, as the saying goes, “Even a broken ship still has three pounds of nails¹.” With its centuries-old heritage in traditional Chinese medicine, how could Nine Streams County possibly have no cards up its sleeve?

To put it bluntly, their past failures in this field weren’t because they lacked resources, but because they lacked professionalism. The truly skilled practitioners refused to stoop to the level of those who cut corners and sold adulterated products just to make a quick buck.

But Wei Sheng’s project was different.

He genuinely wanted to bring those ancestral secret formulas, hidden deep in the mountains and unknown to the world, into the light.

Sure, it was about improving people’s lives and helping locals escape poverty, but more than that, Wei Sheng simply refused to accept defeat. Why should a cultural treasure with thousands of years of history lose out to foreign miracle drugs?

Yes, Wei Sheng had bought those expensive imported anti-itch creams before. But if domestic pharmaceutical companies could develop mosquito repellent creams that were effective, had minimal side effects, and were affordably priced, would ordinary folks really throw their money at foreign brands just for fun?

No way.

Wei Sheng firmly believed that the vast majority of everyday people were the most patriotic. Throughout China’s history, whenever the country faced internal strife or foreign threats, wasn’t it always the farmers who carried the banner of national revival²?

When it came to matters of principle, the people had never hesitated to shed blood to defend the nation’s dignity. And now, all Wei Sheng was asking for wasn’t blood or sacrifice—just a bit more faith in traditional Chinese medicine, a chance for it to prove itself.

Honestly, with the current pricing, if he set the mosquito repellent cream at ten yuan per tube, Wei Sheng believed most people would gladly spend that ten yuan to support a domestic product.

He had absolute confidence in the mosquito repellent formula passed down for generations in Yuan Stream Township.

If an outsider like him had that much faith in their ancestral craft, how could the locals not? Eventually, several old Chinese medicine practitioners from long-standing medical families in Nine Streams County were moved by the sincerity of Wei Sheng’s team and joined the company’s R&D department.

And so, while Housewives Leaving Home continued filming at a leisurely pace in Yuan Stream Township, Wei Sheng’s Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs cultivation base was already in full swing.

Pity the audience! They assumed that a peaceful place like Yuan Stream Township must be home to equally laid-back people, content to live like the drifting clouds and flowing streams. But the moment word got out that Wei Sheng was leading an initiative to develop a medicinal herb industry and build a factory locally, the whole township was abuzz!

Other administrative villages in Yuan Stream Township were also very interested. One after another, they declared that they had the people, the land, and even old Chinese medicine practitioners if needed.

In short, Boss Wei, let us join you and build something great!

Wei Sheng: “…”

Do all the people in Nine Streams County trust others this blindly?

Still, with the enthusiastic support of the locals, the progress of Wei Sheng’s medicinal herb base and factory construction did indeed accelerate significantly.

For the land approvals, the county fast-tracked everything and quickly secured a site for the factory.

In return for the government’s strong backing, Wei Sheng reciprocated by negotiating with the construction company to hire as many local workers as possible. In the past, most of Yuan Stream Township’s young and able-bodied residents had gone to the cities to work on construction sites. Life out there was tough—poor food, poor sleep, and the constant worry of unpaid wages or getting scammed out of a year’s earnings.

But now, with a factory being built right in their hometown and talk of local hiring, what were they waiting for? They packed up and rushed home to grab the opportunity.

As luck would have it, in addition to construction workers for the factory, the medicinal herb cultivation base needed even more manpower. So, the first wave of returning workers quickly found suitable jobs back home.

Once the first group set the example, the second and third waves followed like migrating geese, with more and more locals returning to participate in rebuilding their hometown.

At first, people assumed that wages back home would be lower than in the big cities, and that working locally would mean earning less. But many of them weren’t coming back just for the pay. They were willing to sacrifice half a year’s income just to catch the first round of factory hiring.

Getting into the factory meant having a stable job at home.

Given the chance to secure a steady job while still young, who would want to keep drifting from place to place?

What they didn’t expect was that the wages offered at the factory construction site were actually comparable to what they earned in the cities. For example, bricklayers typically earned 350 yuan a day for skilled workers and 200 for unskilled ones. The factory site offered 300 for skilled and 150 for unskilled—slightly less, but when you factored in the savings on food and housing, it was a better deal.

In the cities, unless you wanted to live in the filthy dorms on-site, renting your own place cost at least 500 yuan a month. Add in the cost of two meals a day, and you were spending dozens more each day.

Back home, you could eat with your family, saving money while enjoying better food. You didn’t have to pay rent either. When all was said and done, they were actually saving more money working at home than they had been in the city.

And it wasn’t just the construction workers making money. Villagers helping out in the mountains were earning decent wages too.

Wei Sheng was planning to make this a long-term industry from the start. In addition to hiring large numbers of people to clear land and plant herbs, he also brought in professional beekeepers to develop a beekeeping sideline at the cultivation base.

Bees might seem insignificant, but many medicinal herbs that require seeds also need bees for pollination. With plans for large-scale cultivation, relying on wild bees wasn’t realistic, and manual pollination would be prohibitively expensive.

So, after consulting with experts, Wei Sheng decided to raise bees on-site. Not only would they help with pollination and honey production, but honey, beeswax, and royal jelly were also ingredients in some medicinal pastes.

This move created even more local jobs for villagers skilled in carpentry, who could now build beehives and work close to home.

Some of the more delicate medicinal herbs needed shade from shrubs to grow properly, so Wei Sheng reached out to contacts and brought in high-yield varieties of blueberry and raspberry seedlings. These were planted in the shaded areas of the herb fields, creating a layered farming system that could generate two or even more types of income from a single plot of land.

Most importantly, blueberries and raspberries are delicious! When harvest season comes around, there’s no need to worry about a lack of pickers. The orchard will be open to all primary and secondary school students in Nine Streams County and their parents!

A warm welcome to everyone—come pick fruit at our orchard! You can eat as much as you like inside the orchard for free! No charge at all! Want to take some home? Well then, we’ll have to settle that at market price…

Wei Sheng had already made plans. If the locals weren’t interested, he’d just open up the slots in his livestream! Maybe even set up a camping site nearby!

Hey there~ Want to taste fresh, naturally ripened blueberries and raspberries straight from the tree, absolutely free? Want to experience the joy of camping in the picturesque Yuan Stream Township? Sign up now for the Yuan Stream multi-day tour! All-you-can-eat blueberries and raspberries await!

And if you’re up for it, you can even sign up to help us pick fruit during those days.

A free vacation where you can actually earn money every day—are you sure you don’t want to come?

The villagers of Yuan Stream Township: “…” Forget the tourists, they themselves were dying to take this job!

Please, dear tourists, don’t come and steal our work!

But as it turns out, there’s no mind in this world that Wei Sheng can’t win over.

A few years later, when the orchard supporting the Yuan Stream Township Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs cultivation base began producing fruit in large quantities, Wei Sheng didn’t even dare post sign-up links in his livestream anymore. Every time blueberry and raspberry season rolled around, crowds of tourists would flood in, driving cars, bringing tents—some even arriving in RVs.

And once they came, they didn’t want to leave. They signed up on the spot, heading up the mountain each day with the villagers to pick blueberries and raspberries. Not only could they eat their fill, but after weighing the fruit they picked, they even earned a bit of spending money.

Don’t be fooled—these folks weren’t short on cash. But money earned with their own hands just felt different! Some short video bloggers even filmed the whole process, titling their videos: “How much can you buy locally with a day’s earnings from picking blueberries?”

So, after picking blueberries on the first day, these folks would head to the local market early the next morning, cash in hand, to shop. You could say that every cent they earned in Yuan Stream Township was spent right there in Yuan Stream Township…

At first, the locals had some complaints about these outsiders coming in and competing for their jobs. But once they realized that these people were earning a hundred yuan on the mountain, then coming down and spending thousands—sometimes even tens of thousands—on local specialties, herbal balms, and other goods, the clever villagers quickly changed their tune and welcomed the “honored guests” with warm smiles.

Who said they were stealing jobs? They were practically gods of wealth bringing money straight to their doorstep!

But that’s a story for later.

Right now, Wei Sheng and his team had finally run into a major roadblock on their entrepreneurial journey: several internet platforms were extremely strict about any kind of pharmaceutical promotion!

In other words, if they wanted to replicate the rural e-commerce model they used in Houzhai Village, they’d first have to figure out how to get around the platform restrictions.

It’s a crime not to use your resources! After racking his brains and coming up empty, Wei Sheng decisively turned to his stepfather for help.

Liang Yi actually had an idea for him.

He suggested that before the pharmaceutical factory was even built, they should take the time to create a cultural IP dedicated to promoting traditional Chinese medicinal herbs.

“If they won’t let you advertise the products directly, then go the roundabout way—start by promoting the raw ingredients. Later, you can present those family-secret balms and such as derivative products of these medicinal herbs. Just drop a few hints here and there. Sometimes, when you leave things half-said, the viewers will dig deeper on their own. Then you can just embed the product links right in your educational videos…”

Wei Sheng was in awe!

No wonder he was the master of exploiting loopholes!

“This isn’t exploiting loopholes,” Liang Yi scoffed. “If the platforms really dared to set up a blanket ban on traditional Chinese medicine and herbs, you wouldn’t even need to find a workaround—just hire me to sue them. I’m telling you, we’d win every time!” He clicked his tongue, clearly disappointed.

Wei Sheng: “…”

So what exactly are you disappointed about? That the platforms weren’t stubborn enough to give you a reason to sue, and you missed out on a potential client?

But Liang Yi had a point. If a domestic social platform actually dared to block traditional Chinese culture across the board, they’d be asking for a public outcry. The line of lawyers mailing cease-and-desist letters would probably stretch from Mohe to Sansha³!

(End of chapter)

Translator’s Notes