Chapter 101

That night, viewers following the show The Wage Earners were stunned by the nationwide elderly care center industry plan mentioned in the program.

“I thought only our neighborhood had an elderly care center. Turns out pilot programs are rolling out all over the country?”

“No wonder there’s a new sign for an elderly care service center outside our community. I thought it was another scam selling therapeutic mattresses or something, but it’s actually a government-run elderly care center?”

“Awesome! Immediately sending the show link to the family group chat. Now my relatives will stop worrying about me dying alone at home because I can’t get married.”

Sharp-eyed viewers were already spotting new job opportunities—

“Holy crap! Why didn’t I think of this? The job was right outside my door! Working at the elderly care center? I can totally do that!”

“Just registered, hahaha. I checked just now—our Street-level Elderly Care Center is really hiring! Base salary over three thousand, plus full social insurance and housing fund benefits, nearly the same treatment as other street-level staff. The more you work, the more you earn. Not bad at all~”

“Can someone upstairs share some application tips? Do I need a social worker certificate or something?”

“I checked the recruitment page—no such requirement. Watch the show carefully! Didn’t they mention it? The Street-level Elderly Care Center will organize all probationary staff for training at large professional health and wellness hospitals—for free! After the training, you can even get certified.”

666!

For a while, recruitment hotlines at street-level elderly care service centers across the country were almost overwhelmed by unemployed people.

Mainly because the entry barrier for this job was low. As long as you had a high school or vocational diploma, spoke clearly, were diligent, and had some learning ability, you could apply.

Of course, this might just be temporary.

Shao Ping, Qin Fang, and their batch really caught a good wave. When most people still didn’t know the centers were hiring, plus with help from the production team, they got in almost effortlessly.

But those who applied later weren’t so lucky.

After all, these days, any job even remotely tied to the public sector—even if just a labor dispatch position—has people scrambling for it. Not to mention these elderly care center jobs offered social insurance, housing funds, over three thousand a month, job stability… technically part of the public system. Soon, not just vocational school graduates, even undergrads and postgrads from less employable majors started signing up.

Care worker positions at elderly centers—once totally ignored—suddenly became hot property.

The funniest part was, many people didn’t even know what exactly a Street-level Elderly Care Center did. Just to stand out among so many candidates, people started treating recent episodes of The Wage Earners filmed at Haitangyuan Street as their exam prep bible—re-watching again and again, carefully analyzing the videos.

Thanks to this relentless study effort from the civil service exam crowd, it didn’t take long before The Wage Earners bizarrely climbed to second place on the national variety show streaming chart!

Not long ago, they hadn’t even cracked the top ten.

The station leadership was floored by this result—not to mention the production teams from other shows now pushed down the rankings were left speechless.

So the real traffic secret… was the civil service exam crowd?!

These exam junkies… are terrifying!

“Hahahaha~ Coincidence! Pure coincidence!” Jin Yannan had just feigned humility in front of the station executives, then immediately jumped on this newly discovered traffic hack. She quickly ordered late-night snacks and milk tea for the post-production team and had them work overnight to re-edit behind-the-scenes footage from The Wage Earners’ episodes filmed at Haitangyuan Street, cutting together three new highlight reels from different perspectives.

Focusing on how the elderly care service centers operated: the role of the street office, the workers, and the management. Especially leadership feedback and long-term outlooks for the industry—basically a collection of likely exam topics!

Wang Qun was about ready to explode from how furious Jin Yannan was making him. Their show was supposed to be the station’s biggest hit—who could’ve predicted Jin Yannan would create the station’s first-ever VIP subscription content?

She uploaded these episodes to the J Province TV Station app, with subscription pricing kept low: just one yuan per episode. Compared to those pricey civil service prep courses that cost thousands, this was basically dirt cheap.

But there was no resisting the sheer number of people nationwide wanting to apply for street-level elderly care center jobs~

Within a month of release, revenue from these videos astonishingly passed the Fifty-Cent Army mark!

Compared to the station’s usual ad revenue, that might not seem like much, but given that every year there’s a steady stream of people applying for elderly care or social worker jobs, these few episodes were pure, essential exam prep content! One yuan per episode, three yuan for the full set—that’s cheaper than a decent bottle of mineral water these days!

Probably tasting success, when Jin Yannan proposed filming a special feature at Haitangyuan Street, the station leadership agreed without hesitation.

After all, there was way too much footage from the Haitangyuan elderly care center. Episode length was already tight. The “Sunset Red Live Streaming Group” segment that Wei Sheng’s team had planned had to be painfully shelved for a future special.

Looking back now—thank goodness they didn’t squeeze it into the original episodes. Who would’ve guessed the show would blow up like this?

That’s why they say: to achieve big things, you have to know how to make trade-offs.

If Jin Yannan had taken the easy route back then and crammed the prep for the “Sunset Red Live Streaming Group” into a single episode, sure it would’ve saved trouble early on—but it also would’ve wasted a whole episode’s worth of valuable content.

No exaggeration: given The Wage Earners’ current level of nationwide popularity, losing even a single episode’s worth of content could easily cost the station tens of millions!

And if you factored in future reruns and online ad revenue tied to streaming volume, the potential loss was even harder to calculate… No wonder the station leadership agreed so quickly to her special feature proposal.

Normally, the number of episodes per show is fixed during planning. Adding an extra episode means pushing back the next scheduled program. If their show hadn’t made so much money for the station, leadership never would’ve taken that risk.

At this point, Jin Yannan couldn’t help but feel relieved. Thank goodness the extra feature just happened to focus on the four guests’ new investment project. Otherwise, suddenly needing to shoot another episode would’ve been a scheduling nightmare—especially for fully booked actors like Shen Yi or rising stars like Zhang Hanxing.

But now—Director Jin was fully energized!

Worried? Why? All four of them had invested money in this project and were counting on it to help secure their financial future—of course they were going to give it their all!

As expected, when word got out that The Wage Earners was going to shoot a special episode at Haitangyuan, featuring their investment project—the “Sunset Red Live Streaming Group”—Shen Yi and the others scrambled to rearrange their schedules. They planned to attend Shao Ping and Qin Fang’s wedding banquet and squeeze in the remaining filming at the same time.

Wei Sheng, meanwhile, hadn’t had a moment’s rest since returning these past few days. There wasn’t even time for his usual study drills. He was constantly running around handling paperwork. Watching him look so blatantly distracted from his real job, Zhou Mingxing was beside himself with eye-rolls, secretly resenting how Hu Qianqian and her son Wei Sheng had him by the throat. Now that he was on this pirate ship, getting off wasn’t so easy.

Ever since Hu Qianqian’s little shop started selling chicks, silkworms, and bamboo lanterns, it became wildly popular among the local elementary school kids. Kids loved to hang out in groups, and over time, it felt like Zhou Yinuo had been half-adopted by the Hu family. She was practically Hu Qianqian’s own daughter now.

Some parents, unaware of the situation, would see the little girl trailing Hu Qianqian everywhere. Coupled with how Hu Qianqian had been glowing and more youthful-looking ever since her divorce, they even started to assume Zhou Yinuo was Hu Qianqian’s second child.

Everyone knew her first child—local TV star Wei Sheng.

Looking at them now, both Wei Sheng and Zhou Yinuo had big eyes, high nose bridges, and fair, delicate skin just like Hu Qianqian. They really did look like siblings.

Hu Qianqian was also very fond of Zhou Yinuo. Honestly, if Wei Zhiyong hadn’t been such scum back then, Hu Qianqian had considered having another daughter herself. Ironically, she hadn’t given birth to one, but now she’d been gifted this sweet, sensible girl.

Whenever Zhou Mingxing had to leave for work trips and called the nanny to pick up Zhou Yinuo, Hu Qianqian would often object. Zhou Yinuo herself preferred to stay with Hu Qianqian. Probably traumatized by that treacherous former nanny, the girl didn’t trust Zhou Mingxing’s new hire much either. Whenever her dad wasn’t home, she’d rather pack a bag and crash at Aunt Hu’s place for a few days.

As time went on, half of Zhou Yinuo’s clothes and toys slowly migrated to the Hu household.

Zhou Mingxing felt guilty about it. Every time he came back from a trip, he’d bring bags of gifts to Hu’s house to express his thanks. After all, compared to an unfamiliar nanny, leaving his daughter with Hu Qianqian gave him much more peace of mind.

Wei Sheng, on the other hand, had no problem with having his mom “stolen.” His work was getting busier by the day, with trips all over the country, leaving him with no time to keep her company. Since he had no plans to get married or have kids anytime soon, Hu Qianqian having Zhou Yinuo around meant she wasn’t lonely.

With the two families growing closer, Zhou Mingxing could no longer treat Wei Sheng the way he used to—barking orders like before.

Not that he could even if he wanted to.

Wei Sheng’s persuasive powers were terrifying. Even someone like Shen Yi—who had suffered badly at the hands of men in the past—started treating Wei Sheng like a real younger brother after just a few episodes of filming together.

Then there were Zhang Hanxing and Yang Junyao—utter disappointments! They were Wei Sheng’s seniors, but couldn’t they at least act like it? Couldn’t they haze the newbie a little?

Instead, they happily followed Wei Sheng into this startup adventure, building their little private fund.

At this rate, where was his authority as a manager? Where was his dignity?

Where were his shares?

When the four of them banded together to invest, did they forget about their manager?

Zhou Mingxing was secretly sulking, feeling thoroughly sidelined by this little Wei Sheng-centric clique.

Hu Qianqian tried to console him: “This is perfectly normal. The younger generation likes different things than us. Let them have their fun. We’ll have ours.”

Zhou Mingxing: “…”

Not comforted at all, thanks!

It was bad enough feeling left out. Now he was not only sidelined but forcibly promoted a whole generation, turned into the “elder” in Wei Sheng’s eyes. How could that possibly cheer him up?

Two days later…

“Hahahaha! That Wei Sheng kid! Really making our station proud!” Zhou Mingxing hung up the phone with a beaming grin and hurried off to report the good news to the network execs.

Who would’ve thought that the “Special Tourism Development Plan” Wei Sheng and the Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation team had brainstormed for Jiangdong Town would actually receive formal approval from a national agency!

The call had come from Jiangdong Town, sharing the great news. Apparently, there were still many resource-exhausted towns like Jiangdong across the country, and these lingering historical issues needed urgent solutions. Jiangdong Town, thanks to its accidental but proactive participation in the variety show, had stumbled its way into finding a self-driven path to industrial transformation. They’d become a role model for similar towns.

As a result, the higher-ups decided to officially designate Jiangdong Town as a “National Demonstration Zone for Industrial Transformation in Resource-Depleted Cities,” with comprehensive support promised to help Jiangdong Town achieve full economic revitalization and improve local livelihoods.

The reason for Jiangdong Town’s call was simple: the national leaders wanted to meet the person behind the idea. Grateful for Wei Sheng’s brilliant plan, Jiangdong Town had promptly submitted his name.

Zhou Mingxing: “…”

The taste of getting slapped in the face!

Just days ago, he’d been complaining about Wei Sheng slacking off. Now, hearing that senior government officials wanted to meet Wei Sheng personally, Zhou Mingxing was wishing Wei Sheng could be even more “unfocused” from now on.

This kind of honor! This kind of social impact! Honestly, it was way more impressive than any trophy Wei Sheng could win at a film or television awards festival.

Industry accolades were still just industry noise.

But this… This was direct involvement in the nation’s resource-redevelopment plan for struggling cities. Not something your average entertainment celebrity could participate in. This was a real, national-level poverty alleviation initiative.

If this ended up being reported on the national news… Zhou Mingxing felt that Wei Sheng’s future influence and resources within mainstream circles would be utterly unrivaled.

The more Zhou Mingxing thought about it, the more excited he got. When he finally called Wei Sheng, he felt like he was floating on air! No one could drag him back down from this high.

(End of Chapter)