Chapter 103

Wei Sheng stared dumbfounded at the kind-looking uncle in front of him.

He never expected that the so-called “high-ranking leader from above” mentioned by Jiangdong Town would turn out to be this man!

He had met this uncle before!

It was about ten years ago, back when he was still in elementary school. At the time, this big shot was the mayor of J City. One year, during Teacher’s Day, the mayor led a team to visit their school. Even then, Wei Sheng had already been a little social butterfly on campus and the student announcer at the school broadcast station. Because of his good looks, the teachers had specifically chosen him to present a red scarf to the mayor that day.

He never thought that after more than a decade, that little boy, trembling as he tied a red scarf on the mayor, would meet the “Mayor Uncle” again here in this unfamiliar city of Jiangdong Town.

The mayor had since become a regular face on national news channels.

And Wei Sheng had grown from an elementary school kid into a newcomer in the entertainment industry.

Jiang Baili hadn’t expected it either—that he and this young man had crossed paths so many years ago.

Behind him, Wang Qun stood just as stunned.

Though he’d long known that Wei Sheng had an uncanny knack for charming elders, this big shot? The man who now held authority over the entire national energy system!

Jiang Baili had been working in the energy sector for nearly eight years, gradually rising through the ranks from a deputy position and fully grasping the entire industry’s inner workings. With the country pushing hard on urban structural reforms in recent years, Jiang Baili had keenly sensed an opportunity. He had made up his mind: before he retired, he would help domestic cities trapped in stagnation due to energy depletion achieve industrial transformation and urban renewal.

It was a debt their generation owed these cities.

Over the past few decades, to fuel the country’s rapid development, these resource-based cities had burned through their own foundations like torches, lighting the path forward for the entire nation.

And now, the cities that had been lit by their sacrifice had surged far ahead, while these depleted energy cities had become one “Jiangdong Town” after another—left behind by the times.

They shouldn’t be abandoned.

Jiang Baili’s attention to Jiangdong Town came for a simple reason: his father had once been an ordinary miner here. When Jiang Baili was three, he and his mother came to Jiangdong Town, and the three of them moved into the Jiangdong Coal Mine dormitories.

Back then, being a coal miner was a proud profession. There weren’t any of today’s messy, illegal coal pits. The entire Jiangdong Town belonged to the state-owned Jiangdong Coal Mine. The mine had worker dorms, a miners’ children’s school, a coal mine hospital, a cinema, a supply and marketing cooperative… The whole town was a bustling little city.

Jiang Baili could hardly believe that in today’s fast-developing society, Jiangdong Town hadn’t gotten better, but had decayed to a state worse than it had been ten years ago.

Jiang Baili and his group arrived in Jiangdong Town a day earlier than the program crew. Accompanied by provincial and municipal leaders, Jiang Baili revisited old haunts—but the more he saw, the more disheartened he became.

The once-familiar miners’ children’s school, the supply and marketing cooperative, the cinema, the coal mine hospital—all had collapsed into ruins long ago. The miner dorms were empty. Due to severe underground collapses, Jiangdong Coal Mine’s most bustling street had already been relocated to the current site of the Jiangdong Town government.

This was no longer the place he once knew.

But feelings don’t change.

“Comrade Xiao Wei, can you tell me, how did you come up with the idea to develop a niche tourism project here in Jiangdong Town?”

“What I mean is, since it’s a niche tourism project, how can you be sure that the number of visitors will be enough to sustain an entire city?”

The township officials had already answered this question before—with solid data, clear logic, and points listed one by one.

But Jiang Baili still felt something was missing.

As for what exactly, he hadn’t figured it out yet. But after seeing Wei Sheng, he suddenly wanted to hear this young man’s own thoughts.

Many in the older generation still harbored stubborn prejudices against young people in entertainment and social media circles. They believed this generation was unwilling to endure hardship, greedy for pleasure, unwilling to work in factories, serve at the grassroots, or dedicate themselves to the people. They saw them as always chasing after quick money and luxury… either making content or delivering takeout or driving for ride-shares!

Why couldn’t they just get into factories, tighten screws, and contribute to society?

Jiang Baili sneered at this mindset.

Given the chance to live a comfortable life, who in their right mind would voluntarily choose a precarious, bitter existence?

You accuse this generation of being afraid of hardship, of craving comfort—but why not ask yourselves, back then, when you were young decades ago, did you want to stay in the countryside as farmers or head to the city and work in factories?

Back then, you scrambled for good jobs yourselves.

Now that you’ve had your fill of good positions, you’re upset seeing the younger generation not wanting to tighten screws in factories? That’s the so-called “double standard” of today’s youth, isn’t it?

Though the town’s industrial transformation plan for Jiangdong Town was beautifully written—good enough for a national presentation—Jiang Baili still wanted to hear what a young person really thought about the project.

What he didn’t expect was that the first thing Wei Sheng said was an apology.

A formal apology to the Jiangdong Town government.

“I’m sorry. When I first made this plan, I was too hot-headed, focusing only on fulfilling young people’s pursuit of niche cultures. But recently, while participating in a program, I suddenly realized… besides young people, maybe many seniors from the 70s and 80s also want to come back and see Jiangdong Town…”

Wei Sheng briefly explained how, during the recent recording of “The Wage Earners” program, he had unexpectedly spent a long time with a group of retired seniors from Haitang Garden.

He noticed that these retirees—wealthy and with free time—had spent their first few post-retirement years checking off every famous tourist spot they had missed in their youth.

But after all that traveling, none of them felt fulfilled—instead, they felt even more empty.

In casual conversations, Wei Sheng discovered that what these retirees missed most was actually the places where they had once struggled and worked hard when they were young.

Some had worked in slaughterhouses in their youth and missed the days of driving out to the countryside at three in the morning to collect live pigs.

Some had worked in forest farms and missed autumn days gathering wild eggs in the woods, or spreading grain in winter to trap pheasants.

Life back then had been incredibly hard, but also genuinely joyful. They had been so poor that even the cheap fruit candies from the corner store were now cherished memories—delicious beyond comparison with today’s pricey imported sweets.

“Back then, I was thinking, if our industrial development plan could take into account this large group of retired seniors, it would be even more perfect.”

“Secretary, you’re from that era too. Think about it—if we could recreate a 1:1 replica of the 1970s Jiangdong Coal Mine Living Area and mining district on the original site, and build the commercial atmosphere of the living area into a fully retro-themed setting, wouldn’t that attract your generation to come for sightseeing and tourism?”

Jiang Baili nodded thoughtfully. To be honest, he had been to many tourist attractions, but what Wei Sheng described was something he had never experienced before. Just hearing the kid describe it already made him quite intrigued.

“I can’t speak for others, but my grandma and grandpa would definitely come and check it out! You don’t know—when my grandpa was young, he envied his relatives who could work in the coal mine. Back then, working at a state-owned coal mine was like having a cradle-to-grave guarantee.”

“Children of state-owned coal miners had milk powder vouchers, egg coupons from birth, and were sent to the mine’s kindergarten as they grew up, all the way through middle school without their parents having to worry.”

“When it came time to get married, the company would allocate housing. After a glorious retirement, the union would still organize welfare visits every year… Our generation never got to enjoy any of that, but according to my grandpa, back then if a family had a coal miner, the parents could walk with their heads held high in the village!”

“Pfft~ That’s true,” Jiang Baili couldn’t help but laugh.

Wasn’t his own family exactly like that?

He still clearly remembered that when his dad got work uniforms from the mine, even after they were worn out, his grandma couldn’t bear to throw them away. She patched them up, and his grandpa would wear them everywhere, standing tall, always trying to show off the big words on the back: “Jiangdong Coal Mine,” just to make others envious that he had a son working at a state-owned coal mine.

Hey~ thinking about it now, these cash-rich retirees really might be the potential customers for the Jiangdong Town Mining Theme Park.

Even better, this group of potential customers was much larger—and wealthier—than those young people who played murder mystery games and escape rooms. Ahem~ times may have changed, but young people seemed to stay consistently broke across generations. It was like this when they were young, and still like this now.

In contrast, today’s retirees, as long as they had even a halfway decent job when they were young, now enjoyed retirement pensions of several thousand a month—higher than many young people’s salaries.

Most importantly, these retirees didn’t just have money—they had loads of free time!

Think about today’s young people—trying to squeeze out a few days of annual leave took half a year of careful planning, plus putting up with their boss’s bad attitude. Even asking for one extra day off was a struggle.

Unlike those retirees, many of whose kids weren’t even having children now. No grandkids to take care of—how could they feel content staying home?

“Come on, Xiao Wei, tell us more! All of you, listen carefully to how young people think nowadays. They’re the future of our society!”

With Jiang Baili’s order, Wei Sheng went from being a variety show guest to a spontaneously recruited expert consultant for the energy system.

Wei Sheng: “…”

Thankfully, on the way here, he happened to think about this and had already written down a lot of ideas in his phone’s memo app. Originally, he was planning to privately suggest it to someone from Jiangdong Town—that if there wasn’t enough time in the first phase, they could roll out the senior group’s “Time Travel Themed Tour Packages” in the second phase.

After all, seniors these days loved period dramas. But just watching wasn’t enough—what about living it?

Thinking back to when they did the “Supernatural Series Live Broadcast” in Jiangdong Town, quite a few production teams had contacted the town through Zhou Mingxing’s connections, hoping to come and shoot dramas here. Wei Sheng had been mulling over the idea the whole trip—why not suggest turning the second phase of the Mine Mountain Theme Park into a film and television tourism park, like Hengdian World Studios?

Others do palace dramas—they could do period dramas!

Anyway, Jiangdong Town already had real coal mines and mountains. All they needed was to survey a safe area and build a block and residential zone styled after the last century. They wouldn’t even need to hire background actors from outside—just relocate local residents back, and as long as they followed park requirements and wore vintage-style clothes while working there, they’d receive a monthly paycheck from the park management. He didn’t believe the locals wouldn’t be tempted!

Jiang Baili looked at the carefully styled young man in front of him with amazement.

This kid! Such a waste being in the entertainment industry. If he could pass the civil service exam, Jiang Baili would personally get him transferred to Jiangdong Town… If Wei Sheng could pull off this “Industrial Transformation Demonstration Zone” for Jiangdong Town, his future political career would be as bright as the sun!

“Xiao Wei, you’re a full-time university graduate, right? Have you ever thought about applying for a government post? For example, in our energy system?” Jiang Baili asked kindly.

Wei Sheng: “…”

Why does everyone keep poking my sore spot lately? It’s like a precision strike straight to the heart!

“Well, I started applying right after I graduated… provincial exams, national exams, special recruitment for selected students, civil service openings… I applied to all of them. But… with how fierce the competition has been these past two years, I didn’t get in…” Wei Sheng explained awkwardly.

If he’d gotten his teaching certificate back in college, he’d have even tried applying for teaching positions!

Now it was Jiang Baili’s turn to be speechless.

Thinking about it, it made sense. From what he’d heard, in recent years, even master’s and PhD graduates from top schools like Tsinghua and Peking University were competing for decent, stable government jobs with good benefits. Ordinary university graduates really couldn’t compete with such super academic elites…

(End of Chapter)