Chapter 156

Come to think of it, the reason Chen Shu thought of inviting Wei Sheng to play the male lead in his new film was mostly because of Wei Sheng’s habit of meddling in other people’s business.

To put it plainly, the male protagonist of this film is a classic “nosy do-gooder.”

The “little junior sister” Zhou Mingxing had earmarked for Wei Sheng—Jiang Cancan, a young contestant from Langshan—had made a name for herself with a single hauntingly beautiful performance of *Song of Sending Off the Lover*. The mentors nearly came to blows trying to recruit her, so impressed were they by her extraordinary talent.

Back then, Chen Shu had already wanted to remake that story. When the original film first came out, it had taken the country by storm. He remembered when the county’s film crew came to screen it in his village—he was just a primary schooler then. The movie was scheduled for 6:30 in the evening, but they were already hauling benches over at noon to save spots. Those who came late had to climb the big locust tree just to catch a glimpse of the screen.

But once the excitement wore off, Chen Shu had second thoughts. That old film had become a classic in his heart. As a die-hard fan, he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone—himself included—ruining a movie he considered legendary.

In the end, it was one of his screenwriter friends who gave him a new idea: if you can’t remake a classic, why not give it a fresh spin? Just make a *New Song of Sending Off the Lover*.

Set against the backdrop of modern-day rural revitalization, the story follows a kind-hearted mountain girl who sends her beloved off to university beyond the mountains, believing he’ll never return. But to her surprise, after graduation, he gives up the allure of the big city and resolutely returns home to build a better future with the girl he loves. Isn’t that the *New Song of Sending Off the Lover* for a new era?

“You really think someone would give up a stable job in the city to come back and farm?” Chen Shu had asked, still skeptical.

His friend nearly burst out laughing. “Isn’t that Jiang Xiaoman? The nephew of your little contestant Jiang Cancan? Even a bystander like me knows that. Don’t tell me the director himself doesn’t?”

Right! How could he have forgotten?

Chen Shu had a sudden moment of clarity.

Still, Jiang Xiaoman was just an ordinary person, and a young entrepreneur at that. He might not be willing to switch careers and become an actor. After thinking it over, Chen Shu turned his attention to someone just as fond of meddling—Wei Sheng.

*New Song of Sending Off the Lover* wasn’t like the old film’s tragic tale. This one was a slightly silly but heartwarming rural revitalization story.

The male lead wasn’t some hot-blooded fool. On the contrary, he was clever. Taking advantage of the “Three Supports and One Assistance” program, he managed to land a job back in his hometown. And thanks to his new status as a government employee, the very first thing that changed upon his return wasn’t the village—it was his own fate.

The girl who had once sent him off to university, thinking she’d never be good enough for him now that he was a “public servant,” had agreed to an arranged marriage. Her parents had promised her a bride price of 98,000 yuan, which would help build a new house. She had resigned herself to marrying someone else.

But the male lead, using the 30,000 yuan he’d saved from part-time jobs during college and the prestige of his government job, managed to win over his future mother-in-law and successfully proposed to the girl.

Love was one thing, but in the eyes of mountain folk, a son-in-law with a government job was far more respectable than a 98,000 yuan bride price. And that kind of dignity lasted a lifetime.

To put it bluntly, if a family had a son-in-law working in town, even if they were just farmers, no one in the village would dare look down on them.

What no one expected was that this marriage would spark an idea in the male lead’s mind. By sheer accident, he stumbled upon a solution to one of rural China’s long-standing problems: the difficulty young men faced in finding wives.

Income might be hard to improve in the short term, but “status”? That could be fixed. Even contract workers counted as “half-public servants,” didn’t they?

So, the male lead teamed up with another important supporting character—modeled after Jiang Xiaoman, the young entrepreneur who returned to his hometown—and together, they founded a beekeeping cooperative. They recruited a group of unmarried young men to come back and help revitalize the village.

You see, in the city, a migrant worker earning 30,000 yuan a month might still be looked down on by folks back home. But once these young men returned and got jobs in “public institutions,” even if their salaries were only 3,000 yuan a month, matchmakers were practically beating down their doors.

The village elders didn’t care about official vs. contract status. All they saw was a young man with a work badge, clocking in at the township office every day. When the government handed out holiday benefits, he’d bring them home in big bags. That kind of prestige? That kind of status? It skyrocketed overnight.

Solving the marriage problems of over a dozen bachelors was already impressive, but what really shocked the higher-ups was that the male lead had somehow managed to bring down the sky-high bride prices they’d been struggling to control for years.

Turns out, in the race to snag a good son-in-law, some families who adored their daughters began slashing bride prices left and right. In the end, someone even coined the slogan “zero bride price.”

The screenwriter really knew what he was doing. The message was clear: to all those older, single men complaining about high bride prices—if you don’t want to pay, it’s not impossible. Just be excellent. Start a business, land a government job. If your future looks bright enough, not only will your future mother-in-law waive the bride price, she might even throw in a hefty dowry.

Didn’t you see what was happening in Langshan? To win over a “government-employed son-in-law,” some fathers were offering dowries of “two cows” or “ten goats.” It was both heartwarming and hilarious.

After offering a solution to the township and helping solve part of the rural marriage crisis, the male lead didn’t just leave those new brides high and dry.

On the contrary, he and the supporting male lead kept expanding the beekeeping cooperative. The “government-employed sons-in-law” earning performance bonuses saw their incomes rise steadily. And their wives, with help from the cooperative, either found factory jobs or started raising native bees on their own. Life just kept getting better.

At that point, a new rendition of *Song of Sending Off the Lover* began to play. The male lead and his team decided to further develop Langshan’s rich forest resources by starting a new cooperative focused on wild mushrooms and medicinal herbs. Langshan Township selected a group of outstanding high school and junior high graduates to attend agricultural training programs in the provincial capital.

And so, across time and space, two versions of *Song of Sending Off the Lover* played in tandem—one sorrowful and tragic, the other lighthearted and full of hope. One steeped in despair, the other brimming with promise.

This script struck a deep chord with Wei Sheng. The male lead’s character was incredibly fun, almost as if it had been tailor-made just for him. Without a second thought, Wei Sheng agreed to take the role.

Coincidentally, Zhou Mingxing also wanted them to join the crew to “lay low for a while,” so Wei Sheng packed his bags, brought along his assistant Xiao Bai, posted a quick update on Weibo, and headed straight to the set.

After the Spring Festival, the special holiday episodes of two shows aired and achieved massive viewership and social impact, leaving all other programs in the dust. The new station director, who had been basking in the praise, finally came to his senses and seemed to regret his earlier decisions. He reached out to Wang Qun and Jin Yannan, asking them to help “persuade” Wei Sheng to stay. Whether it was offering him a permanent position or an 80/20 revenue split, the station was willing to agree to anything—just to keep Wei Sheng.

With the contract termination process just one step away from completion, there was no way Zhou Mingxing was going to back down now. Worried that others might be brought in to talk Wei Sheng into staying, he simply took everyone under his wing and shoved them all into the film crew to start shooting.

Seeing Wei Sheng jump straight into work without a word, Chen Shu was deeply moved. Who the hell said Wei Sheng turned into a diva after getting famous?

According to industry norms, a male lead like him would usually be the last to arrive on set. After all, the more popular the star, the tighter the schedule. For some top celebrities, work is billed by the hour. Who has the time to show up days in advance just to rehearse the script? That’s not script polishing—it’s burning through stacks of cash!

Yet Wei Sheng had such a good attitude. Not only did he arrive in Langshan a few days early, but he also took the time to do something big—something no one expected.

Somehow, he’d heard that many left-behind women in Langshan couldn’t bear to spend money on sanitary pads and were still using homemade cloth strips and even ash as substitutes. Because of poor sterilization, many of them ended up with serious gynecological issues at a young age.

In this day and age, how could women still be using cloth and ash instead of sanitary pads? Having grown up buying sanitary pads for his mom, Wei Sheng not only understood their importance, but also knew to ask first whether she needed day-use, night-use, or panty liners.

Before filming officially began, Wei Sheng called his company and got in touch with a sanitary pad brand they often worked with. He placed an order for 100,000 yuan worth of sanitary pads and had them distributed for free to every village group in Langshan Town.

It was a genuinely good deed. When people think of impoverished mountain villages, they usually think of hunger, so donations tend to be rice, flour, oil, or cash. Rarely does anyone think to donate sanitary pads. Wei Sheng’s move, though a bit unusual, was a huge help to the rural women who actually benefited from it.

At the very least, with the quantity he sent out, these women could use clean, comfortable sanitary pads for the next few months instead of those troublesome and unsanitary cloth strips.

But who would’ve thought that such a small act would earn Wei Sheng a new, inescapable “black nickname”: sanitary pad.

A young man, not even dating anyone yet, suddenly got saddled with a nickname like that. Anyone else would’ve been furious.

But not Wei Sheng. He wasn’t just unfazed—he was proud.

“What’s wrong with sanitary pads? If girls didn’t use them, those haters of mine wouldn’t even have had the chance to be born! The person who invented sanitary pads is basically the mother of humanity!”

Who uses sanitary pads? Obviously, women of reproductive age. Anyone who’s taken a biology class knows that menstruation is one of the key indicators of fertility.

If, one day, all the women in the world suddenly stopped menstruating and no one needed sanitary pads anymore, that would be the real end of humanity.

“Alright then, as long as you’re not bothered by it. Do you want me to organize the fans to clap back for you?” Zhou Mingxing had been worried Wei Sheng might be upset, but after hearing him talk like that, he realized he’d been stressing for nothing.

“No need. But if everyone’s free, help me spread the word—I’m doing a livestream tomorrow night to sell sanitary pads. People can buy as needed, and those who don’t need them can still come support the stream…”

Before he could finish, Zhou Mingxing hung up the phone.

A grown man selling sanitary pads? Only Wei Sheng could come up with something like that!

What Zhou Mingxing didn’t expect was that Wei Sheng actually managed to turn this obscure brand, “Xinyue Jiaren,” into a bestseller.

As it turned out, the brand’s “founder,” Jiang Xinyue, was half a Langshan native herself—her mother was one of the first generation of “migrant worker girls” who married out of Langshan.

Back then, any girl from the mountains who managed to leave and find work was considered lucky. Jiang Xinyue’s mother met her husband at the factory where she worked, and after they got married, they settled in his hometown.

That small town was a nationally known hub for sanitary pad manufacturing. Aside from the big-name brands, there were countless small factories and workshops. These smaller businesses couldn’t compete with the big players on profit margins, so they relied on high volume and low prices, producing knockoff versions of major brands and selling them in remote, impoverished regions.

It was a market the big brands didn’t want to touch. The profit on a single sanitary pad might be just a few cents, and the selling price was dirt cheap. But for rural women who had to stretch every penny, these “off-brand cheap sanitary pads” that city folks looked down on were essential items they could just barely afford.

To keep prices as low as possible and stay competitive, some small brands even offered “bulk” or “plain-packaged” versions—hundreds of pads sealed in a simple clear plastic bag. For just two or three yuan, a woman could get through “those few days of the month.”

Jiang Xinyue didn’t grow up wealthy, but ever since she started menstruating, her mother always bought her name-brand sanitary pads. It wasn’t until one visit to her grandmother’s house that she realized the truth. Watching her parents load the trunk with bags of bulk sanitary pads to bring back for all the aunts and cousins in the village, she finally understood—some people couldn’t even afford the two-jiao-per-pad cheap ones.

The sanitary pads her mother brought back were factory rejects. They had minor defects, but for mountain women who couldn’t bear to spend money on them, anything usable was a treasure. They didn’t care about the flaws.

Whether or not these sanitary pads were unregulated knockoffs, no one really minded the occasional loose fiber or weak adhesive. Compared to the random strips of cloth people used to run around with, even the cheapest sanitary pad felt like a marvel of modern technology—especially when it was free.

It was around that time that Jiang Xinyue’s parents keenly spotted a business opportunity.

The couple quit their factory jobs, spent half their savings on a second-hand Wuling mini truck, and began driving around to small-town shops, promoting and selling locally produced budget sanitary pads. Within just a few years, they had managed to grow the business into something substantial. Now, the Jiang family even owned a small company that supplied sanitary pads to stores across rural towns. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was honest money—and a lot better than working for someone else.

As the second-generation entrepreneur in the family, Jiang Xinyue was clearly taking bolder steps than her parents. She figured that while bulk sanitary pads were selling well, there was still a big untapped market in rural areas: customers who cared about brand names, especially the younger generation. They might not be able to afford the big-name sanitary pads, but they still wanted something reliable and affordable.

And so, “Xinyue Jiaren” was born in that very niche.

This small sanitary pad brand was built on one core advantage: great value for money. The materials were nearly identical to those used by major brands, and they were even manufactured in the same region. But the price? Less than half.

In other words, if a big-name brand sold a pack of sanitary pads for ten yuan, “Xinyue Jiaren” would never cost more than five.

On top of that, Jiang Xinyue had a good eye for design. She hired someone to create a clean, elegant packaging that looked high-end on store shelves. That was actually one of the main reasons the company had chosen to launch this product in the first place—because no matter what you’re selling, packaging matters.

If it looked too flashy or cheap, like something out of a dusty corner store, customers wouldn’t trust it.

The packaging for “Xinyue Jiaren” was simple and tasteful. A plain white background, free of any gaudy decorations or celebrity endorsements. The back listed the product information, while the front featured just the brand name and a single delicate carnation. Nothing more.

Even someone like Wei Sheng, a man who had no use for sanitary pads, instinctively felt that the product inside must be clean and hygienic. That’s the subtle power of visual design.

(End of chapter)

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“三支一扶” (Three Supports and One Assistance): a real government program encouraging young graduates to work in rural areas, providing support in education, agriculture, healthcare, and poverty alleviation