Chapter 189

The first time Wei Sheng met Wu Qionghua, her home had already become the designated collection site for traditional Chinese medicinal herbs in the Shenwu Ridge area.

This woman had truly been doing everything she could to build a better life.

She boldly took on two “boyfriends” at once—Wei Fang and Wei Ping—and even managed to get the two brothers to coexist peacefully. It wasn’t just because they were young and handsome. The real reason was that the Wei family only had these two sons, and their parents had passed away early. By bringing them both into her household, their two families essentially merged into one. That meant their combined homestead, mountain land, and forest property added up to the largest holding in the entire village.

Because of this, when the cooperative was selecting collection sites in the Shenwu Ridge area, the Wu family—now boasting the largest courtyard—had a clear advantage. After the two families began living together, Wu Qionghua had the Wei brothers move all their belongings to her place, leaving the old Wei family house completely vacant.

Her original plan was to wait a couple of years until the village’s conditions improved. If tourism ever developed in the area, she could tear down the old house and build a farmhouse inn. That way, the family would have a fixed asset to rely on.

Opportunity always favors the prepared. Who would’ve thought that before tourism even took off, the cooperative would decide to set up temporary herb collection points in each village? The purpose was to make it easier for locals to sell freshly harvested herbs nearby.

This initiative came from a senior TCM doctor hired by the company. Many medicinal herbs lose potency the longer they sit after being harvested, and some villagers, unfamiliar with proper storage methods, might let herbs pile up for ten days or more. Moldy herbs become worthless.

So during the herb-harvesting season in the mountains, setting up temporary collection points in the villages not only made things more convenient for the locals but also ensured the quality of the herbs being collected.

After becoming one of the cooperative’s temporary collection sites, Wu Qionghua’s household received a yearly housing subsidy of 3,000 yuan, plus a commission on the herbs they helped collect. But the money wasn’t free—they had to attend training sessions organized by the cooperative to learn how to distinguish herb quality, especially for more valuable medicinal plants, which were purchased according to grade.

Wu Qionghua decided to send the most educated person in the family, Wei Ping, to the county for training.

“Hmph. The moment I leave, you and my brother can finally enjoy your sweet little love nest,” Wei Ping said sourly before leaving.

Wu Qionghua gave him a light shove and warned in a low voice, “What are you being jealous about? Your brother spent an entire month leading people into the mountains to collect herbs. While he was gone, weren’t you the one at home helping me sort and process them? Did he complain about you? Besides, the training only lasts five days.”

Wei Ping finally stopped grumbling, broke into a smile, and asked if there was anything she wanted him to bring back from the county. He also needed to buy gifts for the four kids at home. Sigh, just thinking about it made him feel the pressure to work harder and earn more money.

Seeing this strange yet harmonious family dynamic left Wei Sheng completely stunned.

He’d heard that some places in Langshan practiced walking marriages, but he never expected Nine Streams County to be even more open—one woman with two husbands?

And when he heard from the villagers that Wu Qionghua refused to officially register her marriage with the Wei brothers, meaning the three of them were still living together as an unregistered family unit, his expression could only be described as “=.=”.

From now on, if anyone dared tell him that rural folks were all conservative, he’d drag them straight to Yuan Stream Township and have them live in Shenwu Ridge for a few days to experience firsthand the free-spirited local customs. Ahem.

What left Wei Sheng even more speechless was that the girls on their team actually expressed genuine envy toward Wu Qionghua’s lifestyle.

Think about it—having two boyfriends of different personalities vying for your attention, helping with farm work, doing house chores, taking care of the kids, and best of all, not having to marry into their family, serve their elderly relatives, or deal with messy in-law drama.

The cherry on top? If you ever got tired of the relationship, you could just walk away. No need for divorce proceedings, no getting stuck in some ridiculous “cooling-off period¹,” and no being dragged down by a scummy man who refuses to let go. It was practically perfect!

Wei Sheng: “…”

Wasn’t a marriage certificate supposed to protect women’s rights in marriage? Since when did girls stop wanting that piece of paper?

“Calm down! This kind of arrangement only works for women like Wu Qionghua who can earn their own money! Don’t go copying her. If you end up pregnant and the guy refuses to pay child support, raising a kid alone is seriously tough…” Wei Sheng couldn’t help but warn them.

To his surprise, the girls looked at him strangely. “Boss Wei, do you have some fundamental misunderstanding about modern marriage?”

“Yeah, even with a marriage certificate, plenty of men still insist on going Dutch. They just want a wife to serve their whole family and pop out kids, without lifting a finger to support the household.”

“Exactly! So tell me, does that certificate really make a difference? If it can’t keep those men in check, why should I chain myself down with it?”

Once the topic turned to how hard it was to get out of a marriage, the girls got even more fired up, enthusiastically discussing the feasibility of replicating Wu Qionghua’s model.

Wei Sheng: “…” These hopeless fools! And they’re the same ones who keep shouting about abolishing the bride price. Well, now even with a bride price, the girls don’t want to get married anymore!

Still, Wei Sheng didn’t feel the least bit sorry for them. His grandfather had always told him: the blisters on your feet come from the road you choose to walk. Just look at Wu Qionghua. Her useless “ex-husband” neither earned money to support the family nor showed her any care or affection. He brought nothing to the table—financially or emotionally. Why keep a man like that around?

Now look at the two boyfriends she found afterward. Okay, the number might be a bit shocking.

But Wei Fang was steady, reliable, and a good earner—he provided financial value.

Wei Ping was sweet-talking, attentive, and great with the kids—he offered emotional support.

Forget the girls on the team. If he were Wu Qionghua, he’d pick Wei Fang and Wei Ping too.

What really caught them off guard was discovering that Wei Fang, in addition to being dependable, had a hidden talent—he was a master at preparing traditional rural banquets!

Wu Qionghua pulled out all the stops to host Wei Sheng and his team, going even more all-out than she would for her own family during New Year’s.

Her logic was simple: their family owed their current good life to the cooperative, and Wei Sheng, as the big boss of the cooperative, was basically their God of Wealth. Who wouldn’t bring out the best offerings to honor the God of Wealth?

So Wu Qionghua had her “main husband” Wei Fang take down the biggest ham from their storeroom. He sawed off the pig’s feet, chopped them into chunks, and stewed them with homegrown soybeans in a massive pot of braised pig’s feet with soybeans—a dish most families only splurged on during the New Year, since a pig only has four feet.

They also slaughtered an old duck they’d raised themselves and made a pot of sour bamboo shoot duck soup. A hefty five-pound rooster was chopped up and braised with wild mushrooms they’d foraged in the spring. One plate wasn’t enough—it filled three!

The smoked rabbit meat from the rabbits the Wei brothers had hunted in the fall was chopped into small pieces and dry-steamed with dried chili, minced garlic, and soybean oil. The result was flavorful and perfect with rice.

There was also konjac tofu braised with pork, red-braised fish, pork ribs stewed with tea tree mushrooms, steamed pork with rice flour, lotus leaf sticky rice steamed ribs, ham stewed with dried bamboo shoots… a full table loaded with mouthwatering dishes!

And unlike the usual rustic village cooking, Wei Fang’s dishes were not only delicious but beautifully presented. He even carved garnishes and arranged the plates artfully. With skills like that, if it weren’t for the fact that he had to share the family property with his brother, he probably wouldn’t have had trouble finding a wife. But that didn’t matter now—Wei Fang was perfectly content with their current family setup. He didn’t have to grow distant from his brother because of marriage, and their limited family assets hadn’t been split thinner and thinner.

This was something Wei Sheng and his team couldn’t quite wrap their heads around, but the locals accepted it just fine. Wu Qionghua’s arrangement hadn’t caused the brothers to split up or plunged the Wei family into poverty overnight due to marrying off a son. On the contrary, public opinion about this unusual marriage leaned more toward admiration.

They wished they could find a wife like Wu Qionghua too. Unfortunately, women with her boldness and open-mindedness were few and far between.

Since the group traveling with Wei Sheng was fairly large, they split into two tables—one for those drinking, and one for those not.

As soon as the drinking table raised their glasses, the non-drinkers were already attacking the food with such speed that their chopsticks were a blur.

“Oh my god! This sour bamboo shoot duck soup is amazing! Finally, some authentic home-raised old duck!”

“You guys have to try this braised pig trotters with soybeans! Oh my god, the soybeans are incredible—soft, tender, and bursting with flavor the moment you bite into them! And the pig trotters? Absolutely delicious! The skin is packed with collagen, and the meat inside has cooked down into layers. It’s so good I could cry~”

“I’m telling you, this smoked rabbit is a must-try! So chewy and flavorful—way better than that beef jerky I bought for over two hundred yuan a pound. Qionghua, seriously, forget growing medicinal herbs. You and your husband should open a rustic restaurant in the county town! With his skills, he’d blow those so-called farmhouse restaurants out of the water!”

Then there was Wei Fang’s signature dish: lotus leaf steamed ribs with glutinous rice. There weren’t any lotus roots grown locally, but strangely enough, this dish was a staple at every banquet in the area. So every year, people would haul in truckloads of dried lotus leaves from the south.

The leaves were washed, soaked until soft, then patted dry. Glutinous rice, pork ribs, and a mix of seasonings were stirred together, wrapped in the leaves, and steamed. Once cooked, each table would get its own lotus-wrapped parcel. It was a must-have main dish at every rural feast around here.

There was also the tea tree mushroom stew with ribs. The mushrooms had been foraged last autumn from the mountains—wild and rare. Locals almost never sold them, saving them instead to serve honored guests.

The ribs weren’t fresh either; they were Wei Fang’s own cured pork ribs. Stewed together with the mushrooms, the dish was aromatic, chewy, and even more flavorful than fresh ribs.

Before the meal was even over, the group of young men and women Wei Sheng had brought along were already clamoring to stay in Shenwu Ridge for their work trips. They said they didn’t even need meal arrangements—just give them the food allowance and they’d happily eat at Sister Qionghua’s place.

Their calculations were so obvious, even netizens watching online could hear the gears turning.

But the tea tree mushrooms sparked an idea in Wei Sheng’s mind.

Shenwu Ridge was pretty similar to Jiang Xiaoman’s area. The mountainous terrain was barren and unsuitable for rice paddies. To help supplement the income of local villagers, every household had been allocated a plot of forest.

Of course, large trees and rare protected plants couldn’t be cut or harvested. But collecting firewood, foraging for mushrooms, or growing certain Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs that thrived in wild environments—so long as it didn’t damage the forest—was allowed.

Wei Sheng thought, if they could grow medicinal herbs, then why not mushrooms too? Take tea tree mushrooms for example—the dried kind sold for a high price, with good quality ones going for thirty to forty yuan per jin.

And it wasn’t just tea tree mushrooms. There were plenty of promising under-forest mushroom cultivation projects, like the shiitake and wood ear mushrooms Jiang Xiaoman’s group was growing. The economic returns were excellent.

Right now, the forest resources in Yuan Stream Township were severely underutilized. Medicinal herb cultivation was highly seasonal. The truly busy months were only a few each year. What were people supposed to do for the rest of the time? Just sit around?

If the villagers in Yuan Stream Township were already wealthy, then a few months of downtime wouldn’t matter. But the truth was, they had only just emerged from poverty. Many families hadn’t even built new homes yet. If they didn’t seize their youth and work hard for a few more years to improve their living conditions, were they planning to rely on welfare when they got old?

Wei Sheng had heard plenty of complaints from local Poverty Alleviation Cadres during meetings with the leadership of Nine Streams County. One of the biggest problems was a local custom: many so-called “elders” weren’t even fifty yet, but the moment they had grandkids, they decided it was time to kick back and enjoy life, completely giving up on contributing.

But the reality was, most of the working-age adults had to leave for jobs elsewhere. If the elders at home refused to help, then the mothers left behind were expected to raise the kids, work the fields, and take care of the elders too. No wonder so many couldn’t take it and ran off! Who wouldn’t?

In fact, for several years, the local police stations in Nine Streams County had received the most calls from elderly parents reporting their daughters-in-law as missing. But when the police arrived and asked questions, it turned out these women hadn’t disappeared—they had simply had enough of the mistreatment and left, sometimes even taking the kids with them.

And when that happened, the police couldn’t do much. After all, these women had married into the family, not been sold into servitude. In modern times, people had the right to choose where they lived. The police weren’t going to go chasing after them in a squad car just because the in-laws said so.

The Poverty Alleviation Cadres were furious every time they talked about it.

To put it bluntly, these families had been trapped in poverty for generations because of the seeds they themselves had sown.

You see billionaires still working hard in their eighties, yet these folks, just because they married young and became grandparents in their forties, couldn’t wait to “enjoy retirement.”

The truth was, they had no concept of changing their fate through hard work. Instead, they had more and more kids, hoping that one of them might miraculously become successful and lift the whole family out of poverty. But life didn’t work like that.

Why could the children of the rich become business owners at will? Because their parents and grandparents had worked hard for generations to build that foundation. If you don’t work hard yourself, don’t save up to give your kids a leg up, and instead just leech off them—how are they supposed to succeed? The startup funds they painstakingly saved get drained away on your food, medical bills, and social visits. What’s left for building a future?

Wei Sheng thought the Poverty Alleviation Cadres had a point. If you wanted to fight poverty, you had to start by curing this inherited laziness.

But how do you treat these late-stage cases of laziness?

Staring at the tea tree mushroom stew on the table, Wei Sheng suddenly had an idea.

(To be continued)

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Translator’s Notes

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1. cooling-off period: A 30-day mandatory waiting period introduced in China’s 2021 Civil Code for divorce filings, intended to allow couples time to reconsider and reduce impulsive separations; it applies only to mutual consent divorces. ↩