Chapter 211

Because they had completed their group task ahead of schedule, Li Erni and the others decided to stay for the remaining two days after consulting with the director. They planned to use the final two days to help Grandma Wang’s family with a few things.

This was Wen Zhuangcai’s suggestion. He had been working in the city for quite a while and knew that wild Tianma could fetch a high price there. Coincidentally, while they were gathering herbs a couple of days ago, he heard Grandpa Wang mention that it was currently the season for digging Tianma. He heard that the purchase price for wild Tianma in the local town of Qidaowan was only about fifty yuan per kilogram. At that moment, Wen Zhuangcai thought that perhaps they could help Grandpa Wang sell the Tianma in the city instead.

“Back when I was picking up bottles at the night market, I met someone selling Tianma. My family used to dig these to sell, too, so I asked about the price. Who would have thought that if you take this kind of wild Tianma to the city, the price would be three times what it is back in our hometown!”

Fan Lingling nodded and added, “If you really want to sell it for a high price, you can’t just set up a roadside stall like that vendor. Many people don’t know the quality of the goods. You have to go to those hotels or private kitchens that look very expensive and ask the kitchen staff. They buy in smaller quantities, but the price is even higher than what you get on the street. As long as the product is good, you don’t have to worry about selling it.”

As expected of a technical talent whom Wei Sheng had scouted to train as a Management Trainee for the procurement department, Fan Lingling’s words immediately impressed her three companions.

Thus, the four of them split up.

Fan Lingling and Wen Zhuangcai, who were both articulate, were responsible for taking “samples” to the county seat to find target customers.

Li Erni and Yan Xingxing were responsible for following Grandpa Wang up the mountain to dig for Tianma.

Grandpa Wang had spent his life roaming the mountains and knew exactly where the wild Tianma grew better than anyone else. Because this was tied to the family’s livelihood, the production crew intentionally edited out the travel portion during filming. This ensured that no one would know the exact location of Grandpa Wang’s Tianma “honey holes^[1].”

“It’s not that I’m stingy and don’t want people to know,” Grandpa Wang sighed. “It’s mainly that the younger generation coming into the mountains to gather herbs nowadays don’t follow the rules! They want to dig up everything, big and small, in one go, practically wiping out the whole patch. And once they’re done digging, they don’t even fill the soil back in.”

“Think about it. There are only so many places in the mountains suitable for Tianma to grow. If they take the whole lot and ruin the soil, isn’t that one less patch forever?”

Grandpa Wang’s lamentation also caused the netizens watching the show to reminisce about their own hometowns.

Although much time had passed, they vaguely remembered that when they were young, they could pick many delicious wild fruits on their way home from school. In the spring, there were vast stretches of wild azaleas blooming across the mountains.

During the summer and autumn, they could even find many mushrooms while picking vegetables in the garden.

It wasn’t like now, where even the slightly pretty wild azaleas in the mountains were stolen and sold. To find some wild fruit, one had to travel a long way. Mushrooms that were once seen everywhere now required hiking over several mountains, and one would only find a large cluster with a bit of luck.

In the past, they were picky when gathering mushrooms, leaving behind those that were too old or too small to bother with. Now, if they encountered wild mushrooms in the wild, even if the caps were fully opened, they wouldn’t let them go to waste as long as they were still edible.

“Dig away! Dig away! Sooner or later, these wild medicinal herbs in the mountains will be dug to extinction. We can control ourselves, but we can’t control others.” Grandpa Wang sighed for a long time, his kind and gentle eyes looking toward Li Erni and Yan Xingxing.

“You are both good children. I heard from the Village Chief that you came here this time to conduct some kind of artificial cultivation experiments on the wild Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs in this Qidaowan Township area. This is a very good method. We used to have many wild herbs here. Since the wild ones grow well, it means this place is suitable for them.”

“If we can really plant the wild herbs from the mountains in the fields just like planting vegetables or grain, then the folks in our area will surely strike it rich.”

“Once everyone has money, maybe no one will go up the mountain to gather herbs anymore. Those treasures left by our ancestors might finally be preserved.”

Fan Lingling and Wen Zhuangcai returned that same afternoon with good news.

Several restaurants and hotels in the county, upon hearing that they had fresh wild Tianma dug this season, expressed that they could first purchase a few kilograms to try out. If the diners ordered it frequently, they would buy more later.

Furthermore, the price was indeed much higher than what Grandpa Wang used to get from the vendors in town. They could sell it for 120 yuan per kilogram.

“Then let’s hurry up and help Grandpa Wang dig Tianma together.” Yan Xingxing especially cherished opportunities to earn money. To be precise, her entire family cherished every chance to make a living.

Besides, Grandpa Wang still had five grandsons to raise. How could they manage without earning more money?

The netizens felt both sympathy and frustration toward Grandpa Wang and his wife. They sympathized with the simple and kind elderly couple who had been miserably cheated by their son and daughter-in-law, yet they were frustrated by the couple’s lack of resolve. Even after their son treated them this way, Grandma Wang had only chased him and hit him a few times.

After hearing that her son had abandoned the newly-weaned twin grandsons at the Village Committee and fled, Grandma Wang slapped her thighs and cursed for a long time, but in the end, she still went to the Village Committee to bring the two little grandsons back.

“Can’t they hire a lawyer to sue their son? Having five sons and dumping them all on the parents without providing living expenses… isn’t that abandonment?” Even the production crew members couldn’t stand it anymore.

Wei Sheng sighed and shook his head with a bitter smile.

This situation was all too common in rural areas. It wasn’t that no one cared, but that it was impossible to manage. How could it be handled? Grandma Wang’s son and daughter-in-law clearly intended to live off the elderly. They simply wouldn’t give money. The only way was to sue them in court.

However, in the countryside, how many biological parents could find it in their hearts to sue their own children in court? Even if someone helped them file the lawsuit, the parents might soften their hearts and withdraw the case on the spot the moment they saw their child standing in the defendant’s dock.

“I won’t soften my heart. Leader, I want to ask, which court handles the lawsuit you just mentioned? Do I need to write some kind of document?”

Grandma Wang, her hair completely white, had suddenly appeared at some point, holding a child in her arms.

Look at that, didn’t business come knocking for Lawyer Liang immediately?

After hearing about Grandma Wang’s unfortunate ordeal, Liang Yi felt quite sympathetic. He went out of his way to help her apply for legal aid and had a lawyer from his firm help her file a lawsuit in court.

When he returned home that evening and brought up the matter, Liang Yi was still sighing with emotion.

“It’s a good thing we only have one child, Wei Sheng, and that boy is sensible. If we ended up like Wang Qiaoyun (Grandma Wang’s name), with a son who produced five grandsons all at once and dumped them back home, these old bones of mine would probably be worked to death.”

Hu Qianqian had also come to terms with things now. She used to harbor a grudge in her heart because she couldn’t give Liang Yi another child. But thinking about it now, if the child turned out to be as successful and filial as Wei Sheng, that would be fine, but if the child ended up like Grandma Wang’s son… then it was better not to have one at all.

Just when everyone thought the situation at Grandma Wang’s house was nothing more than an ordinary, minor incident, a professor of sociology from a certain university stepped forward to speak.

This expert stated that the story of Grandma Wang’s family, which was captured unintentionally by The Way of Shennong, was not an isolated case in the current vast rural areas. In fact, because most young people worked away from home, the vast majority of those responsible for raising the grandchildren in rural villages were the left-behind elderly.

Many of these elderly people were quite old and had already reached retirement age, yet they had no pensions. They originally had to rely on growing vegetables and raising pigs just to survive, barely managing to support themselves. Now that they also had to raise their grandchildren, it was truly detrimental to the healthy growth of the nation’s next generation.

Therefore, this expert named Shen Quan suggested that for migrant worker couples who left their children with their parents but refused to pay child support, resulting in their parents taking them to court, a mandatory dedicated account for child support and elderly care must be established. He proposed that employers should be required to forcibly deposit a certain amount of child support into this account every month to ensure that the elderly and children receive the most basic standard of living.

This time, the expert’s suggestion made the vast community of onlookers exclaim: Finally, an expert with a correct moral compass and a normal train of thought has stepped up to speak!

“I agree with Professor Shen’s proposal. I grew up with my grandparents when I was a kid. My grandparents were honest, hardworking farmers. My dad drove my mom away with domestic violence and then dumped me and my younger brother in our hometown, ignoring us completely. My grandparents didn’t dare ask him for any child support, and back then, we hadn’t heard that you could go to court to sue. Life was truly too bitter when I was young; we couldn’t even scrape together the tuition for both of us. I went out to work before I even finished middle school.”

“Is it only in the past? This situation is still everywhere in the countryside now, okay? My brother is exactly like that! He always says there’s nothing to spend money on in the village and dumps his two kids in the hometown. Guess how much living expenses he gives every month? Three hundred yuan per child! He even has the nerve to say kids eat very little and three hundred is more than enough. Sure, kids might not eat much rice and vegetables, but other expenses are high. If nothing else, three hundred yuan is only enough for one tin of milk powder, right? Don’t the kids eat snacks? Do they never get sick?”

“I suggest the expert expand the scope of this proposal to the whole country. There are plenty of people in the city who live off their parents while bringing their own kids along. That’s how my brother and sister-in-law are. They spend money recklessly themselves, and as soon as they have a kid, they toss it to my parents. They even have the audacity to say, ‘We gave birth to this child for your Liu Family anyway, so if you don’t raise it, who will?’ I suggest that all couples who want to have children should set up a special support account in advance. If you won’t raise what you birth, then just don’t have them!”

The program crew never expected that after the new episode came out, the point of interest for netizens wouldn’t be the contestants’ growth, but would instead veer off into a social topic!

Well, the participation level for this social topic was indeed very high, and Professor Shen Quan was no ordinary professor. He had another identity: Representative Shen, a representative of the National People’s Congress^[2] that meets every year.

Professor Shen’s influence within the industry was quite significant. Once the old gentleman spoke up, other experts and scholars also stepped forward to echo him, strongly demanding that society must pay attention to the issue of raising the next generation, especially in the vast rural areas. They insisted that situations like Grandma Wang’s must never be allowed to happen!

Over at Guagua Video, they were grinning from ear to ear as they watched the program’s view counts skyrocket.

But when they looked at the trending search rankings again, they couldn’t help but feel a bit depressed, as the topics had absolutely nothing to do with the program’s theme.

On second thought, they decided to let it go. After all, once these netizens followed this social topic, they would discover it was triggered by an accidental clip from a certain show, and nine times out of ten, they would search for the program to watch it.

As expected of Guagua Video, who were professionals at generating buzz, once they realized this, the program crew didn’t try to force-buy trending spots to promote the show and the contestants. Instead, they struck while the iron was hot, having people edit together many social topics that had appeared in the show. Acting as their own hype-men, they started a massive thread on the program’s official blog with the title:

“I suggest The Way of Shennong be renamed ‘Society and Law^[3] (Online Version)’. Look what I found!”

Curious fans clicked in to take a look and were instantly speechless.

The netizens had a point. Since the pilot episode, this show had basically been wearing the skin of promoting China’s traditional medicinal herb culture while doing the work that Society and Law should be doing.

Regarding Li Erni’s eldest sister, who was sold off in exchange for a bride price – how about learning about freedom of marriage?

And Fan Lingling’s older sister, who jumped off a building over a school uniform – was that really just about the hardships of rural family life? It was clearly a serious violation of regulations regarding the school’s mandatory uniform orders!

Then there was Wen Zhuangcai’s family. His thick-skinned uncle and shameless grandmother didn’t need the condemnation of conscience; they needed the sanctions of the law, okay? Maliciously seizing the only property of an orphan and a widow – isn’t that a crime?

After finishing the thread, the onlookers were silent: “…”

Did this program really hide so many positive-energy social and legal issues? Or were they originally just legally illiterate, so they hadn’t noticed while watching the show?

For a moment, the rebellious streaks in the onlookers could no longer be suppressed. Many people couldn’t help but click on the pilot episode again, watching the program seriously from the very beginning.

As a result, “The Way of Shennong,” which had originally been sitting at fourth place on the viewership charts, leaped to the top spot overnight. Its search volume across the entire network held the number one position for two consecutive days. With this, “The Way of Shennong” had officially become a massive mainstream hit.

(End of Chapter)