Chapter 83

After changing its name to the folksy “Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation,” the show went viral all over the internet once again — and even caught fire overseas!

The reason was that Wang Qun, in order to clap back at haters, specifically had someone film that video of the abandoned mine pit.

There are countless abandoned coal mines in the world, but Jiangdong Town’s mine, which has been excavated for over a century and completely exhausted of resources, still left behind a breathtaking landscape that stunned everyone!

Especially the later footage of the underground river shot by a robot — that majestic yet eerie scene made hearts pound wildly.

Let’s put it this way: if those tomb-raiding or supernatural films and dramas could shoot on location in Jiangdong Town, they wouldn’t be ridiculed for cheap special effects anymore… No wonder so many directors are now scrambling to get in touch with Jiangdong Town!

“Director Wang, what do we do now? So many production teams are calling the municipal publicity office, and the publicity office is calling the town — everyone’s asking when we’ll finish the site survey and open up the location for film and TV shoots…” The town leaders were so excited they were trembling all over.

They never imagined that what started as simply asking the “Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation” crew to help brainstorm ways to lift the villagers out of poverty would turn out so well!

Now, forget poverty alleviation — the town leaders were already envisioning a bright future!

Once production crews from all over the country come to Jiangdong Town to shoot, wouldn’t they be able to learn from other tourist cities and attract investment to build a large-scale mine-themed film and TV base?

Just imagine — a popular filming base where the location rental fees and ticket sales alone could instantly fatten up the local government’s coffers!

Crews would come, tourists would follow, and Jiangdong Town’s tourism industry would boom. Villagers could find jobs right at their doorstep.

Older folks could clean the scenic area or collect parking fees, earning two to three thousand yuan a month — enough to supplement their living expenses.

Young people would have even more job opportunities: starting businesses, opening shops, running restaurants, working as tour guides or drivers… Oh, and Teacher Wei Sheng had even suggested that many productions need extras — especially miners, who aren’t easy to fake. Local miners, especially those with disabilities or occupational diseases, could appear as themselves and work as extras. That’s another way to make a living!

The more they thought about it, the more excited they got.

While Jiangdong Town was bursting with joy, Wei Sheng’s haters and rival fans were not so happy.

It made no sense — when the show first announced its new name, the entertainment industry folks had mocked J Province TV Station to no end. Typical of a second-tier provincial station — even their variety shows sounded so tacky. The original name was at least somewhat down-to-earth, but the new one? Ha! It was downright cheesy! Who would even want to click on it?

“Retracing the Path of Poverty Alleviation”? Seriously? Did J Province TV Station really think that by slapping on a fancy, highbrow name, they could compete with the national broadcaster and win people over just with the theme?

Yet before the echoes of their ridicule had even faded, this so-called cheesy show shot to the top of the Weibo trending list and several video platform charts at the same time?

This… this made no sense!

Helping farmers and alleviating poverty — wasn’t that just about growing crops and selling unsold produce? What was there to watch? And the show didn’t even have any real celebrities — the only semi-popular one was a newcomer who’d just signed with an agency, with a freshly minted fan base. There weren’t even any fans to exploit for profit, let alone Wei Sheng himself.

So how on earth did this plain-sounding poverty alleviation show become a hit?

Confused, industry peers clicked on the full video.

Then, production teams scrambled to pull strings to shoot on location in Jiangdong Town — and within days, over a dozen new shows secretly joined the list…

But what could they do? The only intact building complex in all of Jiangdong Town without underground collapse risk had already signed an exclusive contract with J Province TV Station. The station’s own cultural tourism incubator company would provide funds and manpower, Jiangdong Town would provide the site, and the two sides would jointly develop the town’s first mine-themed amusement park.

Other provincial stations: …

Damn it! So this is where the real money is in variety shows?!

Sponsors? Please! Even if they paid big bucks, that’s just a one-off deal. Some sponsors pull out halfway if the show flops!

But a mine-themed amusement park is different. Sure, it needs upfront investment, but honestly, which local station doesn’t have a pile of idle cash in the bank?

Better to invest it than let it sit collecting interest — especially for an adult-focused theme park that would surely become a trendy check-in spot for young people. Add a solid operations team and you’re basically printing money.

In reality, they’d misunderstood J Province TV Station.

The station covered half the investment not out of goodwill, but because Jiangdong Town was truly out of money…

Meanwhile, Wei Sheng was suffering and enjoying himself at the same time.

The suffering: he was inexplicably roped into a mysterious group called the “Jiangdong Town Mine Theme Park Preparatory Committee.”

The joy: to capitalize on the hype and boost the park’s fame, the town decided to select reputable stall owners to set up permanent stalls in the miners’ dormitory area.

Wei Sheng had thought Jiangdong Town — with no farmland or livestock industry — would be a food desert. To his surprise, back in the day, the coal boom drew miners from all over the country. Many settled down, married, and brought their hometown flavors with them.

During filming, Wei Sheng’s biggest daily pleasure was clocking out and exploring the market for delicacies: duck from Nanjing, donkey from Hebei, lamb from Inner Mongolia, chicken from Guangdong, noodles from Shanxi, sour soup from Guizhou, hot pot from Sichuan and Chongqing…

Let’s put it this way: if there were an opening for a government job in Jiangdong Town right now, Wei Sheng wouldn’t hesitate to sign up.

Good food is comforting — but overtime is exhausting.

The Jiangdong Town Mine Theme Park was tentatively planned in five phases, with Phase One centered on the miners’ dormitory where they were filming now.

This time, the town government had used special channels to hire a top-tier expert. They wanted to transform a nearby abandoned small mine into a live-action escape room.

Rumor was that the expert was confident in the project, and the station agreed. They roped Wei Sheng in to help by randomly picking ten fans from the sign-up list during the next livestream to visit and test out the abandoned mine in person.

“Are we recruiting testers now? Isn’t it too soon?” Wei Sheng frowned.

“It’s not too soon! We plan to open up spots for testers every weekend starting now,” a township official explained. “Most of our staff here are older and have never even played escape room games before. How could they review project plans or game designs when they don’t understand it at all?”

“So, you mean to crowdsource ideas and let future players help design the theme park?” Wei Sheng’s eyes lit up.

What a great idea — it perfectly fit the immersive theme park concept of deep user participation!

Wei Sheng instantly perked up. Overtime was painful, sure, but meaningful overtime was satisfying — not that he’d admit he was mostly energized by the huge tray of charcoal-grilled balut the town leaders had just brought out~

It had to be Grandma Lang’s charcoal-roasted balut! The moment Wei Sheng caught a whiff of it, he was a hundred percent sure.

Grandma Lang was also a miner’s wife from the area, though she hadn’t been lucky in marriage—she’d run into a scumbag. When she was young, both her parents had worked for a state-owned coal mining enterprise in Jiangdong Town, which, at the time, made her family fairly well-off.

Then came the turbulent years, when a group of privileged city youths were sent down to the countryside. Among them was the man who would become her husband. He had no intention of going down the pit to mine coal, so he targeted Grandma Lang as his meal ticket. Sure enough, after they married, her father, who was a mid-level manager at the enterprise back then, felt sorry for his son-in-law and transferred him to the truck fleet to drive coal transport trucks.

What happened later was, in that era, both melodramatic and all too common—when the turmoil ended, this crop of privileged young men returned to their former positions in the city, and suddenly the small-town girl, Grandma Lang, was no longer “worthy” of the young master.

Hearing this, Wei Sheng thought he was about to hear yet another tragic tale typical of that time—never did he expect that the seemingly frail, easily bullied Grandma Lang turned out to be the fierce protagonist of her own revenge story!

The moment her husband asked for a divorce, Grandma Lang wasted no time: she grabbed her two kids, rounded up her two uncles and several cousins, and took the address of her in-laws—which she’d secretly copied down years earlier—and stormed up to the capital to demand justice.

Men like her scumbag husband may have lacked morals back then, but the higher-ups at many work units were not about to tolerate such filth in their ranks!

What’s more, for returning city youths to resume their posts, they had to pass a political review. If Grandma Lang’s accusations stuck, her husband would be branded as “morally degenerate”—a real career-killer.

Grandma Lang knew there was no salvaging her marriage, so she leveraged this scandal to wring a hefty sum in compensation from her in-laws and got herself a job at the same state-owned coal mine.

Honestly, if that state-owned enterprise hadn’t later gone bankrupt, life without a man might have turned out even better for her.

Still, she wasn’t doing badly now—both her kids were successful, especially her son, who, perhaps stung by his father’s shameless betrayal, had not only graduated college but also landed a job in the very same system as his father—except at a national-level department, three ranks above the old man!

His mother could endure humiliation for him and his sister, but he had never forgotten how that scumbag abandoned them. So, the father, still a few years shy of retirement, found work life increasingly difficult… often, he didn’t even need Grandma Lang’s son to lift a finger; once old acquaintances learned about his past, they distanced themselves on their own.

On one side, a nearly-retired, washed-up old man; on the other, a thriving, influential superior—whose side to stand on was obvious.

Once her kids married and had children of their own, Grandma Lang helped raise her granddaughter and grandson, then decided she didn’t want to stay in the city anymore. She moved back home, spent her days gathering leftover coal with old friends, and set up a small stall at the market, selling charcoal-roasted balut and marinated eggs. Apart from her pension, her son and daughter gave her thousands in pocket money each month—she was living far better than her ex-husband ever did.

Maybe because she didn’t rely on the stall for a living, Grandma Lang’s business style was extremely laid-back—she’d bring two baskets of balut and one of marinated eggs to each market, and pack up as soon as they sold out!

And since her roasted eggs and balut were marinated the night before, with generous ingredients and rich flavor, plenty of locals would get up early just to buy her charcoal-roasted balut.

Twice, Wei Sheng had shown up too late and didn’t even get a leftover shell.

Now, seeing this big pot full of balut, foodie Wei Sheng was instantly energized.

Overtime? As long as you fed him well, never mind overtime—he’d pull an all-nighter with no complaints!

While enjoying the fragrant, piping-hot balut, Wei Sheng pitched an idea to the folks of Jiangdong Town—

“Don’t you still have a bunch of old dormitories near the miners’ quarters?”

“Besides converting some into themed escape rooms and murder-mystery experiences, the rest could be repurposed too. We could launch a separate online reality show for old building renovations. No need for big-name celebrities—just recruit a few skilled architecture and design teams, maybe even make it a competition with a tempting prize.”

“That way, the town only needs to provide a fixed renovation fund upfront. The design and renovation would be handled by the competing teams themselves. Each team gets a building or a floor, a time limit, and once they’re done, a panel of professional designers plus online viewers vote on the results. Lower entry barriers, and the whole internet can participate.”

“Old building renovations? And after they’re renovated? Use them as escape rooms or dorms?” The town officials were baffled by Wei Sheng’s rapid-fire ideas.

“To maximize profit, the best use is to turn them into boutique homestays,” Wei Sheng said, picking out a well-roasted balut for himself, peeling it as he explained—

“The miners’ dorms we’re filming at now are quite a distance from town. Visitors coming all this way can’t be expected to leave the same day, right?”

“So, we transform the remaining dorms into several small but unique homestays, hire professional hosts to manage them, and we’ll be able to keep tourists around for a few more days. If you think about it—lodging plus food plus activities, even at a conservative three hundred yuan per person per day, is it more profitable to have them visit for a day, or stay for several?”

“Professional homestay hosts? That kind of talent is hard to find, isn’t it?” The Jiangdong Town leaders were a bit embarrassed.

Truth was, they had zero connections for something like this.

But they didn’t need to—Wei Sheng did! It just so happened he was filming another job-hunting reality show!

“If you think this plan is doable, have someone draft up a proposal. As for recruitment—well, that brings me to another way to draw people to Jiangdong Town.” Wei Sheng wiped his mouth, chugged half a glass of iced cola, then pulled out his phone and sent a link to The Wage Earners show to the group chat the planning committee had just set up.

“This is an original job-hunting show from our TV station. Its target audience is exactly the folks struggling to find work in recent years because of the pandemic. Everyone knows how hard the tourism sector’s been hit these past years, right? Tons of high-end homestays have gone under, and many hosts are out of work. If we really plan to build a mining-themed homestay cluster here, we won’t have to worry about staff—we can collaborate with The Wage Earners for a dream crossover. Let the show recruit people for us, for free! And while we’re at it, we can ride their popularity and get free publicity for our homestays.”

This was a solid idea!

Only…

“He’s a director for the provincial TV station—would he really agree to do a free show for us?”

“And this designer competition for the old building renovations—won’t the funds and prize money cost a lot?”

Lately, Jiangdong Town was painfully short on money—just hearing about more expenses made the officials’ heads pound.

Did they even need to spend their own money?

Next, Wei Sheng showed the town officials through his actions that if producing reality shows only burned money without making any, what kind of TV station would be dumb enough to keep churning them out?

(End of Chapter)

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Changing “Workers, Charge Ahead” to “The Wage Earners”