Sheng Juanhua looked at the surrounding villagers and had no choice.
She had brought the live-streaming equipment home earlier, but she didn't expect that there would be signal coverage in her hometown to live-stream. She had just bought the expensive equipment and was worried it might get damaged outside, so she wanted to get familiar with it at home. Little did she know that it could actually be used.
Sheng Juanhua was originally a bold and straightforward person by nature.
Otherwise, with her disabled husband and being just a daughter, if she wasn't feisty enough, she would get bullied in this place.
The fellow villagers wouldn't be that bad, but if you had the delicate heart of Lin Daiyu, you wouldn't survive here. Everyone spoke bluntly and wouldn't care if you could take it or not.
Xiao Qi had merely studied halfway through her education, learning a bit of melancholy and sensitivity, worrying about face and dignity, so she found it hard to adapt when she came back.
Reading books doesn't necessarily make one a bookworm. Only half-understanding makes one a fool. To truly be a learned person, one must read thoroughly and comprehend clearly.
Now Xiao Qi could handle the villagers frankly, but there were just too many people.
Everyone treated it like watching a Western show.
Sheng Juanhua was now considered a capable woman in the village who had seen the world. When the time came, she casually opened the live-streaming platform and started adjusting it.
For the live-stream, she had even changed all the light bulbs at home to 60-watt ones for brighter lighting.
The villagers were extremely curious, as this was just like being on TV, wasn't it?
Someone explained that it was different from being on TV.
Since the New Year was approaching, many young people had returned home as well.
No one expected that someone in the village would live-stream, especially an elderly lady, so everyone curiously came to watch.
Most of the elderly villagers didn't have phones, and those who did had low-memory basic phones, as there was originally no internet coverage in the village.
However, at least the young people who had gone to work outside all had smartphones.
They could all use Douyin and watch live-streams.
Right now, the young people were watching on their phones, while the elderly huddled around the young people's phones.
They were extremely excited.
"Hey, hey, hey, that's the lame guy's wife, no, she's my niece-in-law."
Some mischievous old men even leaned in to take a look.
Then they quickly checked the phone screen, and indeed, their own heads appeared on it. Oh my, this meant they were on TV too.
Although it was explained that this wasn't TV, many still felt like they were on TV.
Today, during Sheng Juanhua's live-stream, the background was changed, and some old customers curiously asked where she was.
"I'm in my hometown, our Gumula Village. It's the first time we've had internet access, thanks to the signal tower sponsored by the Meng City Tang Song Group for our village," Sheng Juanhua said to the camera.
Then she turned the camera around in a circle.
The viewers on the other end of the phone screens saw crowds of people's heads and their rustic clothing, which was truly shocking.
Apart from those who had worked outside and dressed similarly to city folks, the villagers still wore very rural outfits.
They didn't have a concept of being rural, and they hadn't bought new clothes. Even if they had new clothes, they would only wear them on New Year's Day. Otherwise, they would just wear anything, so there was a mix of old cotton, batik dye, all sorts of garments, and even donated clothes that didn't match properly.
In short, it was an extremely antiquated and mismatched group of people.
Xiao Qi helped with the live-stream today, acting as her mother's assistant. While her mother live-streamed, she worked as customer service, responding to comments.
The camera was still focused on her father making bamboo crafts, while her mother introduced and explained the process.
The villagers crowded around Su Youfu, hoping to get their faces shown, just like they thought they could appear on TV.
Even Xiao Qi's grandmother, urged by others, carefully combed her oiled hair to join the excitement and watch her eldest son making bamboo crafts. The tenderness in her gaze was enough to scare anyone.
However, on the live-stream, it just showed a fierce old lady glaring menacingly at the middle-aged man making bamboo crafts.
Initially, everyone in the live-stream thought it was staged because there are too many scams these days, and they didn't have enough fools to believe in handmade crafts or intangible cultural heritage. Little did they expect that today it was actually taking place in an ancient village.
Sheng Juanhua pointed the camera at the background of the courtyard's earthen walls, which looked extremely old.
There was also a group of villagers, unconsciously unable to resist the urge to show their faces, with gaps in their smiles because dental work was too expensive.
The effect of this live-stream was unexpectedly good. Usually, having over 2,000 viewers was already considered great, but today the number reached over 8,000 at one point, even peaking at 10,000 viewers with many likes. Of course, this was the front-end data.
The back-end actual data showed that when there were 10,000 viewers, around 2,000 to 3,000 were real, though the specific algorithm for calculating this wasn't known.
Regardless, with that many viewers, in just one afternoon's live-stream, over 50 orders were sold, with different sizes at different prices – the smallest for 50 yuan, medium for 200 yuan, and large for 500 yuan.
The villagers were stunned. Just this? Just this? Just this?
Just standing there and talking, without chopping firewood, carrying manure, or plowing fields, and they could earn thousands of yuan? Was this money blown in by the wind?
"I can sing too, and I sing better than the famous Xiu Hua!" an old woman with a wide grin confidently claimed.
"I'm the best at rice planting in the whole village," another said.
"I can catch wild rabbits," Xiao Qi's uncle shouted from the crowd.
"Catching rabbits is useless, how much can you sell one rabbit for? It's too hard to catch them," someone immediately mocked.
"I can also pick snails and catch fish," Su Youqian continued shouting.
Everyone laughed and joked, each boasting their own talents.
"My family has cured meat. My mother has many pieces of cured meat from over 40 years ago that she can't bear to eat. Does anyone want some?"
"The sweet potatoes from my family's land are super sweet and delicious!"
Everyone chattered away, but mainly asked Sheng Juanhua, looking at the college student instead.
They thought the college student had taught her this.
Xiao Qi didn't know either. She was studying at university, unaware that her parents were so capable and could even live-stream.
Her mother even had nicknames like Sister Sheng, Big Foot Sheng, Gong Li Sheng (referring to the actress)...
"It's possible, just try it out. When I first started, I was just trying randomly too. You just need to buy a phone and this light, it's not too expensive. Nowadays, everyone can buy phones without going to the city," Sheng Juanhua casually said.
The villagers were truly eager for money because everyone was poor, really poor.
Seeing that the lame man's wife could earn money so easily, no wonder she was the mother of a college student.
After watching the excitement, quite a few people became interested.
Xiao Qi's uncle even stayed at her home, surrounding her brother and sister-in-law to ask questions.
Xiao Qi's second uncle was more lively. Earlier, when there were too many people, he didn't speak up. Additionally, he considered himself to have worked in the city, so he didn't want to casually speak out. He also had intentions of competing for the village official position.
He was quite good at boasting. Although he had only worked as a laborer outside, he told the villagers that he was a boss who had taken on major projects and such.
After everyone left, Xiao Qi's second uncle earnestly asked her sister-in-law about the details.
Su Youqian thought that he could be responsible for talking during the live-stream, while his younger brother did the work.
Perhaps people would watch them catching rabbits, picking snails, and fishing.
The brothers were very enthusiastic.
Sheng Juanhua supported them. Anything was better than staying at home doing nothing.
After the autumn harvest in the village, everyone basically didn't work and was just being lazy due to the poverty.
Meanwhile, Zhang Juan had no idea that the village now had internet access. She hurriedly called her boyfriend, but he didn't answer. Then she sent him a WeChat message with a photo of a car she had taken earlier.
Her boyfriend unexpectedly replied to the WeChat message immediately: "Whose car is this?"
"It belongs to a classmate's boyfriend's family. It's just a Mercedes, not much more expensive than our car. Doesn't your friend Wang also have one?"
"Tsk, Old Wang's is just a second-hand Mercedes that he bought for only a hundred thousand or so. But this one you took a picture of isn't a Mercedes - it's a Maybach, looks like at least two million yuan. Enough to buy many of my cars. Is that classmate of yours particularly pretty? Introduce me sometime if you get the chance."
Zhang Juan: ...
Hearing the words from her boyfriend, the man she was so proud of, she fell silent.
She had thought he was just busy and didn't answer the phone. She was used to that, didn't expect an immediate reply to text messages either. But she didn't expect him to respond right away when she sent a picture.
And to ask to be introduced?
Zhang Juan didn't reply again.
She used to think not having an education didn't matter, you could still make it.
Finding an older boyfriend didn't matter either, you could still be happy.
But at this moment she wavered.
Then she saw the last WeChat Moments post she had made, something about loving yourself more than loving anyone else, that a woman must become stronger, more beautiful, more capable.
An advertising slogan for selling essence face masks.
Yet at this moment, it touched her.
She followed the recommendations of people from her village to work in multi-level marketing, develop a downline.
Taught everyone one-by-one how to use WeChat.
After two or three days, there were many multi-level marketers popping up in the village.
Opening WeChat, it was all people selling things, everyone new at it and posting quite earnestly and interestingly at first.
But they quickly realized, no one really needed this stuff, you sell to me and I sell to you, it's all the same things, what's the point?
So some people started livestreaming instead.
Xiao Qi's two uncles went into livestreaming.
The very first day they went up into the mountains to dig up rabbits. Yes, dig up rabbits - the rabbits in the mountains live in holes that you can dig out.
Xiao Qi didn't want to run laps around the village, so she went along too, sometimes unintentionally getting caught on camera.
Xiao Qi was chopping firewood on one side, wearing her military training outfit, the full set she wears at home in the mountains to work - thick, loose, and easy to move in, the belt cinched without any bother.
As a result, viewers in that livestream of just five or ten people suddenly noticed this background scene.
A livestream that originally had just a few people slowly grew to one or two hundred viewers.
It was their first time, so the first uncle got really into it, digging the hole until the dirt piled up taller than half of him.
While the second uncle introduced things from the side, more slick with his honeyed words and ability to chat. But being a first-time livestreamer, the camera still swung around a bit unsteadily.
Xiao Qi chopped a huge pile of firewood very quickly, then split a bamboo shoot herself to make bamboo strips and tie the firewood into bundles.
The livestream chat was full of people calling out "Firewood Fairy!"
Xiao Qi was oblivious to it all.
The second uncle noticed they had an audience, so he quietly shifted the camera over to point at his niece from time to time, of course not too blatantly, just using her a little bit.
After half a day of livestreaming like this, there were no buyers for the rabbits so they planned to just take them home to eat themselves. But after deducting the platform fees, they had surprisingly received over 600 yuan in tips.
Xiao Qi's two uncles were overjoyed. According to their prior agreement, they split the earnings half and half.
And since Xiao Qi had come along too, they generously gave her 50 yuan each out of their shares.
They each got 250 yuan for themselves.
There were similar situations happening elsewhere in the village.
Li Si really did livestream his family's preserved cured meat, giving a demonstration for everyone on how tough it was - you needed a saw to cut it.
Old Number Five was really selling sweet potatoes, roasting and selling them live.
But the busiest was still Xiao Qi's mom, since everyone doing a livestream came to her first to learn how.
In any case, this year's holiday was incredibly lively.
At night, Xiao Qi lay on the reclining chair on the roof terrace, bundled up in a huge cotton-padded coat, video-chatting with Zaizai.
Zaizai heard the rushing creek sounds in the video and felt an incredible sense of nostalgia.
"You wouldn't know, but now they're all calling me 'Mother Sheng' and my dad 'Teacher Su'. Tsk tsk, those two perk right up when they hear those addresses, tails shooting up into the sky, every day going around teaching. In the village it's constantly 'old buddy 666', 'big bro big sis check this out'..."
Zaizai lay in bed listening to Xiao Qi chattering about mundane happenings, grinning the whole time like a fool.
When Xiao Qi grew tired of speaking, she lay there gazing at the stars, silent.
Looking out over the whole village, it felt familiar yet also somehow unfamiliar.
But it was brimming with vitality. So wonderful.
Sheng Juanhua looked at the surrounding villagers and had no choice.
She had brought the live-streaming equipment home earlier, but she didn't expect that there would be signal coverage in her hometown to live-stream. She had just bought the expensive equipment and was worried it might get damaged outside, so she wanted to get familiar with it at home. Little did she know that it could actually be used.
Sheng Juanhua was originally a bold and straightforward person by nature.
Otherwise, with her disabled husband and being just a daughter, if she wasn't feisty enough, she would get bullied in this place.
The fellow villagers wouldn't be that bad, but if you had the delicate heart of Lin Daiyu, you wouldn't survive here. Everyone spoke bluntly and wouldn't care if you could take it or not.
Xiao Qi had merely studied halfway through her education, learning a bit of melancholy and sensitivity, worrying about face and dignity, so she found it hard to adapt when she came back.
Reading books doesn't necessarily make one a bookworm. Only half-understanding makes one a fool. To truly be a learned person, one must read thoroughly and comprehend clearly.
Now Xiao Qi could handle the villagers frankly, but there were just too many people.
Everyone treated it like watching a Western show.
Sheng Juanhua was now considered a capable woman in the village who had seen the world. When the time came, she casually opened the live-streaming platform and started adjusting it.
For the live-stream, she had even changed all the light bulbs at home to 60-watt ones for brighter lighting.
The villagers were extremely curious, as this was just like being on TV, wasn't it?
Someone explained that it was different from being on TV.
Since the New Year was approaching, many young people had returned home as well.
No one expected that someone in the village would live-stream, especially an elderly lady, so everyone curiously came to watch.
Most of the elderly villagers didn't have phones, and those who did had low-memory basic phones, as there was originally no internet coverage in the village.
However, at least the young people who had gone to work outside all had smartphones.
They could all use Douyin and watch live-streams.
Right now, the young people were watching on their phones, while the elderly huddled around the young people's phones.
They were extremely excited.
"Hey, hey, hey, that's the lame guy's wife, no, she's my niece-in-law."
Some mischievous old men even leaned in to take a look.
Then they quickly checked the phone screen, and indeed, their own heads appeared on it. Oh my, this meant they were on TV too.
Although it was explained that this wasn't TV, many still felt like they were on TV.
Today, during Sheng Juanhua's live-stream, the background was changed, and some old customers curiously asked where she was.
"I'm in my hometown, our Gumula Village. It's the first time we've had internet access, thanks to the signal tower sponsored by the Meng City Tang Song Group for our village," Sheng Juanhua said to the camera.
Then she turned the camera around in a circle.
The viewers on the other end of the phone screens saw crowds of people's heads and their rustic clothing, which was truly shocking.
Apart from those who had worked outside and dressed similarly to city folks, the villagers still wore very rural outfits.
They didn't have a concept of being rural, and they hadn't bought new clothes. Even if they had new clothes, they would only wear them on New Year's Day. Otherwise, they would just wear anything, so there was a mix of old cotton, batik dye, all sorts of garments, and even donated clothes that didn't match properly.
In short, it was an extremely antiquated and mismatched group of people.
Xiao Qi helped with the live-stream today, acting as her mother's assistant. While her mother live-streamed, she worked as customer service, responding to comments.
The camera was still focused on her father making bamboo crafts, while her mother introduced and explained the process.
The villagers crowded around Su Youfu, hoping to get their faces shown, just like they thought they could appear on TV.
Even Xiao Qi's grandmother, urged by others, carefully combed her oiled hair to join the excitement and watch her eldest son making bamboo crafts. The tenderness in her gaze was enough to scare anyone.
However, on the live-stream, it just showed a fierce old lady glaring menacingly at the middle-aged man making bamboo crafts.
Initially, everyone in the live-stream thought it was staged because there are too many scams these days, and they didn't have enough fools to believe in handmade crafts or intangible cultural heritage. Little did they expect that today it was actually taking place in an ancient village.
Sheng Juanhua pointed the camera at the background of the courtyard's earthen walls, which looked extremely old.
There was also a group of villagers, unconsciously unable to resist the urge to show their faces, with gaps in their smiles because dental work was too expensive.
The effect of this live-stream was unexpectedly good. Usually, having over 2,000 viewers was already considered great, but today the number reached over 8,000 at one point, even peaking at 10,000 viewers with many likes. Of course, this was the front-end data.
The back-end actual data showed that when there were 10,000 viewers, around 2,000 to 3,000 were real, though the specific algorithm for calculating this wasn't known.
Regardless, with that many viewers, in just one afternoon's live-stream, over 50 orders were sold, with different sizes at different prices – the smallest for 50 yuan, medium for 200 yuan, and large for 500 yuan.
The villagers were stunned. Just this? Just this? Just this?
Just standing there and talking, without chopping firewood, carrying manure, or plowing fields, and they could earn thousands of yuan? Was this money blown in by the wind?
"I can sing too, and I sing better than the famous Xiu Hua!" an old woman with a wide grin confidently claimed.
"I'm the best at rice planting in the whole village," another said.
"I can catch wild rabbits," Xiao Qi's uncle shouted from the crowd.
"Catching rabbits is useless, how much can you sell one rabbit for? It's too hard to catch them," someone immediately mocked.
"I can also pick snails and catch fish," Su Youqian continued shouting.
Everyone laughed and joked, each boasting their own talents.
"My family has cured meat. My mother has many pieces of cured meat from over 40 years ago that she can't bear to eat. Does anyone want some?"
"The sweet potatoes from my family's land are super sweet and delicious!"
Everyone chattered away, but mainly asked Sheng Juanhua, looking at the college student instead.
They thought the college student had taught her this.
Xiao Qi didn't know either. She was studying at university, unaware that her parents were so capable and could even live-stream.
Her mother even had nicknames like Sister Sheng, Big Foot Sheng, Gong Li Sheng (referring to the actress)...
"It's possible, just try it out. When I first started, I was just trying randomly too. You just need to buy a phone and this light, it's not too expensive. Nowadays, everyone can buy phones without going to the city," Sheng Juanhua casually said.
The villagers were truly eager for money because everyone was poor, really poor.
Seeing that the lame man's wife could earn money so easily, no wonder she was the mother of a college student.
After watching the excitement, quite a few people became interested.
Xiao Qi's uncle even stayed at her home, surrounding her brother and sister-in-law to ask questions.
Xiao Qi's second uncle was more lively. Earlier, when there were too many people, he didn't speak up. Additionally, he considered himself to have worked in the city, so he didn't want to casually speak out. He also had intentions of competing for the village official position.
He was quite good at boasting. Although he had only worked as a laborer outside, he told the villagers that he was a boss who had taken on major projects and such.
After everyone left, Xiao Qi's second uncle earnestly asked her sister-in-law about the details.
Su Youqian thought that he could be responsible for talking during the live-stream, while his younger brother did the work.
Perhaps people would watch them catching rabbits, picking snails, and fishing.
The brothers were very enthusiastic.
Sheng Juanhua supported them. Anything was better than staying at home doing nothing.
After the autumn harvest in the village, everyone basically didn't work and was just being lazy due to the poverty.
Meanwhile, Zhang Juan had no idea that the village now had internet access. She hurriedly called her boyfriend, but he didn't answer. Then she sent him a WeChat message with a photo of a car she had taken earlier.
Her boyfriend unexpectedly replied to the WeChat message immediately: "Whose car is this?"
"It belongs to a classmate's boyfriend's family. It's just a Mercedes, not much more expensive than our car. Doesn't your friend Wang also have one?"
"Tsk, Old Wang's is just a second-hand Mercedes that he bought for only a hundred thousand or so. But this one you took a picture of isn't a Mercedes - it's a Maybach, looks like at least two million yuan. Enough to buy many of my cars. Is that classmate of yours particularly pretty? Introduce me sometime if you get the chance."
Zhang Juan: ...
Hearing the words from her boyfriend, the man she was so proud of, she fell silent.
She had thought he was just busy and didn't answer the phone. She was used to that, didn't expect an immediate reply to text messages either. But she didn't expect him to respond right away when she sent a picture.
And to ask to be introduced?
Zhang Juan didn't reply again.
She used to think not having an education didn't matter, you could still make it.
Finding an older boyfriend didn't matter either, you could still be happy.
But at this moment she wavered.
Then she saw the last WeChat Moments post she had made, something about loving yourself more than loving anyone else, that a woman must become stronger, more beautiful, more capable.
An advertising slogan for selling essence face masks.
Yet at this moment, it touched her.
She followed the recommendations of people from her village to work in multi-level marketing, develop a downline.
Taught everyone one-by-one how to use WeChat.
After two or three days, there were many multi-level marketers popping up in the village.
Opening WeChat, it was all people selling things, everyone new at it and posting quite earnestly and interestingly at first.
But they quickly realized, no one really needed this stuff, you sell to me and I sell to you, it's all the same things, what's the point?
So some people started livestreaming instead.
Xiao Qi's two uncles went into livestreaming.
The very first day they went up into the mountains to dig up rabbits. Yes, dig up rabbits - the rabbits in the mountains live in holes that you can dig out.
Xiao Qi didn't want to run laps around the village, so she went along too, sometimes unintentionally getting caught on camera.
Xiao Qi was chopping firewood on one side, wearing her military training outfit, the full set she wears at home in the mountains to work - thick, loose, and easy to move in, the belt cinched without any bother.
As a result, viewers in that livestream of just five or ten people suddenly noticed this background scene.
A livestream that originally had just a few people slowly grew to one or two hundred viewers.
It was their first time, so the first uncle got really into it, digging the hole until the dirt piled up taller than half of him.
While the second uncle introduced things from the side, more slick with his honeyed words and ability to chat. But being a first-time livestreamer, the camera still swung around a bit unsteadily.
Xiao Qi chopped a huge pile of firewood very quickly, then split a bamboo shoot herself to make bamboo strips and tie the firewood into bundles.
The livestream chat was full of people calling out "Firewood Fairy!"
Xiao Qi was oblivious to it all.
The second uncle noticed they had an audience, so he quietly shifted the camera over to point at his niece from time to time, of course not too blatantly, just using her a little bit.
After half a day of livestreaming like this, there were no buyers for the rabbits so they planned to just take them home to eat themselves. But after deducting the platform fees, they had surprisingly received over 600 yuan in tips.
Xiao Qi's two uncles were overjoyed. According to their prior agreement, they split the earnings half and half.
And since Xiao Qi had come along too, they generously gave her 50 yuan each out of their shares.
They each got 250 yuan for themselves.
There were similar situations happening elsewhere in the village.
Li Si really did livestream his family's preserved cured meat, giving a demonstration for everyone on how tough it was - you needed a saw to cut it.
Old Number Five was really selling sweet potatoes, roasting and selling them live.
But the busiest was still Xiao Qi's mom, since everyone doing a livestream came to her first to learn how.
In any case, this year's holiday was incredibly lively.
At night, Xiao Qi lay on the reclining chair on the roof terrace, bundled up in a huge cotton-padded coat, video-chatting with Zaizai.
Zaizai heard the rushing creek sounds in the video and felt an incredible sense of nostalgia.
"You wouldn't know, but now they're all calling me 'Mother Sheng' and my dad 'Teacher Su'. Tsk tsk, those two perk right up when they hear those addresses, tails shooting up into the sky, every day going around teaching. In the village it's constantly 'old buddy 666', 'big bro big sis check this out'..."
Zaizai lay in bed listening to Xiao Qi chattering about mundane happenings, grinning the whole time like a fool.
When Xiao Qi grew tired of speaking, she lay there gazing at the stars, silent.
Looking out over the whole village, it felt familiar yet also somehow unfamiliar.
But it was brimming with vitality. So wonderful.
