Chapter 202: A New Idea To Make Money
“So, does that agritainment have any development prospects?”
The one asking this was Class President Lu Daiqing and Cultural Committee Member Mandy’s bro one of them Long Xiaoxian, looking at Xiang Chuan with a face full of expectation.
Xiang Chuan had already noticed that this person was somewhat greedy for money and very good at gathering wealth—she really couldn’t figure it out, in this fully intelligent, AI-ified, sci-fi-ized modern era, there were still people earning classmates’ pocket money at school!
If this were placed in the 21st century, they would absolutely be a candidate for the next Huaxia richest or world richest.
But praise aside, Xiang Chuan still needed to seriously dispel this idea of his now.
Agritainment is a very common small-scale tourist activity for 21st century people, but for modern people, it can be said to be an extremely difficult form of entertainment to recreate.
First, the premise of agritainment is to have environmental conditions: adobe houses or thatched cottages with countryside characteristics, vegetables grown by the farm family themselves, poultry and livestock raised by them, folk customs from different rural areas, outdoor activities created using the farm family’s natural environmental conditions…
But in the modern era, it seems only farmland meets the conditions.
Adobe houses and thatched cottages? Modern people probably haven’t even stayed in wooden cabins—could they get used to it?
Vegetables grown by the farm family themselves? Anyway, they’re all using fertilizer converted from farm manure—wouldn’t it be better to just get it directly from the production escort ship?
Folk customs? If not for the drama craze that arose in the Twelfth Fleet spreading to the Third Fleet, they probably wouldn’t even see decent scripts or AI novels here.
Outdoor activities are even more out of the question—this requires terrain conditions, but for convenience of living, whether main ship or escort ship, the terrain is basically flat plains; the ones with better conditions might have a few moats built through the central land like on the main ship, or rivers in nature reserves that look turbulent but are actually completely harmless, let alone rock climbing.
With these environmental conditions, how to organize agritainment? It’s very difficult~
Xiang Chuan muttered this silently in her heart, but on the surface, she still explained these limiting conditions to Long Xiaoxian one by one clearly.
The reason she knew so much was because her own parents had really followed the trend and run agritainment for a while back then, but at that time Guangxi Province didn’t have much presence and it didn’t take off; later there was a period of staying home all the time, and after she went back to work, Guangxi Province seemed to gain some popularity—at least when she occasionally searched Geegle for hot Weibo trends about tourism, she would sometimes see news mentioning Guangxi Province.
But her own hometown at least had mountains and water without lacking fruit; what does the current production escort ship have? Besides fields, it’s all fields. The autumn harvest pastoral scenery is nice, but using that as an agritainment selling point—what’s special about it?
After hearing Xiang Chuan’s explanation, Long Xiaoxian was also startled by the true face of agritainment that Xiang Chuan had just lightly mentioned.
“The conditions are actually this harsh? No wonder ancient people came up with such a time-consuming and laborious thing.”
“You think everyone was that idle?” Xiang Chuan gave him an eye roll. “Another reason agritainment became popular back then was that in the 21st century, many areas still preserved rural farming traditions. This short-term tourist activity was just a way for rural residents to earn extra income. And many villages that hadn’t developed yet had poor geographical conditions leading to underdeveloped transportation, but that also meant the vicinity of the villages preserved pristine natural landscapes, which were a rare natural oxygen bar for residents who lived long-term in cities, but to the local residents, those were just undeveloped rocky areas or woods.”
What Xiang Chuan didn’t say out loud was that back then Huaxia farmers’ farming income was generally not high, so there was a wave of agritainment craze, but after the craze, everyone went back to their own lives: those in cement high-rises doing 996 honestly tapping keyboards, rural farmers honestly going to labor in the fields applying fertilizer; afterward, during short holidays or small long holidays, at most they’d invite friends to stroll rural areas around their work cities—those specially crossing provinces to some village to enjoy agritainment were a minority.
“Sigh… then there’s no way.” Long Xiaoxian scratched the back of his head, annoyed: “I just heard you mention that agritainment and thought it was some outward tourist project suitable for our fleet, but it needs mountains and water… with things as they are now, the Agriculture Bureau would reject my proposal right away.”
“That’s for sure; right now the three major departments on each production escort ship are already fighting over the project plans for increased production ratios of various crops and livestock newly submitted this year. If you level the precious farmland on the production escort ship to make a fake mountain, your dad would definitely chase you down and beat you when you get back.” Cultural Committee Member Mandy chuckled.
Whoa, the bamboo board stir-fried meat tradition of teaching sons is still passed down? Xiang Chuan muttered in her heart.
“If you just want to experience ancient farming culture, you could build a detachable small hut yourself, rent a temporarily idle plot of farmland, take a hoe and experience the days of facing the soil with your back to the sky—I think that’s still doable.”
Xiang Chuan patted Long Xiaoxian’s shoulder comfortingly; this method could only satisfy modern people’s short-term curiosity about ancient farming life—at most after two days of labor they’d honestly go back to their own lives.
After all, if farming were easy, the designers who planned the twelve fleets twenty thousand years ago wouldn’t have specially arranged six production escort ships, equipped with the most advanced automated agriculture equipment to let modern people focus their energy on technology optimization, instead of making them go down to the fields to labor and reclaim land from scratch.
This was way easier than the real ancient people reclaiming farmland on various continents back then.
But what Xiang Chuan didn’t know was that while she was hurrying to keep up with Manager Hill so Ainuo could operate the floating platform to catch up quickly, Long Xiaoxian who heard her words had his eyes light up and then fell into contemplation.
This seems… not impossible?
Long Xiaoxian seized this flash of inspiration, opened his personal terminal, and jotted down a few notes in the memo.
——
“Classmate Xiang Chuan, look at this eggplant—how nicely it’s grown… Right, do you have any dishes that can highlight eggplant’s characteristics?”
Xiang Chuan: Yeah, salted fish stir-fried eggplant, but freshwater fish farming has only just started—where would I find salted fish.
“Come, look at this long cucumber—how fresh it is; I remember in ancient records this was called cucumber, right? It’s not yellow at all… Right, do you have any good recipes here?”
Xiang Chuan: I think you’d be better off just yanking one off and chomping it raw than cooking it.
“Classmate Xiang Chuan, look at this green vegetable…”
“Classmate Xiang Chuan…”
“Xiang Chuan…”
Not sure if it was because tasting raw tomatoes earlier gave Manager Hill a new thrill, making her start circling Xiang Chuan again; every time they reached a field of a certain crop and chatted, within three sentences it was about new dishes for various vegetables.
But this really stumped Xiang Chuan—not that she didn’t want to answer, but her memory’s stock was just those; usually she looked up recipes on Geegle.
Otherwise, as a desk corporate slave whose head was full of various report PPTs, how would she remember so many dishes!
Even though as a kid she often helped out in the kitchen for her mother, so many years of grueling study life and even more grueling 996 corporate slave life had alternately battered her brain—she’d long forgotten most of it.
So even if Manager Hill’s attitude was ever so sincere and enthusiastic, she could only haha her way through with corporate slave routines for dealing with leaders.
After this round of torment, by noon Xiang Chuan was really tired enough to want to collapse.
Even when getting food at the canteen, it took two portions of fried rice and three portions of meat dishes for her to recover a bit.
——
Canteen dining table.
Xiang Chuan looked at Liang Gong with resentful and uneasy eyes, startling him into a shiver.
“C-Club President…? What’s wrong?”
Liang Gong asked cautiously; that morning he’d personally watched how after Ainuo got one look from Xiang Chuan with those eyes, their scandal showed signs of resurgence. Back then he could leisurely watch the gossip, but if the one accepting Xiang Chuan’s resentful eyes became him… the introverted Liang Gong couldn’t handle the gossipy looks from people around him.
Luckily, full and restored Xiang Chuan wasn’t as cryptic as that morning; she said:
“Manager Wu yesterday and Manager Hill today—both managers we’ve met in a row have this kind of personality. Tomorrow we’re meeting your mother—surely she won’t be… like that too?”
As she spoke, Xiang Chuan’s face became even more entangled; she wasn’t very familiar with Manager Wu or Manager Hill and could usually use social distance to get some breathing room, but tomorrow’s Head of Animal Husbandry was Liang Gong’s mother—facing the mother of a classmate, friend, and direct subordinate, Xiang Chuan really couldn’t bring herself to disregard face.
So it was about this. Liang Gong really wanted to immediately retort that his mother wasn’t like those two managers, but considering the message he sent that morning still hadn’t gotten a reply…
“My mother is usually a very gentle person. I often chat with her about you, and she has a certain understanding of you, so she won’t be as… enthusiastic as those two.”
Hearing this, Xiang Chuan’s eyes looking at Liang Gong instantly filled with expectation.
Seeing Xiang Chuan’s eyes, Liang Gong ultimately couldn’t lie against his conscience so definitively; he added softly:
“…Probably not.”
OH.
Hearing these four words, Xiang Chuan’s heart instantly died by half.
At that moment, she saw Manager Hill, who was eating white rice in the nearby employee area, gently waving at her; thinking of having to face this beautiful manager’s siege for another evening and even tomorrow morning, Xiang Chuan peacefully closed her eyes—her half-dead heart now died completely.
Tired, destroy it all.
