Chapter 199: Production Escort Ship Reduction Draft
Xiang Chuan was almost dragged by Manager Heer to the Vegetable Production Department area, while the other students from Class Eight Grade One followed behind the two with expressions of speechlessness.
“Um, Manager?”
Xiang Chuan made a somewhat trembling sound.
“Hm? What’s up, Classmate Xiang Chuan? Do you have any ideas about these tomatoes?”
Manager Heer had stars in her eyes.
I just finished breakfast, what ideas could I have! Xiang Chuan complained fiercely in her heart, but showed nothing on her face.
“No, I wanted to ask, shouldn’t we wait for the students from the other classes first?”
Xiang Chuan’s gaze drifted toward the First Canteen behind them.
Actually, it was just now the time when Nongda Affiliated High School students were getting up and heading to the canteen for breakfast. Only Class Eight Grade One had gotten up super early, finishing several pots of porridge, while students from the other classes arrived fashionably late.
“Oh, don’t mind them!”
Manager Heer laughed heartily.
No, it’s still better to mind them a bit, right? Class Eight Grade One, including Xiang Chuan, all showed speechless expressions on their faces.
In the end, to avoid their homeroom teacher Zhu Bingwen being overly envied by the homeroom teachers of other classes and suffering workplace bullying or similar situations, Class Eight Grade One forcibly pulled Manager Heer to the rest area near the Vegetable Production Department to wait for the other classes to gather.
Of course, the sole victim Xiang Chuan inevitably faced an hour of root-and-branch questioning from Manager Heer.
In response, the crowd from Class Eight Grade One expressed: Heaven has willed a great task to this person!
Xiang Chuan: What have you all been learning in Xiang Xue’s live stream room!
An hour later, students from other grades who had eaten and drunk their fill arrived one after another at the rest area of the Vegetable Production Department.
“Old Lu, that staple food made by your class’s Ancient Gourmet Club leader this time was really good!”
Members of the Literature Club from other classes familiarly went up to greet Class President Lu Daiqing.
In response, the other students nodded one after another in agreement.
“Yeah, usual breakfasts are either too soupy or a bit heavy in flavor. Buns are tasty, but sometimes by the end they’re all that’s left, and they lack flavor when chewed. This time that… called porridge? It was really good.”
“The side dishes were quite salty, but they went perfectly with the porridge! Class Eight President, go help ask that club president when this porridge will be introduced to the main ship. I bet my elders at home would love it.”
“Right, she made fried rice last night. She won’t make fried porridge tonight, will she? I really want to try it…”
……
Not only was Class President Lu Daiqing surrounded by members from other clubs in the same society, but the other Class Eight students were in much the same situation.
No way around it, after the homeroom teachers of other classes learned of Xiang Chuan’s information turbulence contactee identity, they tried every means to pull strings to transfer Xiang Chuan to their own class. But Class Eight homeroom teacher Zhu Bingwen used some method to firmly keep Xiang Chuan in Class Eight, sending the other classes away empty-handed.
Students from other classes, whose palates had been spoiled by Yue Xiang Restaurant, A Bite of China Club Small Restaurant, and the school cafeteria, could only settle for the next best thing, trying every way to build good relations with Class Eight students in hopes of getting first-hand gourmet food intel. If possible, letting them join in on A Bite of China Club new food tastings wouldn’t be bad either~
The gluttons of Class Eight Grade One: Heh, wishful thinking?
Information could be sold to other classes appropriately, but tastings were a different story—sometimes even A Bite of China Club members couldn’t get a turn (like when Xiang Chuan made new food at home). This was truly a case of too many monks for too little porridge; even their own homeroom teacher and principal had to pull strings for a taste. How could they let others have it cheap?
You all should just obediently wait for new food to officially launch before thinking about it!
After the students from other classes gathered, Xiang Chuan was finally freed.
In that hour, under Manager Heer’s relentless questioning, Xiang Chuan felt as if her brain cells had been completely drained. When she returned to the group, she felt the breakfast she’d just eaten had been almost consumed along with her mental energy in that hour.
She looked at Ainuo with complex emotions.
If not for this guy just now serving her a huge basin of porridge that filled her stomach to the brim, she’d probably have to go back to the cafeteria for a second round of breakfast right now.
But the experience of desperately stuffing porridge into her mouth just now really made her uncomfortable.
At this moment, Xiang Chuan felt both grateful and resentful in her heart. The way she looked at Ainuo was quite like the resentful women in the deep palace courtyards in Empresses in the Palace, making the other students around who were openly or covertly watching Xiang Chuan’s movements suddenly develop gossip thoughts about her relationship with Ainuo.
Wasn’t it said that the A Bite of China Club President and this handsome boy from Class Eight had no emotional entanglements? Why does this club president now look at him with such a resentful and affectionate gaze?
The Class Eight Grade One crowd who knew the full story: Watch less TV drama, you guys.
Regardless of how the covert gossip spread, students from each class had already lined up neatly under their homeroom teachers’ instructions.
Manager Heer had now put away her earlier attitude like a fanatic fan and formally greeted the first-year students of Nongda Affiliated High School with a serious face:
“Dear students, welcome to the Vegetable Production Department. I am the manager here, Heer Dina.”
Students from other first-year classes widened their eyes.
The reason was simple: they recognized Manager Heer as the woman who had just bantered back and forth with Manager Wu in front of the cafeteria like performing a skit.
Huh? So this manager who looks very pretty and intellectual is, like yesterday’s Manager Wu, a crop fanatic?
They recalled yesterday how Manager Wu had shadowed Xiang Chuan with root-and-branch questioning, and everyone couldn’t help casting sympathetic glances at the somewhat listless Xiang Chuan.
Blooming twice! Club President!
Xiang Chuan: Thanks for the concern, I’ve already experienced it ahead of time.
However, no matter what they thought inside, students from the other classes outwardly listened to Manager Heer’s speech very seriously.
Fortunately, Manager Heer, like Manager Wu, was a good leader who didn’t like wasting words.
After a brief greeting, she led the first-year students to the fields of the Vegetable Production Department.
“Thanks to material conversion technology, our fleet’s production escort ships can achieve self-sufficiency in vegetables and export them externally. Although some time ago, because other fleets’ agricultural technology achieved a supply balance for agricultural products, leading to a reduction in our crop exports, the upper levels once decided to cut the production escort ship staffing. But fortunately, the recent months’ development in the catering industry made the upper levels drop that idea.”
Manager Heer casually picked a fresh red tomato hanging from the nearby branch and smiled at Xiang Chuan.
Xiang Chuan dryly laughed twice as thanks, then shrank behind Ouyang Yating and Chou Manman. She was now very worried that the students around would hear this and excitedly rush over. After that hour of 100,000 Whys-style Q&A, she hadn’t recovered yet. If she had to face a large group of peers now… oh, no, they should be called high school kids.
Then she would only silently chant in her heart: Tired, destroy it all.
This wasn’t Xiang Chuan being narcissistic. She had learned the general situation of the production escort ship staffing issue from Xiang Weiguo during dinner one day before school started.
She had already anticipated back then that the 21st century gourmet food she brought out might cause the production escort ship staffing reduction plan to miscarry.
But when this day really came, Xiang Chuan was almost scared not to go home.
At that time, the uncles and aunts from the Agriculture Bureau who had taken turns coming to their home for free meals until they were familiar with Little Star all came to the Xiang Family Mansion. The Agriculture Bureau director in the lead was even teary-eyed.
They even brought Xiang Chuan a digital thank-you letter authenticated by the entire Agriculture Bureau and agricultural practitioners on the production escort ships, scaring her quite a bit. (Xiang Chuan: No, you’ve all forgotten your culture, history, and food culture, how did you manage to preserve something like thank-you letters??)
Later, under explanations from Xiang Weiguo and the rarely home Xiang Qi, Xiang Chuan learned the reason why those uncles and aunts from the Agriculture Bureau were so excited.
The Third Fleet was the fleet mainly developing agriculture, which meant that more than half of the residents here were practitioners in agriculture or agricultural product processing industries. If the production escort ships were cut, it would mean one in three agricultural practitioners would be unemployed, and with reduced crop production, the agricultural product processing industry would also be affected, forcing even more people to be laid off and seek other employment.
Although the military escort ships also had their own agricultural industries, the fields there were only for internal self-sufficiency on the military escort ships, and the scale couldn’t compare to the production escort ships that supplied agricultural products to the Third Fleet Main Ship and exported to other fleets.
So when the news of production escort ship cuts came out, the entire Third Fleet Main Ship and its six production escort ships were shrouded in gloom, and even the seemingly benefiting military escort ships voiced unease.
Although most practitioners on the military escort ships were engaged in heavy industry, many of their relatives still followed fleet tradition and worked in agriculture or agricultural product processing. If their families were laid off and unemployed, the economic pressure on these employed people working on the military escort ships would be even greater.
Therefore, Xiang Chuan bringing ancient food out of nowhere not only brought a huge food culture impact to the Third Fleet but also revitalized the entire Third Fleet in one go.
Ancient food pleased modern people’s tongues, making them happy to spend on it. The constant streams of people at every branch of Yue Xiang Restaurant were consumption indicators for agricultural products, along with those freshwater fish that many viewers remembered after watching Class Eight Grade One’s field training, and now the soy products that were the focus of Yue Xiang Group’s development. Not to mention the vegetable soup that Xiang Chuan had shared as a tip in the live stream room.
That small basin of vegetable soup directly made various usually ignored green vegetables hot commodities. If not for the Agriculture Bureau uncles and aunts saying that the first batch of bulk garlic planting would take some time to hit the market, Xiang Chuan would have authorized the even more explosive home-style dish of minced garlic stir-fried green vegetables.
As the recipes Xiang Chuan brought out increased, consumption of diet by Third Fleet residents rose almost vertically.
In the end, considering that more crops undiscovered by modern people might be developed in the future, the fleet leadership revoked the production escort ship staffing reduction draft.
The gloom hanging over the entire Third Fleet dissipated, making the agricultural practitioners of the Third Fleet, especially those on the production escort ships, truly grateful from the heart to the Yue Xiang Group and to Xiang Chuan.
When Xiang Chuan heard all this back then, the corners of her mouth couldn’t help twitching.
She had heard about the production escort ship cuts even at the start of school, but everyone had seemed nonchalant about it then, so she thought it wasn’t a big deal. She didn’t expect it to almost scare her to death this time.
So when she heard before that Agricultural University Affiliated High School was organizing students to visit the production escort ship, she had felt a bit uneasy: Could it be another scene of endless thanks?
And now, as she put on a business smile on her face and returned nods one by one to her classmates casting grateful looks at her, she felt even more depressed inside.
Although the ones thanking her had guessed wrong, she still couldn’t avoid it.
Damn.
