"Visiting Fast Food Restaurants" is indeed a special documentary jointly produced by the food supervision department and the local TV station in Haishi. The promotion began the day after filming was completed, and it was broadcast on the local TV station in Haishi at 8 pm on the third day, with a duration of forty minutes.
As soon as the news came out, at 7:50 p.m., most of the villagers gathered at Aunt Hong's house.
Aunt Hong's 52-inch LCD TV, along with its TV cabinet, was moved outside into the yard, and a dense array of long benches were placed in front of the TV.
The villagers sat in twos and threes on long benches, holding handfuls of peanuts or melon seeds, chatting and eating as they waited for the documentary to begin.
Xu An and his grandmother were seated at the very front, while his second grandfather sat next to them with a thermos filled with goji berries. Xu Kang and Xu Le, the two little kids, played happily with the village children under a tree, throwing pebbles at each other and occasionally letting out a loud, excited scream.
Originally, everyone wanted to watch it at Xu An's house, but when they got there they realized that he didn't have a TV, internet, or anything, so they temporarily moved to Aunt Hong's house.
Aunt Hong's television is the biggest in the village, and it also has the highest resolution.
Ten minutes passed in a flash, and the logo of the local TV station in Shanghai occupied the entire screen, with the five large characters "Visiting Fast Food Restaurants" prominently displayed.
The documentary has officially begun!
The opening credits show recent reports of food poisoning and expired food incidents, before the camera suddenly shifts to a conference room.
On the left side of the conference room sat staff from the local Shanghai TV station, on the right sat law enforcement officers from the food supervision department, and at the top sat a leader giving a speech, announcing the establishment of a documentary filming team for "Visiting Fast Food Restaurants"!
Then a vast sea of fast food restaurant photos flashed across the screen, faster and faster, until only six photos remained on the screen.
One of the photos is of the Xu Family Fast Food Restaurant, which is very familiar to everyone in Xu Family Village.
Wow! It's really airing! Xu's Fast Food Restaurant is on it!
Everyone in front of the TV cheered. Xu An's hands clenched involuntarily. Whether he could make a name for himself in Haishi depended on this!
Unfortunately, Xu's Fast Food Restaurant was shown last, while the first show was a restaurant called "Eat Well and Drink Well Fast Food Restaurant".
This fast food restaurant has been in business for eight years. Like Xu An, it started as a roadside stall, but it took three years of running a roadside stall before it opened its first store.
Filming the kitchen environment, ingredients, and cooking process; interacting with customers; filming the location and process of ingredient procurement, and checking the supplier's documentation...
The inspections were carried out in an orderly manner, one item at a time.
Combined with the sharp editing style in post-production, it creates a silent sense of oppression. The sound of everyone chatting gradually decreases until their mouths are tightly shut and their eyes are fixed on the screen, unwilling to look away for even a second.
Only when the word "qualified" appeared on the screen did everyone breathe a sigh of relief and start chatting and laughing again.
Some villagers who had dined at this fast food restaurant immediately recounted their dining experience to others.
But soon, footage from the second store began to air, and the atmosphere on set quieted down again...
The third and fourth restaurants—all four fast-food restaurants passed the test, with the third restaurant even receiving a good rating.
The fifth restaurant that followed was Yipinxiang Fast Food Restaurant.
Xu An saw the Yipinxiang Fast Food Restaurant on TV and felt it looked familiar. After a moment's thought, he realized that it was the one near Elsa Clothing Company.
I see this store every day on my way to and from Elsa Clothing Company when I deliver boxed lunches to them.
It's unclear whether the production team chose this particular restaurant as the representative of Yipinxiang Fast Food, or whether they filmed all twelve fast food restaurants.
But considering the enormous workload of filming twelve fast food restaurants, Xu An felt that this one was most likely the one chosen for filming.
Recalling the actions and behaviors of the store manager he had witnessed while delivering food, Xu An silently prayed for Ren Peng.
As the camera pans into the Yipinxiang fast food restaurant, the place is packed with customers, who are enjoying their lunch while chatting and laughing.
The man who was in charge of the store was sitting behind the cashier playing on his phone. He was a little confused when he saw the film crew come in. It took him a while to realize what was happening, and he put down his phone to come over and talk to them.
The next second, the scene shifts to the kitchen of Yipinxiang, where some semi-finished dishes are placed openly on the processing table without any cover.
The chefs were all wearing chef hats, but not as required, and their hair was flying in the air;
The employee serving the food chatted as he served, and when he got excited, you could see glistening saliva spitting out of his mouth and landing on the food...
The camera then shifts to reveal pairs of different hands, but all of them have long fingernails with dirt and grime accumulating at the base.
These are the hands that chop ingredients, add seasonings, and portion out meals...
Xu Aneng vaguely heard someone gag, followed by a series of 'tsk tsk' sounds. Some parents even started lecturing their children not to eat out casually, saying it was dirty...
Ren Peng, the owner of Yipinxiang Fast Food Restaurant and a native of Haishi, was naturally sitting on the sofa watching the local Haishi TV station.
When the first photo of Yipinxiang Fast Food Restaurant's storefront appeared, Ren Peng didn't take it seriously. There were plenty of photos of fast food restaurants before him, so it wasn't surprising that there was a photo of his own fast food restaurant.
Then he started looking at the first fast food restaurant, the second, the third, and the fourth, without realizing anything was wrong.
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