Chapter 221: The Season of Farewell: The Victorious General Returns
"Captain, I've thought this over carefully." After a night of grief, Wen Wenxu seemed to have finally accepted Zhu Yingning's continued service at breakfast the next morning. Midway through his meal, he put down his bowl and said worriedly, "I've thought about it over and over again, and I think you should hurry up and learn to drive while I'm still here."
"Huh?" She was holding a piece of noodles in her mouth and her eyes widened when she heard that.
"Think about it, does this make sense? There are so many of us here, and I'm the only one who can drive! Oh, the Party Secretary can drive too, but he, well... you know."
Wang Shengju is a good person in every way, except for one thing - he likes to be lazy outside of work.
He was a slow-paced man. On days he wasn't working, he'd leisurely tend to his garden, help his children with their homework, and spend time with his wife. If there was an emergency at work, he'd rush off to handle it. But if he was asked to handle something less pressing outside of work, like driving to town to pick someone up or deliver some documents, he'd simply agree with a steady "yes, yes," then drag his feet, showing no sign of moving.
After being together for such a long time, the three of them had long seen through Wang Shengju's character and knew that they could not expect him to drive anything.
Wen Wenxu said earnestly, "I'm still here, and you can still do whatever you want with me. But what will you do when Shen Fei and I leave? You can't always ride a bike that looks terrible when you do things, right?"
"Well……"
"Don't bother anymore. Hurry up and find a driving school to sign up and get your driver's license."
The person in front of her was willing to risk his life to give her advice, so she could only nod dejectedly and accept the minister's advice.
Driving lessons were finalized, and she also started working on her Douyin account. Zhu Yingning couldn't rest. She was a typical multi-tasker; keeping busy didn't drain her energy; instead, it opened her mind and inspired her to do more. She asked for a membership list from her city's e-commerce association, as well as from several surrounding cities, and began searching the list for potential partners.
With the popularity of short videos these days, livestreaming e-commerce platforms are popping up like mushrooms after rain. The number of platforms isn't a concern; the key is choosing the right ones. Besides introducing the village's pork production with conventional presentations to help companies understand the village's situation, she also drafted a cooperation plan in advance, mapping out available space in the village and even in town. She also decided to bring in talent from the base, offering them a gradient curriculum to combine theory with practice, aiming to quickly build a local livestreaming team.
Now that the plan is set, the next step is to look for partners.
She traveled around the city and several surrounding cities - of course, before she got her driver's license, Wen Wenxu was still her slave, responsible for driving her to various e-commerce bases in the surrounding area to observe and discuss cooperation.
Chen Fei would come occasionally, but most of the time she was in the village perfecting the table pet she developed.
Based on the feedback from users, she added a weather forecast and disaster warning function to the desktop pet. Whenever it rains, floods, or wildfires occur, the desktop pet will promptly remind villagers to take precautions in both Mandarin and dialect.
Some people don't like the table pet to be an eyesore on the phone screen and just want to summon it when needed. Considering that most of the villagers are elderly, voice is the most convenient for them. All other functions that require finger operation or text recognition are too cumbersome in their eyes. Therefore, Chen Fei also added a voice summoning function. Before summoning, the table pet is in a folded state and will appear only after being summoned.
Because the image of the table pet was carefully designed—a chubby child in red clothes with a constant grin—it looked festive and adorable, the village elders quite liked it. Someone even asked her, "Xiao Shen, I heard that the future will be the era of robots, and robots can chat with real people. Can you make this child on the screen into the kind of robot that everyone talks about?"
Chen Fei could do nothing to help.
Although she majored in computer science in college, AI capable of engaging in free conversation with humans seemed far off. She had briefly studied big data and artificial intelligence in college, but the knowledge, rarely applied, had long since faded from her teacher's grasp. Back then, she believed the craze for large language models was still far in the future. Unexpectedly, just two years later, in November 2022, the release of ChatGPT 3.5 brought mature large language model conversational interaction to the public's attention. By the mid-2020s, the conversational interaction desired by seniors could be achieved through APIs connected to large language models.
The times have taken an anchor here.
In short, because she wanted to complete the functions of the table pet before the end of the service period, Shen Fei almost never left the house, so much so that Wen Wenxu often shook his head when he saw her: "Xiao Shen, Xiao Shen, why did you become a homebody?"
Shen Fei said, "Get lost."
"You are so rude." Wen Wenxu accused.
She smiled wryly, "Comrade Xiao Wen, please get out of here."
Everyone is busy in their respective fields, hoping to put a perfect end to this not-so-long service period.
In May, the vlog they encouraged the young people in the village to shoot unexpectedly became a hit on the Internet. The reason for the popularity was different from what they had previously predicted. It was not because the down-and-out situation of 211 graduates could give the audience psychological comfort, nor was it because of the shit and fart literature, but because there were two people on the video: one was full of energy and talkative, and could speak the language of a group, while the other was taciturn and forced to do something. He had a strong class atmosphere and a hint of death. People said they were SpongeBob SquarePants and Squidward.
"When I was little, I didn't understand why Squidward always had a dead face. Now I don't understand why SpongeBob is so energetic."
"Now you know why Squidward is annoyed with SpongeBob, right? /doghead.jpg"
"I call Squidward the New Age Ninja."
Taking advantage of this momentum, they directly changed their Douyin account to "SpongeBob SquarePants and Squidward" and started live streaming to sell goods.
In June, Zhu Yingning passed the second subject without any major problems.
At the same time, they reached a cooperation agreement with a live broadcast base in a neighboring city and decided to send talents from there to provide guidance on teaching and offer courses.
In order to reduce costs, the live broadcast venue was set in an idle teaching building in the township - it was an abandoned primary school. The township had originally discussed converting it into a citizen activity center, but due to various reasons, construction was delayed. Now it has become a bargain for Zhu Yingning and others.
As for the people receiving training, they were sent by their own village. In order to drive the common development of several surrounding villages, Zhu Yingning cooperated with the township government to spread the news of the live broadcast training course. As a result, other villages also sent some young people who are expected to become the backbone of the future to the town's live broadcast room for training.
They finally formed the form of "city incubation base + township live broadcast room + village live broadcast personnel", and everything progressed in an orderly manner.
The pork market is looking particularly positive for farmers, with prices rebounding at the start of June. Thanks to favorable market conditions and the impact of livestreaming, both the village's cooperative and corporate farms have seen skyrocketing profits.
In July, the base suddenly extended an olive branch, announcing they had accepted investment and planned to collaborate with several surrounding cities to launch a live-streaming agricultural product sales competition and rural tourism promotion, inviting them to participate. Zhu Yingning saw this as a great opportunity. Not only did he encourage the "SpongeBob and Squidward" of his village, as well as other villages in the city, to sign up, he even returned home, consulted with the village party secretary, and selected several young people to participate.
The seven-day event generated over 6 million in revenue and completed 71,000 orders.
There was also good news. At the end of July, Zhu Yingning got her driver's license, having passed all four subjects, one to four, on the first try. Chen Fei and Wen Wenxu, like seeing a victorious general return home, excitedly threw a banquet for her, though of course, it was confined to their home.
She herself was not very drunk, but the other two were drunk as a puddle.
August--
August is the season of parting.
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