Chapter 55 Chapter 55 Chapter 55 Chapter 19...
Chapter 55
The 1976 Miss Hong Kong competition wasn't as complex and tedious as it is today. However, it still involved registration, interviews, semi-closed pre-competition training, canvassing for contestants, preliminary rounds, semi-finals, and the finals.
Registration has closed, and the next stage will be the interviews in a week. This phase includes a swimsuit interview, a formal attire interview, and a question-and-answer session. The judges primarily assess the contestants' appearance, body proportions, demeanor, and conversational style to determine their acceptance.
The contestants who pass the interview will stay in the training camp arranged by the organizer, where they will receive more professional training for one month, such as etiquette, makeup, catwalk, etc.
After a month of training, the contestants will be arranged to perform their talents and canvass for votes in major shopping malls or squares.
After that comes the preliminary round, where the ranking and the places to advance to the semi-finals are determined by public voting and judges' scores...
The preliminary round will be held after Qingming Festival, the semi-finals will be held in early May, and the finals will be held in mid-May.
From February to May, even if you cut off the beginning and the end, it still takes more than three months.
The English school was easy enough; Wen Ke'er was one of the owners, after all, so she didn't have to worry about not being able to get leave. But the district primary school, which required over three months of leave all at once, was a bit of a stretch, and Wen Ke'er wasn't sure.
After experiencing the challenges of finding a job, Wen Ke'er deeply cherished her job at District Primary School. So, when she sincerely asked for leave from the principal, she felt quite nervous.
Fortunately, the district primary school hired Wen Ke'er in the first place because of some connections involved, so she is naturally very easy to talk to now.
After taking a leave from the district primary school and arranging her work at the English school, Wen Keer drew a few clothing designs by herself and went to the barber shop to have someone give her a new hairstyle.
It was also at this time that Wen Keer realized that Weisheng had no intention of participating in the competition at all.
No, sister, are you going to miss such a good opportunity?
Before she started to act up, Wen Ke'er was quite likable. Wei Sheng had recently grown fond of Wen Ke'er and had even softened his heart towards her.
If Wen Ke'er would not implicate her and Wei Zhensheng, nor implicate other innocent people, and would not even affect major national events such as the smooth return in 1997, Weisheng really did not feel that he needed to stop Wen Ke'er now.
But thinking of the protagonist's laws, Weisheng was really afraid that she would get involved with Sheng Sinian again.
In the original storyline, Wen Ke'er, despite being the only daughter of Wei Zhensheng and the eldest daughter of Minsheng, was not welcomed by the Sheng family and was framed by Du Xinyi and her men. Now that she has lost those identities, she is afraid that she will be killed at any moment.
Don't doubt it, in Hong Kong in 1976, killing someone was easier than eating a meal of Northeastern sauerkraut dumplings.
Weisheng sighed inwardly, but still tried his best to persuade Wen Ke'er, "Our family only has a small fortune, which is incomparable to those established families in Hong Kong. We don't have any background, nor do we have any connections or influence. You know all this."
Wen Keer nodded and thought to herself: I also know that your father is patriarchal and treats you just averagely.
Seeing her nod, Weisheng continued, "There are many wealthy people and wealthy dandies in Hong Kong who are not kind to their money. The organizers dare not offend them, but also want to win them over, so they are likely to let the contestants attend various cocktail parties.
If I were to join this Hong Kong escort, I can only guarantee that no one would ask me to accompany them for drinking or sleeping, but as a single girl without any family, you can avoid the open guns but not the hidden arrows. If you don't do it well, you might suffer a lot in the end and even be ruined.
By then, the district primary school may not allow you to continue teaching, and the English school will definitely let you move from the front stage to behind the scenes in order not to affect enrollment.
That's not all, but I'm afraid some people won't give in, and will kidnap you, imprison you, and ultimately leave you unseen, alive or dead. ...Have you considered these consequences?"
No!
Wen Ke'er's mind was filled with thoughts of advancing to the finals, so that the English school could open branches in other districts next year. Besides tutoring in English, she could also hire professional instructors for math, physics, and chemistry classes... Hearing Weisheng so calmly tear open a corner of the darkness, her heart skipped a beat.
All of these could happen to her.
Without parents or family, power or wealth, the only person close to her is Minsheng's eldest daughter. But this daughter is not favored either, and now she calls her "old man" and "brother-in-law".
Even if she wanted to help and protect her, she was afraid she would be powerless.
"I heard there's a base in Southeast Asia that's kidnapped a lot of young girls."
"What?" Wen Ke'er's eyes widened, as if frightened: "They're doing this kind of thing right now?"
Weisheng raised an eyebrow, knowing what Wen Keer meant by the second half of her sentence, but still pretended to be confused: "What do you mean by now or not? Nothing in this world can be accomplished overnight.
If you want to scale up, you have to do it step by step. Just like our cram school, it used to be a small room in a tenement building, but now it is an English school in a convenient location..."
Wen Ke'er twitched her lips and replied awkwardly, "...Yes."
Regardless of whether what he said was what she thought, Wen Ke'er understood what Weisheng said.
In the end, Wen Keer decided to settle for the second best and withdraw from the competition after the preliminary round so as not to make too much of a splash.
Of course, Wen Keer thinks so because she has confidence in herself, but she also admits that the outstanding women of this era are also very outstanding.
For example, Weisheng, who is two years younger than her.
In the end, Weisheng asked Xu Zhirui to help him withdraw from the competition on the grounds of heavy academic workload, and also went to the police station to report the case.
Today this person can help her sign up for a beauty pageant, but who knows what he will do for her tomorrow.
In short, no matter who it is, we have to find this person.
You know what, the organizer arranged a cameraman at the registration office, originally intending to record the behind-the-scenes footage for the contestants, but unexpectedly, by chance, he recorded all the people who received and submitted the registration forms.
As long as we eliminate the contestants in the videotape one by one, the remaining people are all possible.
The workload was not very heavy and it only took three days to find the person.
He is a cousin who is a student in an English school. During the winter vacation last year, Wen Keer had a cold and fever for a few days, and the other teachers were all busy with classes, so Weisheng helped to cover for a few days.
It happened that Miss Xiangjiang started taking registrations after New Year's Day, so the student asked his cousin to help him register.
His cousin works at a TV station. He originally thought that his cousin's teacher deliberately used his connections, but he didn't expect that everything was done on the kid's own initiative.
When the child found that Weisheng was not as happy as he had imagined, he immediately suppressed the idea of jumping out to take credit.
After knowing what happened, Weisheng did not pursue the matter any further, but still punished the child by making her copy an entire Chinese-English dictionary and give it to her.
Weisheng was fine, but when Wen Keer found out, she thought of the children in the future who would use their parents' mobile phones to give gifts to anchors, spend money on games, etc., so she called the children's parents over and explained in detail the dangers of such things.
How should I put it? It's quite responsible.
…
Just when Weisheng was extremely worried, Wen Keer successfully passed the interview and entered the training camp for semi-closed training.
Life at the training camp wasn't harsh, and the conditions were excellent. Although the players didn't have much privacy living together, they were relatively safe.
But Wen Ke'er was naive. On her fifth day at the training camp, the organizers organized a drinking party for the contestants. She and many others didn't go, and the next day, those who didn't go were separated from those who did.
Later, a film and television company approached Wen Ke'er and asked her if she wanted to sign a contract to become an artist, but Wen Ke'er still refused. After that, she and those who also refused to sign with film and television companies seemed to be excluded.
Compared to these powerless contestants from ordinary backgrounds, Du Xinyi's road to the talent show was like a golden age. Nothing went wrong, and no one could steal her limelight.
Compared with Wen Ke'er, the championship seems to be already in Du Xinyi's pocket.
Before coming here, Weisheng gave Wen Keer a lot of precautions. Wen Keer, who was becoming increasingly unhappy staying here, discovered that the runners in the training palace were divided into different levels. After struggling for two days, she finally decided to withdraw from the competition early.
She felt that based on her current situation, she would not be able to pass the preliminary round at all.
Rather than being eliminated because of failing the preliminary round, it would be better to find a random reason to withdraw from the competition now, at least you can save your face.
Wen Keer, who withdrew from the competition early, did not tell anyone about what she saw and heard in the training camp. Although many people had asked her privately about other contestants, Wen Keer still did not dare to bring trouble to herself.
Those contestants who were initially called out often hid and cried secretly. Those who later signed with film and television companies were forced to attend various drinking parties arranged by their agents because they signed contracts with very high penalty fees. Those who, like Wen Ke'er, refused to go anywhere and signed nothing became a discordant existence.
Then, when many people learned that Wen Ke'er had withdrawn early, they all came up to her. Some were secretly threatening her with soft words, while others were playing the emotional card with a reluctant smile, but no matter which one, they were telling Wen Ke'er not to tell anyone about what happened in the training camp.
However, after this experience, Wen Ke'er finally stopped thinking about the plots in movies, TV shows, and novels. She lived a more down-to-earth life and stopped dreaming about those distant dreams...
Weisheng took the Hong Kong High School Entrance Examination and did very well, much to the delight of both Wei Zhensheng and her teacher. Following Wen Keer's suggestion, Weisheng took on her first free advertising gig.
That’s right, I was the spokesperson for their English school.
During the summer vacation, Weisheng traveled to several places again. Later, she still raised the money from various loans to buy a two-story store and opened her and Wen Keer's first branch.
Wen Ke'er bought a Western-style house in full during Weisheng's sophomore year, and also took out a loan to buy the house that Weisheng had previously taken her to see.
With two houses, a formal job, and a full-subject English cram school co-founded with Weisheng, Wen Keer achieved her small goal in just a few years.
As for Weisheng, he continued to study and learn skills step by step. When he had money, he would exchange it for gold and save it in the space.
In such a peaceful and far-away day, after repeated peace talks, the policy of Hong Kong's return was finally decided. At this time, Hong Kong fell into an unprecedented panic and riot.
The first to be affected are public places like restaurants and cinemas, as well as those wealthy people...
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