The villagers who were good at socializing started to ask passionately:
"You guys are celebrities, aren't you!? I've seen you on TV."
"Um... yeah..."
Qin Wei responded somewhat awkwardly.
Usually when fans gathered around, there would be managers and assistants to handle things. She would just have to keep smiling, wave to them, and exchange some polite greetings. She wasn't very good at dealing with situations like this where she had to rely on herself, and still felt rather awkward.
But she also had to get along well with the villagers, since after they were done asking questions, Qin Wei and the others would have to ask them for advice about the local opera.
Unexpectedly, the social butterfly among these entertainers was Qin Wei.
Usually in the crew, she was timid and easily intimidated. Apart from close friends, she rarely took the initiative to speak to others. Her personality didn't match her cool appearance at all. But surprisingly, she was chatting merrily here with a group of children.
"Sister, you're so pretty!"
A kid stared at Qin Wei, generously praising her beauty.
"You're the prettiest person I've ever seen! Even prettier than the celebrities on TV."
The other children also nodded in agreement.
Qin Wei smiled:
"Thank you. How old are you?"
The child answered:
"I'm seven."
"Seven..."
Qin Wei held up her fingers to count and then told him,
"Let me see if I'm right... I'm twenty-three this year, and you're only seven. There's a sixteen year difference between us. At your age, it's not appropriate to call me sister. You should call me auntie."
"Okay, auntie."
The obedient child called her whatever she wanted to be called.
Qin Wei was very satisfied, lest someone would say online after the show aired that she was pretending to be young by letting a child call her sister.
She nipped that potential criticism in the bud.
The others were stunned. Among celebrities their age, perhaps only Qin Wei would make such a request to a child.
It was quite rude.
Qin Wei took out a pack of mints from her bag and handed it to the kid:
"Share them!"
In the face of snacks, looks became insignificant. The child's eyes lit up as soon as he got the mints. He didn't care about looking at the pretty auntie anymore, just thinking about how these candies would taste and how to divide them up.
"Wait."
Qin Wei stopped them.
"Help me out first, then you can go eat."
Just like that, while the others were still painstakingly communicating with the villagers, Qin Wei had already brought Youyou in to meet the local opera elders directly——the grandparents of these children.
The elderly were sitting under an ancient tree in the village practicing musical instruments. Introduced by the children, Qin Wei started chatting with them.
By the time the others came over, Qin Wei had already picked up an erhu and joined their music group.
"Grandpa, listen to me. Based on my experience, your tuning is off. It could be an issue with the instrument... But your fast bowing part doesn't work. You rushed through several notes without shifting to the right positions clearly enough. Grandpa, you're fooling yourself."
After listening, the elder was not annoyed at all. On the contrary, he was very happy to meet someone knowledgeable and kept asking Qin Wei to give him guidance.
Youyou worried by the side. It had been over half an hour already, yet Sister Qin hadn't asked anything about the local opera, and was instead leisurely discussing folk music performance.
Youyou reminded her:
"Sister, why not ask about the opera first?"
Qin Wei told the elder:
"Could you please tell me about the opera first, and then I'll continue teaching you the erhu."
After discussing among themselves, the elders agreed.
They related the appearance of local opera to Qin Wei bit by bit, one speaking after another.
The people sitting here had been singing opera their whole lives. In early years they traveled from place to place with opera troupes, performing wherever there were events. Later as opera's audience dwindled, they gradually returned home to farm.
Now in their senior years they started retirement and reminisced about the past. So they gathered in groups of three or five, and aside from singing opera, they were also learning folk music performance.
But everyone was self-taught late-comers, learning through unorthodox methods, so mistakes were unavoidable.
"I thought local opera would vanish, but now more and more young people are willing to learn it. The ones performing on stage today are all youths from our village. But the audience are all old folks like us. Once we all pass away, I'm afraid there will be no audience left to watch their performances."
There were successors but no audience...
Qin Wei didn't rushed to say anything, but asked Youyou to briefly take notes. Then she returned to the main topic of teaching folk music performance. Qin Wei demonstrated the correct playing technique, then told the elder:
"Grandpa, the sliding and dragging sounds in the fast bowing part can easily irritate listeners. I suggest you slow down, practicing measure by measure first even if it's just two measures at a time. Once you've mastered it well through repetition then we'll accelerate gradually and progressively."
The other erhu-playing elders all took her advice, practicing using her method one time. With Qin Wei's guidance and repeated practice over several times, they made noticeable improvements.
Qin Wei gave a thumbs up:
"Worthy of being musicians in your youth, quick to grasp and learn."
Youyou sighed silently on the side. If Sister Qin also had such high emotional intelligence with colleagues, it seems her path would have been much smoother!
But nevermind, Youyou felt this was exactly her sister's charm!
The previous episode had indeed received not a small number of views and some positive comments. But there were also many complaints and criticisms——
"What the heck! I waited two days, but after the episode aired there wasn't even a single shot with the QinWei X XiaoQiao couple together!"
"The trailer kept boasting that the QinWei X XiaoQiao couple were destined by fate, getting assigned to the same group from the draw. Yet across two days we still haven't gotten a single scene of them together! Are the editors deliberately sabotaging my ship?"
"What exactly is going on here? I'm not saying they have to be on screen all the time, but not a single shot together? Even if they weren't assigned to the same group it would have been fine. But fellow fans, they WERE in the same group—that's the only reason we all came here to watch!"
"I think the editing was malicious. Aside from sponsored promotions and hype, XiaoQiao is usually pretty nice to QinWei in private. Otherwise they wouldn't agree to having meals and going shopping together. I don't believe those were staged. It must be the trashy production team. Damn it, I regret paying for the VIP membership."
"I'm going to cancel my membership next month too. I'll just write off this month's fee as bad luck."
"I concur about canceling, although I'm mainly here for the YuYan and YuRuo ships. Oh well, I was actually looking forward to the QinWei X XiaoQiao moments too. After all Qin is skilled at comedy while XiaoQiao dotes on her unconditionally."
......
Two hours later, the performance officially started and everyone went to sit on benches in front of the village opera stage, waiting for the show to begin.
While the entertainers watched the performance with great interest, the production team felt terrible on their side. They had read all the comments after yesterday's episode aired. They were thrilled for the extremely high viewership for a few minutes. But now they were full of worries.
The top rated comments were basically bashing the lack of fanservice from QinWei X XiaoQiao. And rather than blaming the two celebrities, most speculation maliciously targeted the production team, pinning all sorts of conspiracy theories on them.
Moreover, such criticisms were increasing.
If this continued, their reputation could collapse.
The director also felt wronged. He had been fully confident releasing that trailer originally, highlighting the "QinWei X XiaoQiao couple destined by fate" as one of the selling points. But somehow these two lead actors must have had a lapse in judgement, completely failing to cooperate as hoped.
Yet he was also helpless, as their contracts contained clauses requiring cooperation with the production team's publicity efforts, but no clause mandating cooperation with shipping hype all the way.
The distressed director struggled with indecision. For the sake of view count and reputation, it seemed time to stir up some drama.
