During the slack season, the members of the Commune didn’t have much to do. Since the weather was cold, it obstructed any gatherings as well, so many people were always bored out of their minds.
Upon hearing that there was a show, they rushed to take a seat as soon as they finished dinner.
Lin Lan didn’t really want to rigidly explain her knowledge the way a teacher would teach students in class, so she integrated them into short stories and arranged them in advance.
In addition to the stories, they also have other forms of performances such as Chinese Allegro(3) and poetry. It was basically the same thing as having a modern talk show.
(T/N: It’s a performance that utilises both rhymes and rhythm. The speaker would often beat a chinese castanet in hand at a steady pace whilst performing to give the rhymes an upbeat effect)
Whilst she was in the middle of gathering the performers, she even discovered a hidden talent. A Commune member named Liu Chuncai was fond of telling dirty jokes and usually liked to mess around with wordplay. He was adored yet despised by both male and female Commune members.
Lin Lan was teased twice by him, so upon inviting him back on a later date, she scared him and claimed that he might be arrested for hooliganism.
As a result, Lin Lan took the script she had written and demanded that he perform this by heart, “You have to say all these properly, alright? If you don’t do good, I’m going to send you to prison!” She threatened.
In a way, Liu Chuncai was rather talented. He was so intimidated by Lin Lan that he managed to get the entire script memorised just by reciting it several times.
He also helped Lin Lan to change her tone and speak it in a more colloquial way. This would result in the members understanding and accepting her better.
Lin Lan tried out his suggestion.
The first program was Liu Chuncai’s talk show, which spoke about having a certain type of family.
“There lived such a family where the old lady practised foot-binding(4) and she didn’t wash her feet all year round. She insisted that a few very specific dates were the only days she could wash her feet since those were the days the Lord of the Underworld purged sins. Any other day would cause her feet to be gnawed off by little demons. As a result, she didn’t wash them once for a long, long time. As that prolonged, her feet started to get smellier. It wasn’t that bad since it was binded, but when the cloth unravelled, the stench was so overpowering that it spread for 18 miles. And then…”
(T/N: Foot-binding is an ancient Chinese practice that girls would have to go through even until adulthood. They purposefully bind their feet with tight cloth and wear shoes that are sizes smaller just so they can alter the shape of their feet. It was considered attractive and also symbolised girls/women’s willingness to obey their husband, but it became banned in the last century as it was very harmful)
“There was another family that consisted of a young couple. One was lazy and the other was greedy…”
“Liu Chuncai, what happened to that stinky foot lady? What happened next?” A member of the commune anxiously asked, “What happened to her stinky foot?”
Liu Chuncai answered with a straight face, “What else was there? With stinky feet like yours, we’re all already dying from suffocation, so what do you expect from hers? She died from the stench, sighh…”