The second episode of ‘Gege and Jiejie’s Journeys’ was being recorded in a small country in Northern Europe. When they arrived the weather was good and the sky was clear.
Without Zhao Meng’er there to stir things up, the five guests got along harmoniously after getting off the plane and all agreed to take a taxi to their lodgings.
The rules for this episode were also a little different from the rules of the previous episode.
This time the program crew had rented them a Chinese-style teahouse that was on the verge of shutting down, and the challenge was for them to bring in more than a hundred guests within three days while also achieving a profit of at least one thousand euros.
Among the five guests, only Ruan Tian was a woman, and she was also the only one who could cook.
Thus, after the director finished reading the rules to them, the eyes of the four male guests all turned to her in unison.
Ruan Tian: “…”
The director quickly coughed and said: “There’s actually already a chef in the teahouse, so you all only need to focus on bringing in guests and decorating the interior.”
Ruan Tian’s eyes roamed around the room as he spoke and seriously inspected the interior of the teahouse. Currently, it was laid out with an odd combination of Chinese and Western styles which gave off an awkward feeling. She felt that rearranging it so the style was more cohesive and pleasing to the eye wouldn’t be too difficult.
Ruan Tian had done all kinds of work before, including working part time for an interior design shop and learning bamboo weaving from a kind old grandpa at the orphanage.
After some consideration, Ruan Tian said to Xu Jing: “Hm, how about you go to the door and receive guests and I will re-do the decorations in here?” (tl note: The words she uses could be a euphemistic “receiving guests”)
Xu Jing swept his frosty gaze over toward Ruan Tian and she wilted immediately.
She quickly corrected, “Tsk, it was just a slip of the tongue. Why don’t you go invite guests into the restaurant?”
Xu Jing’s eyes swept over her thin arms and legs and he raised an eyebrow questioningly, “Can you even move the tables and chairs?”
“Yes. “
“Are you sure you won’t need any help?”
“I’ll be fine, just focus on using your beauty to attract more customers.”
Xu Jing didn’t speak, but his eyes seemed to say: Isn’t this girl overestimating herself? He seemed to have no trust at all in her ability to do this kind of manual labor.
However, he could also see that her eyes were very firm, so he didn’t bother saying anything more. He thought that whenever she couldn’t stand it anymore, she would naturally come and find him for help.
After dividing up the labor force thus, Ruan Tian knew she would need to use tonight to replace all of the Western-style chairs in the teahouse. In order to replace them, she wandered the market for half a day trying to find some bamboo furniture, but in the end, she couldn’t find any at all. Eventually, she just gave up and bought some pieces of bamboo and resolved to fashion the furniture herself.
She had learned this craft from the gatekeeper at her old orphanage. The other children at the orphanage never had her patience so, in the end, she was the only one who had stuck through to inherit his skills.
From her experience, so long as she worked fast, she would be able to make four chairs a day.
The program crew and the other guests all watched with curious expressions when she came back from the market with a bunch of pieces of bamboo. Eventually, the cold-faced Xu Jing asked, “What are you planning to do with all that?”
Ruan Tian casually replied: “The chairs in the teashop are no good, they’re too western and don’t match the rest of the decor, so I need to make some new chairs.”
But looking at everyone’s faces…
No one believed her!
These kinds of craftsmanship skills that only existed in legends, how could they be found so easily in a little girl! ?
Xu Jing just thought she was being whimsical.
Most of the viewers in the chatroom were a bunch of city kids as well, so they hadn’t even seen a traditional bamboo chair before, much less thought of making one. In their eyes, making a bamboo chair might as well be as difficult as directly ascending to the heavens!
“Holy shit, she’s bragging again?”
“She said she would make bamboo furniture like it was as simple as eating or drinking. Is it really so easy? Can someone who understands comment?”
“What is this Ruan Tian trying to do? Is she deliberately saying random nonsense to try to drum up heat for herself?”
Meanwhile, Ruan Tian had finished looking around and determined that the teahouse would need eight bamboo chairs. Thus, she was preparing to work hard through the night to get them all done.
She went to the backyard, found a small bench, sat down, tied her hair back, set a piece of clean cloth on her knee, then lowered her head and concentrated on her weaving.
At the same time, a cameraman set himself up directly opposite of Ruan Tian. Whenever she finished, that was when the live broadcast would also finish.
Ruan Tian’s fingers were flexible and her movements were flowing and neat. She seemed to really know what she was doing.
It only took two hours before Ruan Tian finished making the first brand new bamboo chair.
tl begging corner:
Why am I getting a bit of a Mary Sue vibe😆? But that’s ok because I want RT to win win win!
Thanks for the chapter 😉