The time now is when the original owner was just thrown into the show. He only had a face-to-face meeting with the show’s crew and had not had time to show his face in front of the whole audience.

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He wants to avoid the bad impression of the original owner in the eyes of national audiences. As long as he can get rid of the nickname ”rich second generation fool”, the progress of the task will take a big step forward.

He wants everyone to know that although the original owner was a fool, he was actually a cute little fool.

This program is called “The Metamorphosis”. Its main theme is to exchange lives, allowing children in the city and children in the countryside to exchange their lives for three months, each experiencing each other’s lives. To put it bluntly, in just a few months, all the spoiled young masters in the city are transformed into socialist successors with all-around development of moral, intellectual, physical, beauty and labor education. And it also lets the country children who have never seen the prosperous city go to the city to familiarize themselves and experience the life of the people in the city.

Yin Minglu’s body is one of the city’s main guests being exchanged and he was sent to the countryside to endure hardship.

Just at the beginning of the show, the first problem came, which was going up the mountain.

At this moment, the road from the mountainside to the top of the mountain is muddy. Even if the wheels of the suitcase are pulled, they will be tripped by a stone. Yin Minglu who is from the city must climb up alone.

If he gets tired halfway, the program team will not help him, on the contrary, they will be happy to see his embarrassment. Even if he protested, Han Shihao had already asked Yin Minglu to sign a death contract with the programming team in the name of his stepfather. Even if he escaped, he would be caught back and they would plainly show him in front of the audience as a joke.

Even if he climbs the mountain road while being extremely tired crying uncontrollably, he who is a ‘spoiled brat’ might later be compared in the video with a rural child with inconvenient transportation walking the mountain road for a few hours without breathing.

This exactly was the case with the original plot. From birth to twelve years old, the original owner who had never walked such a long and rugged mountain road alone crawled with red eyes crying all alone while calling out his mother. He fell down several times halfway. His entire delicate and cute face was covered with mud. If it was the usual time, his nanny at home would have been distressed for him coming up to wipe his face and hugging him, but at the moment that was impossible.

But the habit of the body had dictated it. So he walked up to one of the big sisters in the staff, nestled in the other’s arms. He cried and refused to walk.

This move stunned the audience in front of the TV. Especially the program group had even put a comparison in advance: In order to go to school, children in rural areas have to ride bicycles for one hour a day and have to jog for two or three hours. No matter it’s a sunny or a rainy day, they have to go to school. Their life is very difficult. With the jade in front, the original owner was naturally compared to the dust.

Everyone didn’t know that he was different from ordinary children. Even if they learned about it later, their bad impression of him would have been biased, and it would have been hard to change later.

This program originally promotes comparison and likes to let urban children and rural children “compete” on the same stage. For example, rural children are young and thrifty, while urban children are willful and spend money like water. Rural children are filial to their elders, have excellent grades, and they also study hard. But they suffer from the limitation of rural resources and their dreams are forever unfulfilled, while urban children are born with a golden spoon and have everything they need, but they do not cherish their own resources. They rebel against their elders and waste their youth.

All in all, the program’s main purpose is to let urban children be the cannon-fodder to let the audience see the truth, goodness, and beauty of rural children.

In the previous episode of this program, the rural children first arrived in the bustling city and were shocked by the city’s prosperity. They shed tears seven times. They felt the barrenness and backwardness of their hometown more and more. They were compared with the urban children who dissed them but had hippie smiles and sleepy faces. There was an uproar in a certain area across the country.

This also made the program group more firm in its main purpose of the program. Their biased editing was even more obvious and absolutely unavoidable. Even if Yin Minglu was stuffed with money halfway through or he didn’t have any scenes that could show his weakness and inferiority compared to rural children, he would still have lost to rural children through the program’s evil editing.

Yin Minglu is in the weak body of the original owner, and it is impossible to transform into a strong man. Climbing to the top of the mountain without breathing, not collapsing was already better not to mention that a twelve-year-old child couldn’t do it. He could only try his best, in order to avoid being compared to the dust.

He couldn’t climb up anyway.

So instead of crying like the original owner who refused to climb. Instead, he pulled the suitcase and walked slowly forward. Such an “obedient” scene made the photographer a little regretful.

Earlier, when the young boy was silent like a marionette[1], the program could have edited that part as the boy’s “silent resistance”. His indifferent and cold eyes could have been edited as “his perfunctory feelings for parents”. At this moment when the boy is moving obediently, even if they have expert hands, they won’t be able to edit it evilly.

The photographer reluctantly rubbed his sore shoulders, hoping that the child would behave ”unexpectedly”. It would have been better if the boy was crying, resisting, and yelling like the children who came to the show before.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

The child seemed to be unable to understand the “severe obstacle” that the program group deliberately arranged for him. He was very leisurely, pulling a small suitcase, and treating everything like an outing. He was walking and stopping all the way, with beautiful jet-black eyes. He was fascinated by the scenery on the roadside. He looked at the flowers and plants for a while, and the stone and mud block, and exclaimed from time to time, “Ah, it’s a butterfly! The butterfly is so beautiful.”

The photographer couldn’t help it, and finally asked, “Have you never seen a butterfly?” The meaning of his words was that Yin Minglu was making a fuss.

Yin Minglu shook the Setaria viridis[a kind of grass] in his hand, while his free hand wanted to catch the beautiful dancing butterfly. He naturally replied: “I haven’t seen it.” The original owner had only seen this kind of exquisite butterfly in the museum in its lifeless form.

In the camera, Setaria viridis in the hands of the young boy shook happily. From the arc of the action, one could slightly see the self-satisfaction in the boy’s eyes.

The photographer was stunned, obviously unbelieving, “How come you haven’t seen it? Don’t you usually go out?”

Even children in the city can’t miss these things, right? Is this kid deliberately playing with them? If so, the current city guests’ methods of protesting against the program group are really getting more and more superb. Even he is a little bit unable to judge.

The child raised his face obediently and tilted his head and said: “Mum and Dad don’t let me go out.”

Yin Minglu was telling the truth. Because of his specific physical and mental problems, the place where the original owner grew up and the place he stayed the longest was either his home or the school. There were parents and subordinates to take care of him at home and dedicated teachers in the school to protect him. The original owner had only been to a few places.

Not to mention the real butterfly, only after participating in the show, the original owner had seen a pig rolling in the mud for the first time. He was so scared that he sat down on the ground crying endlessly.

Even if he had seen it in the pictures, can the actual object be linked to the recognition in the picture? A proverb often says that even people who don’t eat pork have seen pigs run, but in fact, how many people who have lived in the city since childhood have actually seen pigs run with their own eyes?

”Why?” the photographer asked. He didn’t know Yin Minglu before the filming. He had contact with the other two city’s main guest’s children in advance. He had also filmed videos of them “doing crimes” and being “spoiled and arrogant” in the city. This child was last to join.

However, other people in the program group told him that the child had an arrogant temper and was inseparable from his parents. When his mother remarried, his personality became even more sensitive and he rebelled against the relatives with a taciturn attitude. To make matters worse, he was already twelve years old but without self-care ability, unable to travel independently.

At first, he thought that the “cause” of this city child’s behavior must be very serious. He must go to the countryside to rehabilitate and receive re-education from the program group. Now that he met a real person, he was a bit unable to connect this cute and clever child with the one that the program’s crew members had described to him.

Even with just a few words, he wanted to know more about the back-story of this child. As the saying goes, “everything has a cause”, a child who “has never seen a butterfly” must have the shadow of his family behind it. Parental education plays a vital role in it. So he kept asking the boy about these questions.

The child was also very “cooperative”. He answered without spending much time. He said: “Dad said that there are bad guys out there. They will arrest me, kidnap me, and hurt me.” Of course! After all, he was the one and only fool son of the rich man. He was treated as a fool who was easy to deceive and rob by his own family. But the original owner certainly didn’t understand it. So, Yin Minglu hopes that the people watching TV will have unbiased eyes and see a little bit of mystery from it.

As soon as his voice fell, before the photographer had any reaction, Yin Minglu immediately clasped his cheeks, blinked his eyes seriously, and asked, “But I am so cute, why would anyone want to kidnap me?”

His childish words were tender and naive. The photographer froze for a while, he couldn’t help but laugh. He shook his head, thinking that this child was probably protected too well, like a carefree and precious flower, completely ignorant of worldly affairs.

Anyway, he was only in charge of shooting. The educational problems behind the three main guests of the city will naturally be criticized by countless netizens and educators. He can only faithfully record those eyes that were so pure as if there was no trace of impurities in them.

The journey ahead was very long.

The child walked very slowly. He walked very slowly like a grandfather taking small steps, making people feel very anxious. He even took off his shoes from time to time, shaking them to shake out some sand. He sometimes stood on the rock with his bare white and tender feet, humming a little song, as if he was not in a hurry to walk the road.

Because he walked slowly, the program’s crew members who had to follow him couldn’t rush forward.

Walking up to a steep slope, the child pulled the suitcase with enough effort to climb up but was dragged down by the weight of the suitcase. He almost fell to the ground backward. He was stunned and shocked. He patted his thumping little heart. His little face blushed and he said that it was exciting.

After speaking, he ran up again without admitting defeat. But he was defeated again by the towering slope five seconds later.

This was a threshold set deliberately by the program group for the three guests, but they all miscalculated the child’s footwork and ability.

After repeated unsuccessful attempts, the people in the program group were even more disappointed than Yin Minglu. They could feel that the child was serious about climbing up, but he was driven down by the landslide. So they couldn’t blame the boy at all. They even wanted to give their long legs to the kid. So that he could quickly climb up.

Seeing that the evening was approaching, they were actually more anxious than Yin Minglu. This group of people couldn’t sleep on the street. In desperation, the program team had to send someone to carry the child on his back and step onto the steep slope.

The photographer also turned off the camera. He did not intend to make an exception for this guest to make him look hard-working by helping the boy to record this scene.

At a certain place where no one could see, the corners of Yin Minglu’s lips curled up slightly. Will they always be able to avoid making exceptions?

They could avoid making exceptions the first time, will they be able to do the same the second time?

………………………………

Footnotes:

[1] Marionette is a person who is easily manipulated or controlled.