Chapter 697: Unworried Mulberry In Person
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
It was completely logical for something to attract more attention when it grew bigger. When a person grew in popularity, they would attract all sort of weird people. This was similar in theory, completely logical.
Or to be precise, it was not that one would start attracting weird people when one became popular. Rather, it was those weird people enjoyed approaching the popular person.
Because of Ma Zhida’s money box, someone came looking for trouble at Yuan Zhou’s restaurant.
This wasn’t something weird. In the past, there were some show hosts that were coming to cause trouble as they thought the food here was too expensive. Then, they tried the food here live and ate each of the dishes served here. This time, a different kind of troublemaker was attracted.
The ID of this person was Unworried Mulberry. He had a huge following on Weibo. Ignoring the fact of whether he had any bot accounts following him, he had followers in the millions. His main job was to look for trouble, reporting on topics that would bring trouble to others.
For example, when there was an incident where students that managed to pa.s.s the university entrance examinations were given a reward of 10,000 RMB, this Unworried Mulberry would start investigating this incident. When he found that this was fake as the money given was, in fact, the government subsidy for impoverished students. He would then came out to expose the truth.
Strictly speaking, his existence had more pros than cons. In this new era where the internet platforms were taking over the traditional media, fake news was surging out without a stop. The younger generation was no longer able to determine which ones were the fake news.
Unworried Mulberry had been paying attention to Yuan Zhou’s restaurant since a while ago. However, he had never been on site to investigate Yuan Zhou’s restaurant. On one hand, he lived quite far away from Yuan Zhou’s restaurant, and on the other hand, he rarely reported on food-related topics.
When he heard about the money box incident, he acted like a shark that had smelled blood. He decided that it was about time he went there to have a look.
Firstly, the price of the food at Yuan Zhou’s restaurant was nearly a tenfold or even more of other restaurants. Unworried Mulberry did not think much about this. As long as the price was clearly labeled, he wouldn’t mind. In any case, he had also looked into the reviews of Yuan Zhou’s restaurant on the Internet. Although many of them were berating the restaurant for being expensive, there were even more reviews that praised the food there to be tasty.
So long as the food was delicious, there would always be paying customers no matter how expensive it was. In any case, the paying customers believed that what they ate was worth the price. So it did not matter if the food was expensive.
But this time, Unworried Mulberry was sure that this money box incident was definitely Yuan Zhou’s restaurant putting up a show for publicity. As far as he was concerned, the quality of the food there must have dropped after it got popular. This was not the first time he had seen something like this. An example of this was the Granny’s Noodles that got popular after covered by the TV show A Bite of China. It had now become a franchise.
When Unworried Mulberry tried the noodles there, he found that the taste was merely comparable to Shan Cheng Noodle, yet the noodles there were much more expensive. To be frank, their popularity was the only thing carrying their marked-up price.
Therefore, Unworried Mulberry was of the opinion that this had also happened to Yuan Zhou’s restaurant. When it first opened, the food there was good. After it became popular, it started ma.s.s-producing dishes, causing the quality of the food to drop. One had to admit that this Unworried Mulberry did not have his huge following for no reason. From a tiny clue, he was able to come out with so many theories in his mind.
It wasn’t like Unworried Mulberry was suspicious for no reason. In this incident, he could clearly sense that the spam army was involved. This entire thing had gone viral in an extremely unnatural manner. Therefore, he had decided that this was most definitely Yuan Zhou’s restaurant putting on a show just to maintain its popularity.
As a journalist with a conscience, he had to expose this.
He acted on his thought immediately. He bought a ticket for an evening flight and at 3:00 pm the same day, he arrived at Chengdu and called for a taxi.
“Number 14, Taoxi Road.” He already did his research and found out about the address before he came. This was something any smart person would do. He would not stupidly tell the taxi driver to go to Yuan Zhou’s restaurant. Normally, no taxi drivers would know where to go when the direction given was too specific.
When he thought of this, a smug smile crept onto his face.
“Number 14 Taoxi Road?” The taxi driver was first stunned before saying in realization, “Oh, got it. Young brother, you are going to Yuan Zhou’s restaurant, right? No problem. Sit tight.”
The taxi driver was a middle-aged man of about 30 years old. Therefore it was fine for him to call Unworried Mulberry young brother. After he started driving, he looked at the rear mirror. Then, he kindly reminded, “Young brother, the next time you take a taxi, just say the name of the shop you’re going directly. How will us taxi drivers know the specific road number like Number 14 Taoxi Road? Luckily you’re going to Yuan Zhou’s restaurant. If you’re going to Number 33 Taoxi Road instead, I won’t even know where that is.”
Unworried Mulberry made an expression of someone who did not feel like talking for now.
The taxi drivers of Chengdu drove at a decent speed. In any case, it was not peak hour right now. Therefore, there was no traffic congestion and they reached the intersection of Taoxi Road in about half an hour.
“There are a lot of people lining up here. There are also a lot of pedestrians walking around. We will normally stop at the intersection,” explained the taxi driver.
Unworried Mulberry looked forward and found that there was indeed a lot of people here. No other cars were driving into the street as well. He nodded, paid the driver, and got off the car.
“A tiny street hidden amid the flouris.h.i.+ng city. The environment here is quite good,” he muttered.
It was previously mentioned that Taoxi Road was an undeveloped subdistrict. However, this street was surrounded on two sides by developed business districts. To the left were huge office buildings and to the right was a huge public square. In contrast, Taoxi Road looked tiny, like an ancient pathway hidden amid numerous skysc.r.a.pers.
Why did Unworried Mulberry get an impression that this was an ancient street? Simple. On this street, there were many vending stalls which were already very rare nowadays. Some were selling Tanghulus, some were selling cotton candies, and there were even some people making sugar figurines here. Many vending stalls that could no longer be seen in this new era could be seen here.
His greatest astonishment came from the fact that even with so many vending stalls here, the street was still very clean.
“How peculiar,” Unworried Mulberry couldn’t help but mutter.
Many streets shaped in ancient styles for tourism with many vending stalls would only look neat at a glance. The moment one approached a rubbish bin, one would be a.s.saulted by an intense foul smell, causing one to feel like covering one’s nose and quickly walking away.
That was not the case here. The rubbish bins at the intersection looked very neat, with the trash all separated according to types. Near the rubbish bins was a circular object where sounds of peddlers shouting came out of it without a stop.
“Making sugar figurines, making sugar figurines, you can even make your own sugar figurines here.”
“Tanghulu, Tanghulus available for sale here. Even Boss Yuan agrees that the Tanghulu here is nice. Take a look.”
“Cotton candy, selling cotton candy, Boss Yuan’s favorite cotton candy. You won’t regret eating my cotton candy.”
“Interesting.” The curiosity of Unworried Mulberry was piqued when he heard these shouts.
Along the way, he did not ask for directions. Just like that, he observed while he walked in direction of Yuan Zhou’s restaurant.
He walked at an average speed and observed everything in detail. With this, the article he wrote would feel real as well. This had always been a habit of his.