Chapter 153 Taste
Chapter 153 Taste
'Zanju Town seems to have a good geographical location and is close to Taoyuan City, so why is it abandoned?'
A purple barrage of comments crossed the screen. It was sent by a VIP user who had joined the live broadcast room.
"It's deserted because it's close to the city."
Tang Xin had to answer the sponsor's question, so she changed her hand to hold the selfie stick, walked through the dilapidated courtyard with light steps, and said softly: "The years when Jiuzhou's economy developed most rapidly were also the years when rural towns like Gubei and Zanju lost the most population.
The process of urbanization has continuously siphoned the rural population to economically developed cities, and those siphoned away are mostly young and middle-aged laborers and highly educated intellectuals, leaving only the elderly and children.
Tang Xin thought for a moment and continued, "Before Zanju Town was completely abandoned, the education department conducted a survey in the town's primary schools. Among the approximately 5 fifth-grade students, more than 1200 were left-behind children. The remaining students were mostly raised by single parents, meaning one parent worked in the city and the other raised the child at home."
Looking at the entire Zanju Town, the number of children who are actually raised by both parents does not even exceed three digits.
The situation in Gubei Town is better, but not much.
"The education of young people is never a small issue, so 'letting children grow up with their parents' became the guiding spirit of Taoyuan City in those years. The city expanded the school, cancelled the original Zanju Town Primary School and merged it into the urban area."
As she spoke, Tang Xin felt that this topic was a bit dangerous, so she made it short:
"It's not that this approach is completely useless, it's just that the results are minimal. It's true that the children have gone to the city, but busy parents still don't have time to take care of them, and they still need the help of the elderly at home to raise them. This has not changed."
What happens next is very simple.
Children followed their parents and the elderly followed their children. In the short few years since the school merger, the population of Zanju Town was lost as fast as driving a four-wheel drive. It soon changed from a town slightly smaller than Gubei Town to a lonely place with only dozens of lonely elderly people left.
As the last few dozen elderly people passed away one by one over time, the deserted Zanju Town was completely abandoned and became what it is today.
"Look, the house in front is where the lonely old man who used to stay in the town lived."
Tangxin moved the camera to show a two-story building with a still intact structure in front of the audience in the live broadcast room. The wall on one side of the house had collapsed, like a cut cake, and the line of sight could directly see the building structure inside through the cross section.
Because she had done some research before coming here, Tang Xin knew more or less about the situation of this house. She walked forward and said, "The former owner of this house was an old widowed lady named Wu.
Mrs. Wu’s husband died early, and her daughter married in Yongzhou. Her son worked as a seaman in Yanzhou, traveling in the wind and waves, and rarely came home for a year or two, leaving her alone in the town to live on her own.
The economic conditions of Mrs. Wu's family are actually not bad. Her children have not treated their mother badly materially. Her married daughter returns home every other year to celebrate New Year's Eve, and her son, a seaman, simply uses his mother's bank card as his own salary card, and keeps all his savings in his mother's card, leaving only some basic living expenses for himself.
But the old lady never touched her son's savings, and always kept them safely for him, hoping that one day she would have saved enough money to help him get married and start a family.
"But Mrs. Wu didn't live to see her son get married. On August 2008, 08, a normal evening, she prepared dinner and planned to take a bath while the rice was cooking. But she fell in the bathroom and never got up again."
Tang Xin shook her head, walked to the bottom of the half-collapsed building, and pointed the camera at the wooden door frame that was already covered with mold spots: "An old lady who lives alone fell to her death in her bathroom. How long do the family members in the live broadcast room think her death was discovered after her death?"
'About a week?'
"It won't take more than a month at most. Although there are few people in Zanju Town, someone would definitely notice if a living person suddenly disappeared without a trace."
'I think 3 days at most'
"They are all wrong." Tang Xin looked at the comments floating in the live broadcast room and shook his head, saying, "The correct answer is 14 months, which is - 1 year and 2 months." At that time, no one in Zanju Town discovered the death of Mrs. Wu, because she was the last resident in the increasingly deserted town. Her silent death did not attract anyone's attention until 14 months later when the ocean-going fishing boat carrying her son finally returned. He then noticed something wrong from the unreachable phone call.
When the son rushed back home, his mother was already rotten to the bones.
'So what does this story have to do with today's expedition?'
"That's a big deal." Tang Xin smiled and came to the door of the half-collapsed residential building. She said mysteriously, "According to bloggers who came to explore Zanju Town before, when they passed by this residential building in the evening, occasionally, occasionally, they would hear a 'thump' sound, as if someone had fallen down upstairs."
Before he finished speaking, suddenly, a muffled sound came quietly from the second floor above Tang Xin's head.
The tone was dull, yet a little crisp, like the sound of wet flesh hitting the tiles.
Or to be more precise - it was the sound of a person who had just taken off his clothes and was about to take a shower, falling on the wet tiles in the bathroom.
Suddenly, Tang Xin's face turned extremely pale.
'Fuck, anchor, don't scare me!'
"Is it the production team? It must be the production team, right? Anchor, please say something! Damn it..."
"But this building has collapsed in half, it's definitely a dangerous building! Who would be so kind as to place something like this in a dangerous building?"
The comments on the screen suddenly became denser, and the popularity of the live broadcast room began to rise rapidly, but this sudden increase in traffic did not make Tang Xin in front of the camera show the slightest joy, because no one knew better than her as one of the organizers of this live broadcast PK:
There is no production crew in this small town to create program effects.
The barrage of comments in the live broadcast room was rapidly refreshing, but Tang Xin was so confused that she had no energy to look at it. At this moment, her pale face was paler than the foundation she applied on her face. A bright white moon was hanging quietly in the night sky, illuminating the kind and smiling face of the Four-Faced Buddha.
"Ouch..."
“Ouch…”
“…Hey, ouch…”
A weak groan slowly floated out from the second-floor window and entered Tangxin's eardrum along with the cool night breeze. She seemed to have seen with her own eyes an old man falling down in the bathroom, wailing and crying for help towards the deserted town.
In the live broadcast room, dense barrages of comments were refreshing rapidly. Tang Xin's breathing suddenly became rapid, and her heart was beating wildly in her chest.
She didn't dare to believe what she heard, nor did she dare to think about what she would see if she went upstairs now. Only the sobbing wails floated in the silent night.
"Calm down...Calm down..." Tang Xin patted her chest lightly and adjusted her disordered breathing.
She frantically reached into the small leather bag on her waist and fumbled around, trying to find a piece of chocolate. Tang Xin had hypoglycemia, so she always carried a bag of hard candies or chocolates with her, just in case she got dizzy or became emotionally agitated or overworked.
But after reaching into her bag and searching for a while, Tangxin found nothing. She clearly remembered that she had brought 5 bars of peanut chocolate in her purse, but now she couldn't find any.
Not only the chocolate, but also the lollipops, milk candies, brown sugar plums in the bag...all the snacks were gone.
(End of this chapter)