Shiban Village got a new village chief that autumn.
Li Guizhi's husband, Zhao Fugui, was placed under investigation for embezzling poverty relief funds. Supposedly, when law enforcement arrived, Li Guizhi was squatting outside her courtyard gate, hurling abuse into the street. When she saw the police car, she thought someone had lost another chicken and grabbed a broom to go argue with them.
The new village chief was a young man in his early thirties. As soon as he took office, he went door to door and got to the bottom of the village's debts.
After Metamorphosis aired, Shiban Village became famous online. The aerial shots of those few drafty adobe houses and the footage of an elderly person and two youngsters drinking thin rice porridge drew widespread public attention.
The provincial authorities soon approved a special poverty relief grant earmarked for infrastructure construction and assistance for struggling families in Shiban Village.
A construction crew arrived in the village. First, they rebuilt the stretch of village road washed out by the torrential rain, then installed telephone lines in every household.
The telephone line at Shen Wangjing's home was among the first to be installed.
As it happened, the Metamorphosis production team had been conducting follow-up interviews a few days earlier. Under the pretext of "recording extra behind-the-scenes footage," Duan Qizhao had visited the postproduction room and spent twenty minutes wheedling a young production assistant before finally getting the Shen family's newly installed phone number.
After revealing what that mysterious string of numbers really was, Duan Qizhao leisurely hummed a tune. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two fingers silently pluck away the slip of paper that had been tossed back.
Jiang Xun stuffed the slip into his school uniform pocket and stared at the blackboard, his expression