Jingting was rather surprised too, so much so that he couldn't help asking the livestream viewers, "You already live inside your keyboards, and you still care about losing weight?"
The viewers:
[How rude! We only live inside our keyboards occasionally. Most of the time, we still have to see people!]
[Skip losing weight in spring, and spend summer regretting it!]
[Even Taoist priests like you, free of all worldly desires, need to lose weight. What's wrong with ordinary mortals like us, who still have worldly desires, taking an interest in weight loss? What's wrong with that?]
Jingting thought about it and decided they had a point, so he earnestly offered everyone some advice. "I hear there are generally only two ways to lose weight: watch what you eat or get moving. So here's my sincere suggestion. If you really want to lose weight, you can come work as unpaid volunteers at Clear Breeze Temple. You can farm here, weed and fertilize the fruit trees, or even help out in the kitchen. Of course, if you want to be Clear Breeze Temple's sweeping monk, or stand around selling things for a full twelve hours every day, we can arrange all of that too. We guarantee you'll come in weighing two hundred jin and leave weighing one hundred. It'll work better than any weight-loss tea or porridge."
Everyone: "..." Great advice. Please don't offer any more.
Chapter 29
Jingting had wanted to recruit some volunteers for Clear Breeze Temple, hoping to score some free young, able-bodied labor. Instead, he failed to recruit any adult volunteers and brought in a batch of little volunteers.
These little volunteers were organized by Mrs. Wang and Zhao Yumei, the two members of the "Clear Breeze Temple junior wives' club." It all started when the two ladies visited Clear Breeze Temple and discovered that a batch of fruit trees and a nursery of Chinese medicinal herbs had been added to its back courtyard.
Many schools organized educational trips these days, and the school attended by Mrs. Wang's son and Zhao Yumei's daughter happened to be planning one recently. After discussing it, the two ladies simply decided to make Clear Breeze Temple the destination.
It would last two days over the weekend.
Yun Zhaozhao had actually refused at first, because Clear Breeze Temple had never hosted so many children before, and they would also have to arrange accommodations and meals for them. Unfortunately, Mrs. Wang offered far too much money. So although the words of refusal were already on the tip of Yun Zhaozhao's tongue, she swallowed them in the end.
The children arrived on a Saturday with clear skies stretching for miles.
Ten children came in total, almost all of them second graders. Among them,
Mrs. Wang's son, Wang Ziyu, was the oldest of the group. Although he was only half a year older than the other children, at their age, even a month made a difference. On top of that, he was big, so he was something of a leader in this group of elementary school students.
He was the core of this group of elementary school students, but no one knew that deep down, young Wang didn't want to come to Clear Breeze Temple for any educational activities at all. He couldn't even understand why his mother had arranged an educational trip to a Taoist temple.
After all, the other students he knew were going to museums or aquariums. Some were even going to his favorite places, the planetarium and the science museum. Yet his mother, without even asking his permission, had passed over all those fun places and picked a Taoist temple for him.
How was he supposed to brag and show off to his classmates when he got back?
Just thinking about it made him furious!
With those thoughts in mind, young Wang wore a long face the entire way to Clear Breeze Temple. Even the children beside him could tell he was a little unhappy.
Zhao Yumei's daughter, Yuan Xiaoyue, felt completely differently from young Wang. The little girl treated this educational trip to Clear Breeze Temple as a spring outing, and one where she could spend a night away from home at that. She was cheerful the entire way and even started singing on the bus.
And so the group arrived at Clear Breeze Temple in their various moods.
To take good care of these little guests, Yun Zhaozhao specifically assigned Lin Banxia to handle their entire visit.
There were still quite a few visitors in Clear Breeze Temple's front courtyard during the day, so Lin Banxia didn't take the children there, leading them straight to the back courtyard instead. Although the fruit trees in the back courtyard hadn't borne fruit yet, many of them were already flowering. The neatly arranged rows of trees covered in blossoms looked quite magnificent and beautiful, and the sight kept the children excited for a while.
Only after the children's excitement had settled did Lin Banxia bring out the little shovels and buckets Yun Zhaozhao had prepared in advance. She handed each child a set and said, "Next up is weeding time. Whoever weeds quickly and well gets an extra big chicken drumstick with lunch."
Weeding might be physical labor for adults, but to a group of eight- and nine-year-olds, it was really a game. At Lin Banxia's command, the children quickly got to work.
This was where the orchard's advantages became apparent. In a vegetable patch, they might have had to worry that the children couldn't tell weeds from vegetables, but an orchard posed no such problem. After all, even kindergartners wouldn't confuse grass with trees, let alone a group of second graders.
Wang Ziyu had intended to hold out a little longer, but when one of his companions announced that they had dug up a little earthworm, he finally couldn't resist. Grabbing his little shovel and bucket, he rushed over.
The children spent the entire morning weeding, digging, and searching for little earthworms.
Throughout all this, Lin Banxia did nothing but pull up a little stool and sit nearby, watching them dig, dig, dig in the big back courtyard. At most, she occasionally took out her phone to snap a couple of photos and send them to Yun Zhaozhao, so she could post them in Clear Breeze Temple's junior shareholders' group.
The morning passed quickly.
At noon sharp, Clear Breeze Temple had lunch ready for its little guests. Every child received four dishes and a soup, and, keeping their promise, they also prepared a big chicken drumstick for each child.
Perhaps they were tired from weeding all morning, or perhaps Daoist Chang Kong's cooking suited their tastes too. Either way, these children, who were fairly picky eaters at home, all ate with great relish.
Lin Banxia seized the opportunity to take plenty more photos and send them to Yun Zhaozhao.
Yun Zhaozhao posted the lunch photos along with the morning's weeding photos in the group, and sure enough, they drew a flood of praise from the parents.
[He's eating so happily. I've never seen him enjoy his food this much at home. Daoist Chang Kong really is the GOAT.]
[Nice. They get both food and fun.]
[When's the next educational trip like this? I'd like to sign my daughter up.]
[Are registrations only open to children? Can a three-hundred-month-old baby join?]
The discussion in the group was lively, and Yun Zhaozhao's eyes lit up as she read it. Actually, come to think of it, if this event was well received, they really could organize more activities like it in the future. It was a good way to bring in revenue, after all!
After lunch, Lin Banxia had the children wash the bowls and chopsticks they had used and put them back before leading them to their temporary dormitory-the same room where Lin Banxia's grandfather had stayed before. Unlike last time, however, the room had now been set up as one large communal sleeping area. Soft mattresses covered the floor, with ten little quilts laid out neatly on top. The children could choose whichever patterns and colors they liked.
Wang Ziyu loved astronomy most, so he chose a quilt patterned with stars. Yuan Xiaoyue chose a pink quilt covered in little flowers.
Once the children had chosen their quilts, Lin Banxia divided them into boys and girls. The boys slept on the outer side and the girls on the inner side, with a small screen curtain serving as a simple divider between them.
Many children this age no longer took afternoon naps, and their school didn't give them much time to nap either. After all, they sometimes had classes or homework at midday too.
So when the mothers in the wives' group first heard that Lin Banxia was coaxing the children into taking a nap, they all thought it sounded dubious and unlikely to work. Even when they tried to get their own children to sleep at home, they didn't succeed every time, let alone with so many children sleeping together. Children tended to get carried away with an audience, after all. The more people there were, the more excited they got, and the more excited they were, the harder it was to fall asleep.
Yet, unexpectedly, less than half an hour later, a video arrived from the temple saying that all the children were asleep.
Mrs. Wang was the first to express disbelief: [They're really asleep? How did you manage that?]
Yun Zhaozhao: [We played Buddhist chants for them for half an hour. Ethereal Buddhist chants to calm the mind and help you sleep. You deserve them.]
Everyone: [...]
Worried that the children wouldn't sleep properly that night if they napped too long, Lin Banxia only let them sleep for an hour before waking them one by one.
The morning's activities had been weeding and digging for earthworms. The afternoon's activities also took place in the back courtyard, but this time, they switched to uncovering the secrets of Chinese medicinal herbs.
Following Yun Zhaozhao's instructions, Lin Banxia had printed the names of several dozen Chinese medicinal herbs from the internet in advance. She then had the children take the names and find each corresponding herb in the medicinal herb garden.
It was rather like a treasure hunt, except the treasures they were hunting weren't actual treasures, just Chinese medicinal herbs.
But regardless, as long as something took the form of a game, the children were enthusiastic.
If the morning's weeding game had been an individual battle, the afternoon's medicinal herb treasure hunt became a team battle. It was even a battle of the sexes, with the boys on one team and the girls on the other.
Many Chinese medicinal herbs had lovely names but looked quite unremarkable, so finding them wasn't that easy. Lin Banxia had worried that the children wouldn't stick with it, but they turned out to be more persistent than she had imagined. They actually managed to find all dozen or so medicinal herbs whose names Lin Banxia had printed.
Whenever a child correctly identified a medicinal herb, Lin Banxia had them stand beside it for a photo together. It was both a record and something like a medal, so naturally, the children who found more became increasingly interested. As for those who hadn't found a single medicinal herb after ages of searching, Lin Banxia would sneak over and quietly offer a little clue, lest they end up in tears.