By linking my account to the check-in system, I became a leisurely traveler.

Chapter 166 Look at my drawing skills... [First update!]

There are two things worth noting when I woke up this morning.

One thing that happened was that Li Younan's last ascent of Mount Gongga and the incident where he rescued Ding Rui was reprinted by several news media outlets.

To be honest, the incident happened a while ago, and the fact that it has suddenly become a hot topic again is not without basis.

Li Younan then saw several posts online about the progress of the lawyer's criminal self-prosecution against internet celebrity Lao Xu.

Meanwhile, some influential figures also commented on the matter, all from the perspectives of social hot topics such as the online environment, public opinion, and self-defense in the face of false accusations.

Old Xu made a fuss for a while, trying to apologize and try to make a comeback, but he was criticized by netizens and went silent.

This matter was naturally fueled by others.

Ding Rui isn't the kind of person who would swallow a loss. He's already declared online that if that old Xu dares to make a comeback, he'll definitely take away his livelihood.

However, right now, Lao Xu's main focus is on dealing with the court summons. The evidence is conclusive, and he has encountered a shrewd lawyer who is driven by fame and profit, so there is almost no chance of turning the tables.

People online are laughing at him just as they laughed at Li Younan back then.

All the favorable conditions—timing, location, and people—have been shattered.

Seeing Lao Xu's current situation, Li Younan was naturally in a very good mood.

He felt no pity whatsoever for such a person.

……

Half an hour later, Li Younan arrived at the agreed location and then drove Lu Shihua to the craftsman's house.

Sitting in the car, Lu Shihua would steal glances at Li Younan every now and then.

Prior to this, she had sent messages to many influential online figures, but so far only Li Younan has responded to her.

Originally, Li Younan was the lowest priority among the online influencers she was considering, because Li Younan is strictly speaking a travel blogger, and although travel bloggers are somewhat related to intangible cultural heritage, the correlation is not that close in general.

Lu Shihua prioritizes bloggers who promote traditional culture.

Unfortunately, perhaps because her collaboration wasn't for commercial purposes, she didn't know whether those influential figures hadn't seen her message or had seen it but simply didn't intend to reply. She was somewhat disappointed.

Sitting in the car, Lu Shihua suddenly asked, "Teacher Li, why did you respond to my message?"

“Actually, you don’t need to call me Teacher Li. I’m not much older than you. Just call me Brother Li.” Li Younan glanced at Lu Shihua and said, “As for why I responded to your message, well, how should I put it? I was just curious and wanted to see what kind of person was doing this.”

Lu Shihua looked surprised and tilted her head, asking curiously, "Is that all?"

Li Younan nodded.

Li Younan's answer was still somewhat strange to Lu Shihua.

She was actually an extremely outstanding girl in college, and she often participated in social practice. Whether it was teaching in rural areas or other volunteer activities, she did them very seriously. After graduating from college, she devoted herself to saving those intangible cultural heritages that were about to disappear. In this process, she naturally interacted with many influential people on the Internet.

how to say……

The process of dealing with these people is gradually shattering her filter of online persona.

She gradually realized that no matter what kind of persona one creates online, the vast majority of people still create public accounts for material gain.

Of course, this doesn't mean we should look at it with disdain.

For example, a popular online figure who promotes Chinese culture may be doing so to make money, but he does indeed promote Chinese culture.

However, regardless of whether the content output by those online influencers is positive or negative, a different way of thinking is needed when dealing with them.

When discussing cooperation, they always consider the potential benefits.

Some of these benefits are direct monetary gains, while others may come from increased traffic.

Because she had encountered many setbacks before, when Li Younan calmly stated this reason, she felt a sense of absurdity.

She then thought of the news she had seen before, in which Li Younan almost risked his life to save another person on Mount Gongga.

She began to realize that perhaps society wasn't as bad as she had imagined, and that there were still some very pure people, like Li Younan next to her.

She couldn't help but glance at Li Younan a few more times.

About an hour and a half later, the car finally entered a country road.

Guided by Lu Shihua, Li Younan's car turned into a village in Langzhong.

There are a few things that are quite famous in Langzhong, one is the ancient city of Langzhong, and the other is Zhang Fei beef.

However, Li Younan doesn't have time to visit the ancient city or taste Zhang Fei beef right now.

They soon arrived at the village that Lu Shihua had mentioned, and met the old man Lu Shihua had spoken of.

The stench of dirt mixed with decaying leaves seeped in through the cracks in the car window. The road grew narrower and narrower until it finally stopped in front of a wooden door with a rusty copper ring hanging on it. The four characters "Li's Bamboo Weaving" on the lintel had faded to just mottled marks from the red paint.

When I opened the door, water was dripping from the bamboo rack in the courtyard, and half-finished cloth dolls were drying on the rack.

Grandma Li sat on a low stool in the main room, her back to the door, clutching a bamboo strip in her hand, her head bowed low.

They had already called before they arrived. When Grandma Li saw Lu Shihua, she was clearly very happy, but also looked at Li Younan with some nervousness, smiled cheerfully, and didn't know what to say.

Lu Shihua had told her on the phone that they had invited a pretty influential online figure this time. She didn't really know anything about online influencers, but Lu Shihua had said that the person who came could help promote "Smiling Dolls".

In fact, the local government had already done this several years ago.

At the time, she thought she could really save the craft passed down from her ancestors, so she went along with it, but the results were minimal.

Despite the government's efforts to promote it, ultimately not many people bought it.

When people visit the ancient city, they are more willing to buy trinkets imported from Yiwu. However, genuine handcrafted items are not purchased due to their prices.

So when Li Younan came this time, she didn't have much hope.

The old woman understands very well that publicity is useless. Now she only hopes that there will be one or two people who are truly willing to pass on this craft.

While it's being made, I'll take this opportunity to explain it to Li Younan.

"This is the first step in making Langzhong smiling dolls - selecting local three-year-old Ci bamboo, peeling off the green skin, splitting it into bamboo strips that are not much thicker than a hair, and then soaking it in rice water for three days to make it tougher."

"Then sew the doll's body with homemade homespun cloth, stuff the cloth with dried mugwort and dried tangerine peel, and finally paint the face with pine soot and sophora japonica juice."

"The eyes should be drawn into 'almond-shaped' shapes, the eyebrows should be 'crescent-shaped', and the mouth should be upturned, like you've just eaten a sweet fruit..."

As she spoke, she pulled a doll wrapped in red cloth from the drawer. The cloth was frayed at the edges, but the doll's smiling face was still bright. "This was made for my grandson. I sewed it when he was a month old." She stroked the doll's face with her fingers and sighed softly. "When he came last year, I gave it to him, and he said, 'Grandma, this is an old relic. People in the city play with robots,' and then threw it on the table."

“Four years ago, three Japanese people came.” She suddenly stopped and gently put the red cloth doll back into the drawer. “They were wearing raincoats and squatted in the courtyard watching me make dolls. They watched all day long. When I split bamboo strips, they noted the thickness of the strips; when I boiled pigments, they patted the sophora flowers in the porcelain bowl; they even asked clearly what size needle I used.” She paused. “One of them, an old lady, over seventy years old, bowed to the doll I hadn’t finished. Before leaving, they bought ten dolls, saying they wanted to take them back to Japan for an exhibition, and that if I wanted, they could send apprentices to learn from me.”

Li Younan asked her if she had agreed, and she shook her head, then said seriously, "Even if the things passed down from our ancestors are lost, they can't be passed down to those places!"

Lu Shihua, with a somewhat complicated expression, said, "Things that are almost lost in our area are treasured by Japan and South Korea."

Grandma Li pointed to the half-finished products piled up in the corner of the main room: "Who am I supposed to teach? Five women in the village used to learn from me, but now they either went to work in the city or ran away because they thought it wasn't profitable enough. My son said that when I can't work anymore, I'll burn all these bamboo strips and fabrics to save space."

The rain was still falling. She picked up a doll without a face painted on it, dipped it in some acacia bud juice, and tried to paint eyes, but her hand trembled so badly that paint dripped onto the cloth, forming a small dirt spot.

She sighed and put down her pen: "Actually, I'm an old woman, and I don't rely on this to make money anymore. The village gives me a minimum living allowance. I have enough to eat and wear. I'm just sad that this is a craft passed down from our ancestors. It's been lost in my generation... and no one else knows it anymore."

Lu Shihua, who was standing to the side, glanced at Li Younan, sighed deeply, and said with some sadness, "The most heartbreaking thing in this world is never that something is gone, but that someone is there to protect you, yet you still can't keep it."

Li Younan was silent for a while, then suddenly picked up the faceless doll and asked Granny Li, "Granny, you're looking for a successor, right? What's the hardest part about this?"

“The hardest part is painting the face.” She dipped her brush in pine soot ink, smeared the ink on the rim of the bowl, but didn’t immediately apply it. “Look at this doll’s face. It’s just a small piece of cloth, about the size of a palm. The eyes have to be drawn as almond-shaped. If the left one is a little bigger and the right one a little smaller, it will be off-center. The eyebrows have to be crescent-shaped. The strokes have to be light at the beginning and slightly upturned at the end. If you use too much force, it will look like a crying eyebrow. The most precious part is the mouth. It has to be drawn from the left corner of the mouth upwards, then slowly downwards to the middle. The curve has to be like a freshly picked sweet plum, sweet and delicious, but it can’t be too upturned, or it will look like a silly grin.”

Li Younan thought for a moment and then picked up a pen from the side.

He thought for a moment, then suddenly started drawing on the doll's face.

This scene stunned Lu Shihua, who quickly said, "Brother Li, stop! What are you doing?"

Grandma Li, standing nearby, chuckled and said, "It's alright. I can only do this for fun now; I can't sell them anyway."

Lu Shihua frowned slightly, suppressing her urge to stop Li Younan.

But a moment later, when she saw the doll's face, she was stunned.

Li Younan, of course, did not draw the usual smiley face doll.

With his current painting skills, he can paint whatever he wants without any pause.

With just a few strokes, a lifelike image has already appeared on the doll's face.

She's still laughing... This is Labubu, who recently made a lot of money from foreigners.

Li Younan put down the rag doll and then picked up another doll at random.

With just a few strokes, he drew a demon child named Nezha.

Lu Shihua was naturally shocked, and what shocked her most was Li Younan's painting skills.

She hurriedly took out her phone and snapped two photos.

Look at this doll; it was painted with the crudest paint, yet it's incredibly lifelike.

Lu Shihua secretly weighed the options in her mind... Although Granny Li was the inheritor of this craft, to be fair, Li Younan's painting skills far surpassed Granny Li's.

It should be noted that this was Li Younan's first time using this type of paintbrush and material, yet she had already achieved this level of skill with ease. Even among the art school students she had met before, none of them could reach Li Younan's level.

She was still in shock.

She suddenly realized that these two ugly-cute dolls were completely different from the smiley dolls she had seen before, but they were surprisingly cute, so cute that she wanted to buy them.

Li Younan looked up and asked Granny Li, "Granny, do you think my painting skills are good enough to carry on your craft?"

The old woman looked at the doll for a while, and said with a complicated expression, "This drawing... is quite good, but... this drawing... is not right."

Li Younan picked up a painting again, seemingly unconcerned.

This time, I drew a very standard smiley face doll.

As he painted, the old woman's somewhat cloudy eyes gradually brightened, and finally, her eyes even reddened as she stared blankly at Li Younan.

(End of this chapter)