Her Cultivation Diary
Chapter 331 - Chapter 331 331. Tricks for Choosing Melons_1

Chapter 331: 331. Tricks for Choosing Melons_1 Chapter 331: 331. Tricks for Choosing Melons_1 Everyone was stunned for a moment, then all burst into laughter.

Zhang Yanping called out, “I’m starting the live stream. Anyone who doesn’t want to show their face, please stand to the side.”

With a click of a button, the live stream resumed.

On the other side, Seventh Uncle teasingly chastised Qiaoqiao, “What kind of method is that? Patting a watermelon as if it’ll ripen? You don’t even know how to choose a watermelon, but you act like a pro–come here, I’ll teach you.”

“Wait a minute!”

Qiaoqiao was a very responsible teacher; at that moment, she quickly stopped Seventh Uncle and then leaned into the live stream to take a look:

“Seventh Uncle, hold on a sec. I’ll learn with the kids–have all the kids arrived?”

He leaned into the camera, but his gaze was on Zhang Yanping, who was adjusting the live stream setup.

Zhang Yanping saw the flawless face approaching him on the screen, and even though he saw it every day, he couldn’t help but hold his breath at that moment.

After all, with a face like Qiaoqiao’s, he should really be an anchor in the beauty section.

Indeed, after a brief silence, the barrage of comments exploded once again–

[Just came in and got hit by a beauty bomb]

[Babe, aunty’s gonna give you a kiss first today]

[No, no, darling, let your sister cling to those cheeks]

[Kid, your mom’s here!]

Goodness, the relationships in this live stream were in quite a mess; Zhang Yanping couldn’t even bear to watch.

Thankfully, there were still some serious folks.

[I’m here!]

[The host’s streams always start so unexpectedly, luckily I enabled notifications]

[What’s today’s stream about?]

[What a huge field of melons! Are you selling them?]

[The peach flowers are gone, but there are a lot of fruits on the peach trees–are you selling peaches?]

[Are they for pre-sale?]

[Can you put up a link?]

As the number of people increased, the conversations multiplied, and the atmosphere in the live stream was whipped up; in just a few minutes, the number of viewers had soared to three or four thousand.

Zhang Yanping once again marveled at Qiaoqiao’s popularity. At that moment, he stepped back, deciding to let things be.

Qiaoqiao also turned the camera around and now looked at the viewer count on the screen–under Xin Jun’s guidance, he had already learned to understand some of these things, and at that moment, he smiled sweetly, “So many kids have shown up!”

“Alright, Seventh Uncle, go ahead. I’m learning with the kids.”

Then he said, “Kids, today I’ll teach you how to pick a watermelon. Even Teacher Qiaoqiao doesn’t know how, so we’ll learn together.”

Seventh Uncle: …Suddenly being so formal made him feel a bit embarrassed.

But with age comes experience, and after clearing his throat, he gestured for Qiaoqiao to come closer.

Zhang Yanping saw–alright, today he was just a tool again. He simply lifted the tripod, and the camera followed Qiaoqiao’s angle, moving forward.

In the midst of the lush green melon field, a round and plump watermelon in front was especially cute.

There were also a few scattered ones nearby; Seventh Uncle simply moved the watermelon along with the vine over to this side, then picked two melons and placed them together.

“Come on, I’ll teach you how to pick.”

“You said something about patting earlier–tell me, can you actually hear anything when you pat it?”

Before Qiaoqiao could respond, the barrage of comments came first–

[Can’t hear a thing.]

[To be honest, I think patting is just a pre-action to buying a watermelon.]

[Patting: It’s like I know what I’m doing, but actually I haven’t heard anything.]

“Every time I tap a watermelon, I think it’s ripe, but it turns out not to be the case when I cut it open.”

“Man, watermelons are so expensive now. I don’t dare buy from roadside stalls for fear of picking an unripe one and then feeling too embarrassed to return it. Eagerly waiting for the lesson.”

The two watermelons looked about the same size and seemed to have no difference, but Seventh Uncle pointed at the wavy lines on the watermelon:

“If you can’t tell by the sound, first you need to look at the patterns on the watermelon. Full, uninterrupted, and stretched out, a bit wider–it’s like when there’s more subcutaneous fat on a person, it fills out the skin. It’s the same principle.”

“That’s a good watermelon.”

“Like this one beside it, the stripes are tight and close together. It hasn’t eaten enough, hasn’t absorbed enough nutrients, hasn’t grown out. It needs to grow more.”

Inside the live streaming room, there was a collective exclamation of “damn.”

However, Seventh Uncle’s lesson wasn’t over yet.

“Next, look at the vine. There’s a saying that ‘the stem falls when the melon is ripe.’ When the melon ripens, its vine starts to shrink, and that’s when the stem can fall off.”

“Once it shrinks, this place gets smaller, right? So, look at where this watermelon connects to the vine, this belly button-like spot–isn’t it very small? This means it’s ripe.”

“Like this one next to it, it’s still growing, so its vine is still thick and green. If you pick it now, that belly button will be big.”

“Learned something new!”

“Man! I could never tell by knocking, but I can figure it out by looking at the patterns.”

“The stem falls when the melon is ripe–can that be used to pick melons?”

“If I’d known this sooner, I wouldn’t have been humiliated by an unripe melon last year.”

“I’m going to the watermelon stand to redeem my past shame in a moment.”

Zhang Yanping also listened with shining eyes and quickly steadied the camera.

“Next, our local melons are rarely hung in nets to grow, so most of them lie on the ground.”

“Resting on the ground, this side will turn yellow–one, because it’s not exposed to the sun, and two, because of the color of the soil. Watermelons like this, exposed to the sun and wind, are just like greenhouse-grown vegetables compared to wild ones. Our field-grown vegetables just have more flavor, and such watermelons are also a bit sweeter.”

“However,” Seventh Uncle glanced at the live stream again, “now there are too many places growing watermelons in every part of the country. Some places are more scientific and hang watermelons in nets to save space. Those don’t make contact with the soil. They can still be sweet, but you can’t use this method with them.”

“Learned it, learned it!”

“I just love melons that lie on the ground.”

“Isn’t that why they say ‘the essence of the sun and the moon, nurtured by the land’?”

“Melons hanging up lack soul.”

“How many people hang up summer melons? That’s usually done off-season to facilitate sunlight exposure and temperature control.”

On this side, the teaching was not yet over.

“The final trick is to tap. The sound of tapping has its own rules too.”

Seventh Uncle stretched out his hand and tapped on the immature melon, producing a series of crisp “thumps.”

“Did you hear clearly? If it’s crisp, it’s not ripe. If it’s overly ripe, it will make a different sound.”

However…

He looked around the field and said, “We don’t have any overripe ones right now, so let’s not tap those. You tap this ripe one yourself to listen to the sound.”

The live stream audience perked up their ears too, ready to seriously learn how to distinguish melons by sound.

As a teacher, Qiaoqiao was looking serious, ready to put what he learned into practice.

His hands were overly pale in the sunlight. Before the live stream could comment, he gently tapped the watermelon twice.

Before the ripe fruit could respond, a crisp “crack” was heard, and Zhang Yanping aimed the camera over to find that the plump watermelon had irregularly split in the middle.

Seventh Uncle exclaimed, “This is a good watermelon! Ripe just in time–come on!”

He quickly picked up the watermelon from the ground and broke it open along the crack.

The dark green skin turned a slight white, thin, to the point of being only a few millimeters.

Inside was a rich, red mass of watermelon flesh, glistening with juicy brilliance in the sunlight.