Song Tan's Notes

2025 is a somewhat special year.

I moved to a new environment, started a new life, began new hobbies, learned new knowledge, and ventured into fields I had never been before.

The year was not very smooth overall, but the overall results were good.

As the year draws to a close, I wanted to write a long and insightful summary of my life experiences, but after much thought, my mind went completely blank.

Staying calm is the normal state of mind.

As I get older, my memory is almost gone; I can forget what I just said the moment I turn my head.

I don't have enough energy either. Ten years ago, I could write all night long, but now I feel dizzy and disoriented if I do anything late at night.

But if I don't say anything, it would seem like my mind is completely blank!
Damn it, I wanted to portray myself as an intelligent person!

Then I thought about what profound insights I might have gained from reading.

---No.

Ugh! My head is completely blank!
However, most of the time, reading doesn't give us the most direct insights, but by absorbing more knowledge, when I am moved, I will know what is moving me.

This year, I realized that my thinking and knowledge were really shallow.

My hometown is a hilly city in the plains, belonging to the Central Plains, and is also a strategic location fought over by military strategists. It can be said to be a place where the north and south meet and blend together very well.

But my hometown is a mountain village nestled in a valley. I always thought that all villages and towns in the world were like that.

It wasn't until I visited a friend's house two years ago that I realized that villages and towns are completely different from one another.

She told me she was going back to her hometown village to stay, so I brought a lot of daily necessities. But when we got to the town, we found that the hotels there were the same standard as the mid-to-high-end hotels in my small, third-tier city.

The town has Snow King, Luckin Coffee, and is bustling with people, making it a lively and prosperous place.

My town, in my memory, was a winding, hilly area with many twists and turns. I lived at school during junior high and had to walk two hours home every week. There were a few small supermarkets, general stores, breakfast shops, etc.

In short, after rambling on for a while, the core point is that our township is quite poor.

Despite its impoverished location, this region produces Xinyang Maojian, one of the top ten famous teas in China.

Tan Tan's tea business was inspired by this.

I hate picking tea more than anything else in my life.

The dew was heavy, soaking my trousers and shoes, and my wet hands carefully picked the tender shoots of the tea.

The tea leaves contained snakes, insects, rats, ants, wild rabbits, pheasants, and nests of worms, small spiders... I've told you all a few times that when I was a child, I didn't have many toys. My dad would catch centipedes, break off their fangs, and give them to me to play with, which I enjoyed immensely.

But this is spring tea, and although it's hard work, the temperature isn't too high, and the price is a bit higher, so it still takes some effort.

When the heat of summer arrives, I get up at 4:30 in the morning and head straight to the hillside. I wait until the sun is scorching hot before going home for breakfast.

I went back into the swarm of mosquitoes in the evening, continuing to brave the high temperature, and only left when it was completely dark at eight o'clock.

I'm not a diligent person, nor am I very good at manual labor, so my tea-picking results were really nothing to brag about.

But I remember that during the summer vacation of my first year of high school, sometime in the early 2000s, I sold my long hair for 80 yuan, and then went to pick tea to sell it—

Fresh Maojian tea, eight yuan per jin (500g).

Eight yuan. One jin (500g).

Maojian tea doesn't weigh much; most skilled workers can only harvest a little over a pound after working for half a day or six hours.

In other words, after working hard for half a day, you only earn about ten yuan.

From before Qingming Festival, to May Day, to the entire summer vacation, and even to National Day—oh, tea picking might not be done during National Day, but before National Day, chestnut buds must be picked. In the tea forest, amidst the buzzing of mosquitoes and insects, with faces flushed red, bodies covered in bumps, and hands blistered, one picks chestnut buds with fire tongs.

In short, summer vacation is my least favorite holiday because I have to do chores every day, which is too tiring. (Actually, because my parents spoil me, I actually do relatively little chores.)
And it was this Xinyang Maojian tea that, after I entered society, saw its market improve year by year. For example, my family's several acres of tea plantations, the most profitable spring tea, during the month of Qingming Festival, my parents could earn more than 10,000 yuan just by picking tea.

Of course, once the first harvest of spring tea is over, the price will plummet, but I won't go into details here.

In recent years, local major tea merchants have invested hundreds of millions of yuan to build a tea village (I am not trying to encourage tourism here; in my opinion, the tourism culture here has not been very successful and there is still much room for improvement. It is okay to drive here for a visit if you are nearby, and the scenery is also unique, but I would not recommend making a special trip from afar because the scenery is too scattered and fragmented. Aerial views are more beautiful than close-up views).

When I get home, the driver will happily ask, "Did you go to the tea plantation?"

I lack emotional intelligence, so I complained: "Hey, I've been looking at tea plantations every day since I was a kid, why would I specifically go and squeeze into the crowds? Why not just invest so much money in this tea village?"

The driver chuckled: "It is a tourist attraction after all. Don't wait for a holiday; you can stop by and take a look while you're passing by."

I always thought that this kind of investment, like those pedestrian overpasses in the city that offer no shelter from the wind or rain, no sun protection, and are blindingly bright at night, was just something people with money wanted to mess around with.

Even after I told my mom about it when I got back, she just chatted casually:
"Thanks to his significant investment in brand building, our tea can command a higher price, allowing us to earn 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year. Otherwise, it would be like before, earning only a few thousand yuan during the hottest days of summer, not even enough to cover our living expenses."

This was just a casual remark, but it's hard to describe my silence.

In that instant, I really felt that I was extremely shallow (although I still didn't understand the colorful light bridge in the city).

But I'm also glad, because I need to write, and I'm afraid of making mistakes and being laughed at (I misused the phrase "Heaven and Earth are ruthless, treating all things like straw dogs" ten years ago, which is truly shameful to think about), so I've been researching, watching videos, and reading books...

I've written about some silly robots, and readers have explained the difference between hackers and bots to me.

He has written about disasters and has been educated by readers about the various technological devices used during disasters.

While writing about drug prevention, I received some educational information about "The Sword of China".

I've written about cultivation, historical fiction, the apocalypse, the supernatural... I write whatever comes to mind, and it's always full of passion.

Writing "Song Tan's Chronicles" gradually enriched my understanding of the farm work I knew but didn't know the reasons behind, my past memories, what I saw, heard, and did, and the agricultural science popularization I received from CCTV.

Next is ancient times, specifically the "Chronicles of the Qin Dynasty".

The background is based on the Qin and Han dynasties. Sometimes I even had to check whether a quote was out of context. The progress was very slow, but because I was forced to look up a lot of information and attend many classes, I can say that writing this book actually reshaped my understanding of ancient civilization and history—although I can only remember a little of it.

But I still love every character I create.

Now, 2025 has passed.

In 2026, I wish we can all see our own lighthouse and see our own direction clearly.

Wishing everyone happiness, health, and everlasting joy, and may you earn lots of money.

happy New Year.

Happy New Year! (End of Chapter)