The Gourmet Paradise forum, under the Gossip and Venting section.
"Exposing a fruit shop full of sycophancy."
I'm telling you guys, I stumbled upon an unbelievably ridiculous online fruit shop today. It’s like the mother of ridiculousness opened the door to ridiculousness itself, taking it to the extreme.
On the product review pages, which are few and far between, it's nothing but effusive praise. You can't find a single negative comment.
Some of the product reviews read like a master of flattery at work. They're not eating fruit; they're eating peaches of immortality like the Monkey King, and even he wasn't this eloquent. They're just selling watermelons and strawberries, and there's a crowd acting like they've never tasted them before in their lives. These people are sick.
The shop owner is sick too.
Can't you guys tone down the bought-and-paid-for good reviews a little!
Here are some screenshots for you guys—
The shop's strawberries are absolutely amazing. Each one is as big as my child's fist. Three strawberries weigh a pound. I was a bit worried at first, wondering if such large strawberries would taste bad. To my surprise, the flavor was incredible, truly spectacular! .jpg
I've never eaten a watermelon as delicious as the ones from this shop. Forget those other varieties, they can't even compare. I tasted pure bliss. What kind of divine melon is this shop selling? After eating this one, I feel like all the watermelons I've eaten before were just garbage. .jpg
Ahhh... Honestly, I always thought "muskmelon" was just a name, and never really thought they were that fragrant. In fact, most of the muskmelons I bought a few years ago weren't even very sweet. It wasn't until today that I finally tasted what a real muskmelon should be.
This is truly my dream muskmelon.
Just taking it out of the bag, the aroma was already wonderful. Once cut, the scent was even stronger and more fragrant than my current perfume. The texture was both sweet and fragrant, absolutely perfect. .jpg
...
...
There are too many to list. This shop is treating anyone who hasn't bought from them like an idiot. Strawberries the size of a fist, who would believe that?
The biggest strawberries I've ever bought were ten to a pound.
Three to a pound, what kind of strawberries are these…
They’re not afraid of getting caught; they’re bragging too much…
【Although it's a bit outrageous, it's a common practice for new shops to solicit good reviews when they first open. There's no need to be so harsh and say it's unacceptable.】
【To be fair, the fruit photos they posted look quite good. Those strawberries look appetizing, and their size is very tempting. I guess it's just a deceptive photo.】
【That watermelon looks so familiar. It looks a lot like the "exploding melon" that someone on the forum used to promote years ago. The kind that would easily explode and crack if you applied a little pressure when ripe, spoil quickly, and was either not ripe enough to be good or too ripe to handle, making it impossible to transport and sell in large quantities.
It just looks a lot bigger. One of them must weigh twenty pounds. Could it be a special new variety?】
【That muskmelon looks familiar too. I remember seeing something about it on the news a few years ago. It was a muskmelon variety that a research institute failed to develop. Apparently, it was supposed to be extremely fragrant and sweet when ripe, but the flesh was very soft, making it almost impossible to transport.
When unripe, the fragrance and sweetness were greatly reduced. Most importantly, it couldn't be ripened by artificial means, it would only rot.】
【You know, I think it’s fine. The shop isn’t selling their fruit at a particularly high price, just a normal price for premium fruit. What’s wrong with using slightly exaggerated language? I think it’s perfectly fine and I want to try it.】
【The original poster's point is that such exaggerated descriptions should be applied to imported premium white strawberries selling for 369 yuan per jin, not to red strawberries selling for only 29.9 yuan per jin, right?】
【Although I think the original poster makes a valid point.
However, since the original poster hasn't personally bought and tasted them, isn't it a bit unfair to say this? What if their descriptions are exaggerated, but the taste is indeed good? Isn't that the same as giving a bad review without watching the movie?】
...
Even though Ding Yun's online store was called out, since they hadn't bought anything, they couldn't leave negative reviews. So, overall, the impact was minimal. In fact, it brought her some traffic, and her store was quickly sold out.
As people who bought with a "let's give it a try" attitude received their orders, many immediately went to the thread that called out Ding Yun's shop to post photos and criticize the original poster for making accusations without proper investigation.
Before long, the original poster deleted the thread and posted an apology. The result, however, was that the apology post was worse than not posting at all. After it was posted, many people even suspected it was some kind of marketing tactic.
Putting someone down first and then praising them, using the strategy of "suppress first, then elevate."
However, there are relatively few people who spend their time discussing a small shop online. Most people, after buying and finding it good, will at most remember the shop for future purchases or recommend it to a few friends.
As long as Ding Yun maintains product quality.
Her sales volume will surely snowball, and so will her customer base.
With this successful experience, Ding Yun began her focused journey of "picking up scraps." She started searching everywhere for fruit seeds with good varieties and excellent flavors, but which were ultimately discarded or put into cold storage due to reasons like preservation and transportation, making commercialization impossible. She would then buy back those seeds, their licenses, and even their entire ownership to optimize them.
And sell them as her own brand.
It was only at this point that Ding Yun realized how difficult it was to develop a fruit variety and how many varieties died in laboratories and research facilities.
They would never reach the public.
Every excellent variety developed is preceded by countless failed varieties. Fruits with thin skins, abundant flesh, juicy interiors, and few seeds, with delicious flavors, are not achieved overnight. They are slowly cultivated through repeated cross-breeding, taking years, often decades.
Furthermore, the core of developing a superior variety is not just about taste. While taste is important, shelf life and transportation difficulty are also crucial considerations.
No matter how good a variety tastes.
If there are issues with preservation and transportation, making it difficult to sell widely, then it lacks promotional value. After all, fruit must ultimately be sold nationwide to consumers, not just for one person to buy a seed, grow it, and eat it themselves.
Fruits that can be sold nationwide and even worldwide must have a long shelf life.
The reason why domestic cherries are difficult to export is their short shelf life; they rot within three to five days.
Some fruit shops with poor sales even end up selling half and letting the other half rot.
Forget exporting; even within the country, it's hard to transport such fruits to remote areas for sale.
Fruits that are prone to rot and difficult to transport have high transportation costs and high spoilage rates, making their prices naturally difficult to lower. Therefore, if there are no similar competitors for such fruits, it's one thing. But if there are similar competitors that are also more resistant to spoilage, they simply cannot compete.
These are all factors that need to be considered in variety development.
As for imitating Ding Yun, by increasing the fruit size or thickening the skin, that is certainly possible. However, the difficulty is undoubtedly immense, because they are not Ding Yun.
You can't change a species' genes by simply looking at it through a magnifying glass. They need long-term, continuous cultivation.
Ten to twenty years is considered short.
And success is not guaranteed.
Therefore, this is where Ding Yun found her niche.
As her fruit business grew over the years, and she acquired more and more orchards, she no longer contented herself with simply "picking up scraps." She began to hire professionals and establish over a dozen variety breeding centers, instructing them to focus solely on taste when developing fruit varieties, without considering other factors.
This was to expand her industry chain.
Increase her ownership of fruit varieties.
And thus, build a high-end domestic fruit system, breaking the previous situation where China had very few self-developed high-end fruits, with most of the high-end fruits on the market being imported.
Simultaneously, she utilized those fruits to travel the world.
Building a global fruit sales market.
Establishing her reputation and exporting to countries worldwide.
How to describe it? The advantage of most of the fruit varieties Ding Yun developed was their large size and excellent taste. And most people, given good taste, would still prefer a larger fruit.
Between a fist-sized peach and a head-sized peach, if their wallets allow, people would rather choose the head-sized peach even if the taste isn't identical. Let alone when the taste is identical. Therefore, Ding Yun's large and excellent fruits were destined to conquer the global market, the only difference being the time it would take.
However, even with the help of her magnifying glass and unlimited funds, it still took Ding Yun over ten years to achieve her goal, as not only promotion but also fruit growth and the development of suitable nutrients required a long time.
As her fruits began to be sold globally and sales stabilized, Ding Yun started making other preparations, such as setting up more variety breeding bases and hiring more professionals to take over the variety improvement work that was originally done by her magnifying glass.
She couldn't stay in this world forever, and her magnifying glass had certain limitations in variety improvement.
With abundant funds and stable sales,
She naturally had to fill these loopholes.
To form a stable, closed-loop chain of variety research, development, and production.
As the loopholes were gradually filled, Ding Yun began to look for an heir. She didn't choose from her relatives, as that would cause jealousy. She also didn't ask her father and mother to try for another child, as they were already elderly and another pregnancy would be too taxing on their health.
Instead, she chose from within the company.
In the end, she selected a manager, Zhao Xiaguang, who was highly capable and whose logical thinking, personality, and values were somewhat compatible with hers.
However, this was only a temporary selection, and she entrusted the company's management to Zhao Xiaguang while giving her some profit sharing. Whether she would eventually hand over the company would depend on Zhao Xiaguang's future performance and Ding Yun's own lifespan.
If Zhao Xiaguang were to pass away before her.
She would likely have to start searching again.
For now, Zhao Xiaguang could only serve as the executive president.
Regardless, Ding Yun was now much more relaxed, with both wealth and leisure. Her parents even thought that they could afford to raise a simpleton, but Ding Yun eventually managed to extinguish this idea with great effort.
This is what Ding Yun did in the technologically advanced society.
In the ancient society, she wouldn't truly go into seclusion for decades. After all, spending too much time in the technologically advanced society could become tedious, and she would want to use the ancient world's body to do things that were impossible or too impactful in the technologically advanced society, or simply inconvenient, but wouldn't cause much trouble in the ancient world.
After all, she had already created giants.
What would be so significant about creating other things?
Furthermore, she wanted to leave some foundation and protection for the original owner's family, so that as long as they didn't court disaster, they would be safe and secure in the future.
So, after another few years of seclusion.
Ding Yun specifically created "tree rice" and "tree wheat." These were plants that grew like trees, with each grain of wheat or rice weighing several pounds, representing the magnified version of wheat and rice.
And perhaps due to their size,
Their classification even changed. From herbaceous plants, they became woody plants.
Once grown, they could continuously yield wheat or rice.
No need for constant harvesting and replanting.
And the yield increased significantly. While not reaching the exaggerated figure of ten thousand jin per mu, five thousand jin per mu was achievable. The only drawback was that many people who liked to eat rice found it inconvenient to break the grains before cooking. Families with fewer members also found it a bit inconvenient to break one grain to cook, and it would take several days to finish.
But regardless of that.
The incredible increase in yield brought Ding Yun immense honor and the admiration of the common people. At the same time, the entire Xiao family also benefited from this.
While their foundation couldn't compare to that of the Kong or Zhang families, their short-term reputation far surpassed theirs. It was believed that with the accumulation of fame over time, as long as they didn't court disaster themselves, even if the dynasty changed, the new emperor would never treat them harshly. They would even bestow numerous rewards and favor upon them, hoping to gain their recognition.
To enhance the legitimacy of the new dynasty.
With this experience, Ding Yun later, whenever she felt bored or depressed and found it inconvenient to cause trouble in the technologically advanced society, she would return to the ancient world to create some extraordinary species. For example, pheasants weighing thirty to fifty jin, geese with lion heads weighing eighty to a hundred jin, giant trees hundreds of meters tall that rooted beneath small mountains, and super-sized gourd vines whose branches completely covered entire mountains…
In short, the more disciplined and law-abiding Ding Yun was in the technologically advanced society, the more unrestrained she was in the ancient society, using magnification to relieve stress.
Fifty years later, the overall situation in the technologically advanced society had not changed much, except for the emergence of a relatively large, global, high-end domestic fruit brand.
However, the ancient world underwent a massive transformation.
Under Ding Yun's reckless magnification, the ancient world gained numerous colossal plants, along with vast tracts of land planted with giant rice and wheat resembling trees.
This directly led to an increase in oxygen concentration.
Ordinary organisms began to tend towards gigantism.
Fifty years was enough time for humans in that world to procreate for several generations, and for ordinary organisms to reproduce seven to nine generations. Therefore, both newly born humans and other newly born species in that world were much larger than before. The average height of many of the younger generation had soared to 1.9 meters, with many exceeding two meters. Other species were largely the same.
They were all significantly larger than before.
Although Ding Yun felt a little guilty, she wasn't excessively so. Because after discovering this situation, she immediately dedicated herself to remediation, continuously magnifying woody plants and oxygen-producing organisms like blue-green algae.
This was to ensure that the ecosystem would not collapse.
Without her intervention, it was likely that the entire world's ecosystem would not have changed but collapsed.
It might have even led to a world-ending catastrophe.
For this reason, after the ecosystem in the ancient world stabilized, Ding Yun dared not cause further trouble.
Considering that her parents in the modern society had passed away and the company had found a suitable successor, Ding Yun spent a little time settling her assets before directly withdrawing.
However, she was unaware that.
The two worlds, due to her constant soul-traveling over the years, had developed a close connection and were mutually attracted. Even after she left.
The attraction between the two worlds did not disappear.
And then, precisely at 9 o'clock on the twelfth day of the third month, one year and three months after her death, they officially collided, creating a super-large spatial gate that connected the two worlds. From then on, the cosmos gained a "conjoined twin world," and the beings in both worlds, through the connection of the spatial gate, began to communicate and interact.
And the location of that spatial gate.
Was Ding Yun's frequent residence, her later home.