"Hello everyone, I am Peng Fei. I am truly sorry that you have to remember my hometown in this way. I am truly sorry, and deeply ashamed."
"For the past two days, there have been many discussions online about me and my hometown. Everyone has asked me to give an explanation. I have thought a lot, and I was indeed afraid, thinking of escaping. But after much consideration, a person must ultimately pay for their own wrongdoings and face their own shortcomings. Therefore, I stand before you now."
"Please allow me a few minutes to explain the whole story from the beginning. Thank you all."
"My hometown, my family, was very, very poor. How poor? Although I finished high school, before I came to Nancheng a year and a half ago, the furthest I had ever been was to the high school in the county town. I had never been anywhere else."
"I had heard words like towering buildings, dazzling array, streets paved with gold, and bustling crowds in textbooks, but they were abstract. I couldn't truly understand their meaning. To use a popular phrase now, poverty limited my imagination. Things that are commonplace to you were things people in my hometown would never see in a lifetime."
"Our village only got electricity five years ago. There are over 30 households in the village. Although every household has electricity, only fewer than ten have televisions, let alone color televisions."
"Hard to imagine, isn't it? In today's society, with such advanced technology, my family didn't even have a television."
"I am considered the most educated person in our village. This is because my father was a carpenter in his youth and had traveled to some places, broadening his horizons and knowing the importance of education. However, he passed away early. After his death, my mother had to raise three children alone. As the only male in the family, I had to share the responsibility, and naturally, I stopped studying."
"When I was in elementary school, I would wake up at a little past five in the summer mornings, make breakfast, and walk an hour uphill to school. In winter or on rainy days, I would usually wake up at a little past four."
"Because it was too far, we didn't go home for lunch. The school didn't provide meals, so everyone basically brought leftover rice from breakfast, wrapped in plastic bags."
"But because we rarely shopped, we had very few plastic bags at home. A tattered bag would be cherished and used for a long time, even for several years."
"Some people might ask, why not buy a lunchbox? That was also an expense. For poor families, any small expense could be the last straw that breaks them."
"Because the conditions for schooling were so harsh, with few teachers, and their educational levels weren't high, and their salaries were low, our educational environment was very poor. Most people would just finish elementary school, or drop out before finishing elementary school."
"They would help with chores at home, day after day repeating a life without any new experiences, until they reached their teenage years. Elders would think they had grown up and needed to get married, so they would start arranging it for them."
"Girls were never short of suitors. Although our place was poor, there was still a bride price. For families in our area, a bride price of a few thousand yuan was a mortifying expense."
"Moreover, marrying a local girl usually involved an engagement period of two years, to observe the groom's family's attitude before marriage. During these two years, the groom had to bring various gifts to the bride's family during festivals. Over two years, this was also a significant expense. Therefore, to marry a local girl, one had to be from a well-off family."
"Many families couldn't afford it, and coupled with the scarcity of girls, this led to the phenomenon you see online."
"This phenomenon has been prevalent in our area for at least ten years. Ever since I can remember from childhood, women from outside have been coming into the village. For us, this was commonplace. Coupled with our ignorance and lack of understanding of the law, we didn't take this matter seriously. We even thought it was how things should be, a normal social phenomenon."
"We didn't practice empathy, we didn't consider the feelings of the bride's parents, nor did we pity the women. As long as our own families were complete, the whole world was fine."
"What everyone says is true, I was once one of those people. Two years ago, my uncle found someone to buy me a wife. She was very beautiful, from Nancheng, and I fell in love with her at first sight."
"I originally didn't want to get married so early because my family was poor, but after I met her, I forgot everything else. I was willing to borrow money to bring her back."
"Like all the women who first came to our place, she cried, she made a scene, she begged me to let her go, promising to give me a lot of money. But I didn't believe her. I didn't believe anyone in the world had that much money. More importantly, I couldn't bear to. She was so good, so beautiful. If I let her go, I would never meet anyone so good again. So, I locked her up..."
At this point, Peng Fei closed his eyes, recalling Zhan Jingchun's pitiful appearance back then, feeling even more like a scumbag.
If he could honestly reveal these things today, and if their town could completely eradicate this poison, change this vulgar custom, even if others looked down on him or ridiculed him, he would accept it.
"We don't have children. It's not that I didn't want them, but we had one, and she managed to get rid of it."
"She never liked me. Every day she was there, she was trying to escape. Later, she finally left, and my world collapsed."
"I only knew her name, only knew she was from Nancheng. I didn't know if I could find her, or where to find her, but I still chased her to Nancheng."
"Terrifying, isn't it? Someone who once hurt you, relentlessly chasing you to your hometown, like a vengeful ghost?"
"But I didn't think that way at the time. On the way here, I thought I was deeply in love. I treated her so well, why wouldn't she like me?"
"It wasn't until I truly entered Nancheng and met educated, normal people that I realized how profoundly wrong I was."
"I am sorry to her, sorry to all my fans who liked and trusted me, sorry to my agent, sorry to the brand sponsors, sorry to everyone who has ever given me work."
"I should have spoken about these matters from the beginning, not waited until now. I deeply know I was wrong, so I sincerely apologize to everyone here."
"I will pay for my past actions, and in the future, I will be cautious in my words and deeds, and never repeat my mistakes. I am sorry!"
After speaking, Peng Fei bowed deeply twice in the video, and it was uploaded online without hesitation.
It was imaginable how explosive the internet would be with such significant news.
Within just one hour, the server crashed.
With billions of views, his agent was driven to madness.