"You can't say that. People from Henan always find a way to do better than others wherever they go, and that's a skill."
"Hehe," Zhao Sanque was noncommittal, "When I was a child, five siblings of mine—three died. I was the fourth one, nearly starved to death. Do you know how I survived?"
"It wasn't by eating sparrows, was it?"
"You're half right. That year, I was six years old, skin and bones from hunger. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I started to think about catching sparrows. Do you know about sticky nets?"
Ye Tian nodded. Those kinds of nets were useless against large birds of prey, but for little things like sparrows and swallows, they were spot on. Most people would think the net was coated with glue, but it wasn't; it was just a closely woven net, loose on the outside and tight on the inside, whose main function was to entangle, not to stick like glue.
