Roland and Palatina walked side by side through the flat barnyard, chatting with "telepathy" along the way, and unknowingly entering the supply and marketing cooperatives under the protection of the "invisible magic ball". Palatina was shocked as soon as she entered the door, the valley village supply and marketing cooperative, the most imposing building in the area, covering an area equivalent to a theater, with a spacious hall full of shelves and thousands of kinds of goods.

"Is this really a country shop?" Palatina couldn't believe her eyes, "It's not much inferior to the big malls in the holy city of Yashan!" ”

"Supply and marketing cooperatives" sound a bit rustic, but in fact, they are completely operated according to the model of department stores on the earth. Roland has also discussed "supermarkets" with Evgenia, and the Far East's commerce minister and queen of retail, inspired to experiment with "à la carte" shopping in her stores.

Palatina wandered among the rows of shelves, and when she realized that she, the imperial princess from the first metropolis of Vares, had a strong urge to shop in the country supply and marketing cooperative, like a country girl who had just entered the city, she couldn't help but feel ashamed.

At this time, there was a girl's energetic shout from upstairs, which aroused her curiosity, gave Roland a look, and turned to climb the stairs.

"Peter, can you do it? This is a high-end product imported from Canaan, in case my baby sewing machine is broken, I will definitely not spare you! ”

"You can rest assured, Bafura, install it according to the process on the mail-order manual, you can't go wrong, hand me the screwdriver."

When Palatina ascended to the second floor, she found that the layout was different from the first floor, with no counters or shelves for displaying goods, and more like a warehouse, with large and small packages, barrels, and cardboard boxes.

In the center of the hall was a large wooden box that had just been opened, the oddly shaped and intricate mechanism was exposed to the light, and the greased gears glowed with a cool steel glow.

Palatina looked closely and recognized it as a new foot-operated sewing machine.

A young girl in a green druid uniform with a pair of cat ears pricked up is looking at the sewing machine with joy, and the occasional flicking of the cat's tail shows her excitement, as if she can't wait to show off her sartorial skills on the machine.

A boy who looked to be about the same age as Catwoman's druid crouched across from the sewing machine, his snow-white priest's gown stained with oil and unconcerned, assembling a mail-order sewing machine against the instructions.

"Come on, Peter, hurry up and install the sewing machine, I'll sew you a new cloak!" Catwoman jumps around cheering on the boys.

"Thank you, Babhafra, you didn't keep yelling in my ear, you helped me a lot!" The little priest muttered helplessly.

……

"That's Bafra and Peter, the resident druids and priests of the Valle Village commune, and they're all old friends of mine." Roland whispered to Palatina.

"Two interesting little ones...... "Palatina" smiled with a smile, "Far Easterners are really fashionable, and even the little girls in the country use sewing machines." "Even in a mega-metropolis like the holy city of Asia, the sewing machine is just a decoration in the lady's drawing-room, usually placed opposite the piano, covered in red velvet, and only occasionally displayed to the girlfriends.

"The sewing machine is a great invention, and it can even be said to be the highest representative of civil machinery technology in our era, but it is a pity that the quality of the sewing machine produced in the Far East is not good, and it can only get a place in the low-end market, and high-end goods still have to be imported."

The sewing machine ordered by Pafra was imported from Canaan and was a beneficiary of the Far East's trade preference agreement with Canaan, and was loaded from Bethlehem on a ship along the Crescent River to Medes, where it was loaded onto a train to Colasburg and then transferred to the village of Vale. There are many twists and turns along the way, and the shipping costs are quite high.

"I have a question, how did a rural girl living in the far northeast find out about the launch of Bethlehem's latest sewing machine, and how did she complete the complicated process of ordering, shipping and receiving?" Palatina looked curious.

"That's a good question." Roland took her hand and said, "Bafra has a good ear, let's go over there, don't alarm her." ”

Bypassing a pile of packing boxes, Roland led Palatine to the second-floor office area, picked up a brick-thick picture book from the messy desk and handed it to her.

"The second floor of the supply and marketing cooperatives is the 'mail order agency' in Gudi Village, open the mail order manual in your hand, the goods on it can be ordered, and you can come here to pay and pick up the goods at the scheduled time."

Palatina opened the mail-order brochure and was greeted by colorful and eye-catching illustrations, and the exaggerated advertising slogans were even more memorable.

She curried through the mail-order brochure and found four hundred and forty-nine catalogs, each corresponding to an advertising page, which included a wide variety of mail-order items, including saddles, farm implements, knives, and kitchen utensils; The introduction of the complete set of furniture occupies many pages; There are more than 30 styles of women's summer cloaks, as well as men's shirts of various grades from 5 silver thalers to 20 gold thalers, and more than 50 kinds of different types of women's suits from pajamas to evening dresses; Add to that a wide range of jewelry, brightly colored perfume bottles, porcelain, kitchen utensils, stoves, toys, children's clothing and strollers, and it's a big-box store built on paper!

Palatina rubbed her eyes, overstimulated by the exaggerated advertising images, and flipped back to the catalog pages to see the rarer items. The results opened her eyes, and the homemade "aphrodisiac absinthe" made by the dwarf aunt in the town of Big Rabbit Nest was impressively listed, and what shocked her even more was a terrible "prom queen" brand "breast enlarger", which looked like an iron toilet puff, and the advertisement promised that if you used it regularly, you would be able to have "round, firm and beautiful breasts......

Palatina couldn't help but imagine the scene of the "toilet ladle" firmly sucking her chest and pulling it outward, and suddenly shuddered, and quickly dropped the mail-order album, and shivered twice before calming down.

"Roland, first of all, I have to admit that the mail-order industry in the Far East is thriving, but don't you think these advertisements are exaggerated? It's like a propaganda poster distributed by cultists! I'm amazed that anyone would be willing to draw such a deceptive thing! ”

"It's a bit of an exaggeration, it's all a request from a businessman, and the painter has to accept the commission to paint these bizarre advertisements in order to support his family." Roland smiled slightly wryly, "In fact, this is to blame for the rise of the 'magic guide phototypesetting technology' has had a violent impact on the painting industry, most of the traditional painting art has a realistic style, to learn this skill, you must first practice sketching, the more you paint like the real better, but with the 'mirror' and ' With the popularity of fax machines, people could easily photograph beautiful landscapes without spending years learning to draw, and painters became dispensable characters with lifelike characters, and even newspapers and magazines no longer hired painters to draw illustrations, but instead published more realistic photographs, resulting in painters who made a living by selling illustrations had to face the dilemma of unemployment. ”