Ministry of Magic Classification: XXXX

The 6533 from Daliangshan

English added by me :)

Video transcript:

In the depths of Daliangshan, I got on a green-skin train. In the beginning, I didn’t think there was anything different here. It wasn’t until I discovered the ticket price was so low it was ridiculous. At the cheapest, it was only 2 yuan (0.29 usd). The whole journey was 400 km, which was only 26.50.

This place and the train from my memory wasn’t quite the same.

Climbing on required using a super tall platform. Some people were carrying beilous. Some people were wearing pretty ethnic folk dress. And there was also an Yi apo doing sewing work.

It wasn’t until a girl carrying a rooster walked by me that my mind filled with thoughts.

Are all the pets here so unusual?

Later, a da-jie was getting on, and I gave her a hand. I discovered there were a lot of chickens and eggs. If there are chickens, could the ducks be far away?

As expected, their song sound resonated from the front.

I was a little curious: what other mysterious animals were there around?

This sheep was truly impolite, and da-ge was put in a temper from being dragged around. Using the strength of 9 cows and 2 tigers, he finally sent it into the bathroom.

I wonder if it will dream of the plumber Mario here…

Finally, there was only a celestial dog over here, bobbing its head.

Oh right, I must hurry and tell a train attendant: the villager’s pigs have pooped in the train car again.

Fortunately the train attendant told me the pigs and the dog were bought to be taken back and raised. The chickens, ducks, and sheep are being taken to the county seat to be sold. They’re all passengers on the train.

In order to convenience the fellow villagers’ bulk cargo, each train car has a row of seats taken out. It’s hard to imagine that the storage room here could be so excessive.

The train also has a few study cars specifically made for students coming and going.

The mountains and rivers outside gradually grew distant. Those in the train car speedily wrote across their papers.

The students here were innocent and unaffected toward the camera.

["You’re very adorable!"]

The girl bashfully told me that she was in middle school.

["Third year of junior high."]

The boy shared his last sunflower seeds with me.

The Yi villagers’ standard mandarin wasn’t too fluent. She only knew one line:

["I don’t understand what you’re saying."]

However the students were able to teach me.

["'Kashasha' means thank you (in Yi)!" "Kashasha!"]

They take this train back home on Fridays and take the train back to school on Sunday.

Seeing the smiles on their lips, I finally realised: this train is what they depend on from elementary school to high school. This is her special study car. And it’s the train that brings him wealth. Even more so, it’s the slow train to lift them out of poverty.

Send in a ♬ for your muse to catch mine singing

“If she’s got the temperament for it, she should try her luck inland,” they advise. “No point her starting a temple here if she’d find her people elsewhere, with a little searching.”

At first, your parents are reluctant to send you away. Though you’re well-behaved and diligent in your chores, you’re a sickly child with no God to worship. And besides, you’ve always been the dreamy type–inclined to lose track of time watching the path of rain droplets chasing down the window, or the fronds of an anemone as it sways in a rock pool.

Instead, they send you to the temple of the Storm to learn all you’ll need for your own God. You are happy there, for a time: making up beds and serving food to the castaways who pass through, keeping vigil at the lighthouse, burning incense and praying with the loyal widows and orphans of the drowned.

One such widow, an old, old lady, touches the mark on your forehead. “I recognise those letters. We wrote this way in the town where I grew up, way off past the mountains.”

Your heartbeat quickens. “What does it say!?”

She squints, eyes engulfed by wrinkles and hidden behind smudged glass. “A… Ar… Oh, I can’t remember how to speak it. I left before I learnt my letters properly. There was a war, you know. But I remember,” she says, mistily, “the most beautiful pink and white flowers used to grow, on the borders of the wheat fields…”

You try to ask more questions, but remembering the war distresses her, and so you speak of other things. When she’s drifted off to sleep, you get to your feet, go home and tell your parents: you are leaving in search of your God.

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

b) What the actual fuck did I just watch.

c) I’m always here for little old ladies curbstomping malevolent supernatural entities.

BUBBLES

All summer and fall, beavers gather up branches with the leaves they actually eat, and store it in the deep end of the Pond, where the cold water and limited oxygen keep the leaves fresh all winter, so when it's negative 20 outside, a beaver can take a dip out of it's lodge, grab some refrigerated leaves in the (relatively) warmer water and go back to it's cozy little nap hole while everything else is out there suffering and eating bark or the like.

Welcome to 2023 by Frog and Toad

A parrot eating a croissant while standing on the top of the sign.

- the amount of YEET

- Clever use of magnets and physics

This beaver is a rehab animal. He was found on the side of the road when he was no bigger than a potato. He is still young in this video (you do not realize how big adult beavers are, trust me) and is not ready to leave his home or family. Yes, beavers are social and they live in families. For him, his rescuer is his family. But he will be ready to leave at the age of two or three, when a wild beaver would leave his parents and seek out a territory of his own.

Anyway, he gets plenty of outdoor time and is also being taught to swim and do normal beaver things. He WILL eventually be released. So him building a dam out of plushies is not as sad as it might seem.