Chapter 68

If parents didn’t rush marriage, it might actually spark their children’s desire to get married, turning it into something new, rebellious.

Gu Yi was a bit confused: “Your real parents?”

“Yeah, Chen Dad and Chen Mom heard that I’m dating Yu Dule and think it’s too unreliable. They probably went back and talked about it, so these two are so anxious that they ran all the way to Shanghai to arrange it for me. Little bunny, did I tell you before that I was ‘on my last legs’? Well, here it is.”

The more she listened, the more wrong it seemed. The next day, Gu Yi went with Guo Xingxin to the matchmaking corner. She had previously visited there under a fake name for an interview and had been scolded by old uncles and aunties. It was even busier on Sundays. Guo Xingxin’s parents looked very beautiful at first sight. Their appearance seemed a bit “detached” and didn’t look very rich, but more like well-dressed people from small towns. People always said that Shanghai people saw everyone else as country folk, but with such an irredeemable sense of aesthetics, it was inevitable to be called rural people.

The mother sat on the ground, with a small blackboard in front of her that read: “Born in 1990, Master’s degree, 168 cm, good-looking, requires a partner with a house and car.” To make the process faster, she also placed a photo of Guo Xingxin beside it, and soon a group of uncles and aunties gathered around the photo, praising her endlessly. Gu Yi thought the scene was too surreal. The beautiful girl Guo Xingxin, the woman Yu Dule and Lu Ming cared about the most, had just given Yu Dule 29 birthday gifts, now at the most famous yet controversial matchmaking corner in Shanghai, surrounded by a group of parents pointing and commenting on her.

“Little girl came? Oh, looks pretty good. Where do you work?”

“Not a high-class job. Should probably quit now, right? If not, I’ll go to your company,” said Guo Xingxin’s mom.

“Oh, what kind of job is that? Is it a hostess?”

Guo Xingxin’s mom: “No, don’t say such things. It’s not that bad, it’s livestreaming.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay then. Not one of those third-rate jobs. After 10 p.m. on Changshou Road, the hotpot and crayfish shops are all massage parlors. You may look good in the park, but looking good doesn’t mean you have money. Even if you look pretty, it won’t help,” said the aunt, seamlessly switching between Shanghai dialect and Mandarin, speaking earnestly, “Bad money drives out good money, society is cruel.”

“My daughter is a Master’s, from a prestigious school!”

“Prestigious school? What does that matter for marriage? A prestigious school doesn’t mean anything. Your husband won’t need to go to class with you.”

Gu Yi, listening to these conversations, could hear the vast amount of information conveyed. — Never compete with the old aunties in sarcasm. Their kids were all treasures, and when they talked, they had no flaws. One of the aunties, eyeing Guo Xingxin’s lack of a “lucky” face, sneered: “After love fades, you can still live together. But you need to be lucky, girl, you have to bring good fortune to your husband.”

Gu Yi was so angry she retorted: “You guys say a round face is lucky, a high hairline is smart, a round forehead brings wealth—then pick me, I meet all the criteria except for money.”

“Little girl, stop arguing. If you don’t want to get married, don’t come here. What’s with this self-media and TikTok, trying to make a joke out of us? You all are like an enemy force. Let me tell you, no one is going to escape marriage and kids. You can’t keep saying no, you’ll regret it later.”

This conversation angered Gu Yi: “Auntie, death is a part of life, but getting married and having children isn’t.”

Guan Xingxin’s mother asked, “Xinxin, is this your friend? What kind of circles are you in in Shanghai, that’s why you can’t get married.” She seemed to have no patience for Gu Yi: “You should let her go home and stay with me here.”

Under the blazing sun, the umbrella on the ground extended down the whole street. The flyers stuck to the umbrella and hung from the trees, fluttering in the wind but not easily shaking off, stretched out endlessly. Gu Yi thought it looked like an elderly form of performance art, a kind of retirement reemployment, called “Not Letting Children Have a Good Life.” Those involved may not accept it, but the desperate parents couldn’t do anything about it. Guan Xingxin tightly held Gu Yi’s hand, biting her lip and said, “Mom, I have a boyfriend.”

Before she could finish, her mother interrupted bluntly: “I don’t approve of that boyfriend of yours. Haven’t you suffered enough? You’re still renting a house to get married. I heard from Aunt Chen that he’s still living with you, looking scruffy, and it’s Aunt Chen who pays your rent. A man who depends on a woman for living!”

“He has a job, he’s better off than I am, don’t insult him.”

“There are so many here with houses and cars, they’ve saved thirty years of effort.”

The atmosphere wasn’t confrontational with swords drawn, but Guan Xingxin was being crushed by her mother with no chance to fight back. Gu Yi, who was used to skillfully debating with her own mother, found herself unable to make a single move—she never expected that some parents wouldn’t even let their daughters speak. An older aunt, holding her bag, tried to mediate kindly: “Hey, you know, we see parents like you from other places a lot. Let me tell you, at People’s Park, I told you, you can find someone within three months, but if you don’t, you’ll become a ‘nail house,’ meaning the problem is with the child. You say destiny can wait, but I’m telling you, here it’s all about big data, people are random. If this one doesn’t work, you move on to the next, there’s no such thing as ‘fate.’ I met a couple last month. Their parents met here, didn’t work out, so the elders came back, still friends.”

Facing a group of old Shanghai aunts, who were overly modest, Guan Xingxin’s mother seemed even more unwilling to talk about the past and only humbly “bargained”: “She’s getting older, anyone under forty is fine, having children is okay, mainly just needs to be in good condition and treat her well.”

“That’s easy to find. She’s so pretty. There are quite a few good matches from families with great kids, born in 81 or 80, all excellent...”

Finally, Guan Xingxin’s father spoke, his voice full of fatherly concern: “You’ve told us you can find someone, and we believed you, gave you time. After so many blind dates, if you’d put in more effort before, we wouldn’t need to help you. You’ve let us down.”

“I don’t want to get married.”

“You’re thirty!”

“Does the law require marriage at thirty? No law says this is a must…”

Guan Xingxin burst into tears, and everyone became excited. A beautiful girl showing up at a blind date corner is always fresh. A crowd of parents surrounded them, talking over each other: “Even if you don’t want to get married, don’t delay your current boyfriend. He probably wants to get married. An outsider girl without a car or house, being pretty is useless. Shanghai houses, little girl, it’s not that we’re boasting, you really can’t afford or pay the mortgage.”

Gu Yi couldn’t take it anymore: “Please, the law doesn’t say marriage and having children are duties, is thirty written into some law?”

Guan Xingxin’s mother pointed at Gu Yi, her voice almost pulling out her hair: “You’re not normal, shut up!”

Shut up? Gu Yi couldn’t help herself: “Auntie, your mind’s not normal either. All the flyers stuck on these umbrellas are full of pros. With all these great qualities in one’s body and society rejecting it, it just proves it’s all fake! Let me count what these conditions actually mean. Educated—no degree; good looking—tall; 175—less than 170; honest, with a good temper—no brain, no guts, just cowardly; rich family, yet filial—depends on parents, likely a mama’s boy; overseas studies—fake degrees. Finding these here proves your horizons aren’t great, and you don’t have much of a social circle, no different than me.”

“Little girl, what kind of talk is that, have you studied?”

“I did, and I was raised bilingual, with Northeast dialect and curse words. The blind date corner isn’t all bad, but Guan Xingxin doesn’t need it! How can you degrade your own daughter like this? Having children is fine, being divorced is fine, even criminals have basic human rights!”

Before Gu Yi could finish, Guan Xingxin’s mother stood up, grabbed her fan, and chased after her. Gu Yi darted through the umbrellas, thinking it was still more comfortable with her own mother—at least there was back-and-forth in their arguments, and her mother gave her the right to defend herself. But with someone else’s mom, it felt like she had no right to defend herself. Just because you’re not getting married, you’re wrong?

The Shanghai crowd was cold, and no one intervened when the umbrella was knocked over—they just watched the drama unfold. Gu Yi kept running and lecturing, her breath full of energy, like a rap, running straight out of People’s Park, crossing the street, and into a hotel lobby to cool off. Gu Yi finally understood why Guan Xingxin dreaded talking about her parents—it was like they never gave her a chance to reason, just waiting for her to follow their expectations and move to the next step in life.

Gu Yi messaged Yu Dule, but didn’t get a reply. She checked Weibo, and saw that every post from Yu Dule had a comment with a lotus flower avatar, which seemed off. She then checked Yu Dule’s Douban posts and diaries—they all had the same comments.

“You don’t deserve my daughter. A mediocre university graduate, working all over, just a second-rate guy, hurry up and break up with my daughter.”

“You can’t afford rent, can’t pay for a house, and you’re living off my daughter—how dare you? Sir, please break up with my daughter as soon as possible. Both of us have worked hard to ensure our child’s happiness, not for her to end up with a useless man.”

“Our daughter worked hard to graduate from a prestigious university, we gave her full freedom, not so you could take advantage of her. I advise you to think carefully!”

The words were full of anger, especially with all the exclamation points.

Gu Yi’s fingers were cold, and she was shaking with rage. How could they intervene to this extent? What did Yu Dule do wrong? With Rong Mao and the two of them spinning around, laughing joyfully, there was nothing more precious than mutual affection. Should they really break up and go look for someone else? Was Guan Xingxin’s family really so poor they couldn’t make ends meet?

Yu Dule returned the call: “Is there something you need?”

“Have you checked your Weibo and Douban?”

“I saw it. This is already the toned-down version; it was much worse before I deleted it. But if you can see it, that means they posted it again. I really don’t understand. The intellectuals I met at home were all pretty kind to me. Why would they turn so cruel when they leave?”

Gu Yixin thought to himself, they’re not the same pair of parents. Even now, he’s still being kept in the dark by Guan Xingxin and his four parents. Despite spending nearly every day with Yu Dule, Gu Yixin wonders how Guan Xingxin manages to hide things so well. He chuckled on the other end of the phone: “I never thought that a monthly salary of 23,000 yuan would still make you a failure in Shanghai.”

Thinking about Liang Daiwen’s usual calm demeanor, aside from his emotional barriers, he really doesn’t worry much about money. In the city, young people become friends with one another, and family background and income differences aren’t so obvious. It’s only when parents interfere that it becomes apparent. A peaceful life without striving requires financial strength, and facing everything with composure requires confidence.

Gu Yixin’s attempt to help Guan Xingxin failed, so he turned to Liang Daiwen for comfort. That night, there was an open mic event at the antelope club, and although Gu Yixin had prepared some jokes about love, he spent the afternoon in the hotel lobby revising them. Jokes are the expression of current emotions, and anger is the best trigger. Liang Daiwen’s calm words in the WeChat conversation reassured Gu Yixin: “Guan Xingxin never told Yu Dule’s parents about things before. Now that the parents have come to Shanghai, it was inevitable they would argue. The outcome is clear, it’s just a matter of time.”

Liang Daiwen’s rationality was overwhelming, almost as if he were “the embodiment of clarity.” Gu Yixin could understand him, but only someone with emotional barriers would speak so bluntly. Gu Yixin felt that Liang Daiwen’s honesty resembled the detached demeanor he had once had at Ounce—cold and composed as an observer. While others tried to offer hope, Liang Daiwen’s approach was brutally realistic. Gu Yixin could only say, “It’s not over yet, let’s trust Yu Dule once more.”

By evening, there was still no message from Guan Xingxin. Gu Yixin felt a little down, likely because her parents were too difficult. When he arrived at the Antelope club that night and saw the second season’s popular contestants on the wall, his anger flared up again. He sat on the couch waiting for his turn to go on stage. He tugged at the microphone cable and gained a bit of a defiant attitude.

“Hello everyone, I’m Gu Yixin. Are there any of you who’ve been set up on blind dates?” He paused. “Alright, you can put your hands down. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

“At this age, it’s the peak of the parental pressure to get married. I once went to a blind date corner. There were flyers hanging on clotheslines, posted on umbrellas, and the shaded spots under trees were prime locations to grab. But it’s all parents, and occasionally, children are there to pull their parents away. Most of the time, they fail. Parents want to see their children married and have grandchildren, but there’s no place for them to go, so this becomes a grand performance, middle-aged people sunbathing, while you can hear Buddhist chants. It’s like they want to purify someone.”

“Recently, my friend’s parents came to the People’s Park blind date corner and made a flyer for their daughter, exchanging information with other parkgoers to find her a match. This became a philosophical matter—shouldn’t finding a match happen at a blind date corner? Why not at a crematorium? My friend is incredibly beautiful, to the point where if she walked on stage at Ounce, everyone would definitely take out their phones—not an ordinary kind of beautiful. But to old people, she’s 29, too skinny, not good for having children; her education level is too high, it overshadows men; her family background is fine, but without a house or household registration in Shanghai, her score is low.”

“At the time, I was baffled, and we argued a bit on-site before they kicked me out. I realized parents get very stubborn with age. They think people should pair up, have children, and live like the characters in dramas, where everyone ends up in a happy family. How could you not get married? I just don’t get it. When parents argue with daughters-in-law, when childbirth leads to death, when couples fight over property, when infidelity and divorce cause families to fall apart, the parents’ line becomes, ‘Everyone goes through this, this is marriage, this is what couples are like.’ Even when it’s that bad, why still get married? And then they’ll say, ‘You can’t predict these things, so you need to open your eyes when choosing.’ Oh dear mom and dad, there’s no weather forecast. I have to carry an umbrella every day, and when I get wet, you blame me for not predicting the weather. Isn’t that what ‘unpredictable storms’ means?”

“Another one is when relatives introduce someone—this is probably the most harmful for young people. They’ll cover up the bad conditions with nice words, as long as they match, it doesn’t matter if they’re suitable. Even if one half of a couple is gone, the introduction team is already waiting at the door. They’ll say your eyesight is bad when you’re blind. They really want to sell you off at a cheap price. People’s nature is voyeuristic; even two dogs fighting on the side of the road, people stop to watch. Isn’t that how relatives and neighbors behave? They’re just waiting for the spectacle.”

“I think parents never understood something. When they were hysterically blocking early relationships, breaking broomsticks just to stop it, it was to hinder love. But they couldn’t win against the rebellious nature of a 14- or 15-year-old. Now, if they didn’t push us to marry, they might trigger that rebellious spirit in us again, making marriage an act of defiance—punk, rock, rebellion, being unique. We’d fight to get married just to defy our parents. If love is beautiful enough to willingly enter marriage, people will get married naturally. But when there are more things in life than the happiness of marriage, and the cost of marriage keeps rising, who would dare consider such a risky project? Especially for women, after entering the ‘walled city’ of marriage and experiencing the pain their parents suffered, when they get to that age, they think, ‘Why hasn’t my daughter eaten this bitterness yet? The time has come, she must suffer too. Right now, she must get married.’”

Unfortunately, Yu Dule was also present. When Gu Yixin got off the stage, a wave of sadness hit him. Why didn’t he see him earlier? Yu Dule wasn’t angry, though. “Want to have a drink with me?”

He set down a few bottles of alcohol on the table, and Gu Yixin felt a little pity for him. The man’s dignity had been struck, and it seemed like even the right to love had been taken from him. Gu Yixin sent Liang Daiwen a location pin, knowing tonight would end with no sobriety. It was also troubling that Xu Guanrui’s situation added more stress.

“Don’t be upset.”

“Am I really that bad?”

“Heh, their parents aren’t the standard by which to judge your worth. I saw them, they’re pretty silly.”

“What’s silly about it? They’re just doing business.”

Gu Yi thought to himself, we’re not talking about the same set of parents here, but he couldn’t say it out loud. Yu Dule continued, “If even Lu Ming were to be disliked, owing debts with a daughter, always getting into fights and ending up in the police station. In the end, talking about stand-up comedy, you can’t have a marriage tag on you. Your job is to make people laugh, how could you have responsibility?”

The more Yu Dule talked, the more comical it became, but it made Gu Yi almost want to cry. His heart was shattered, yet Yu Dule was still cracking jokes. This wasn’t the kind of way to ease pain. Then Yu Dule suddenly said, “Do you think we’d be better off breaking up?”

“Stop talking nonsense. She can’t find anyone who makes her happier than you. But guess what I found out yesterday? Xu Guanrui has countless girlfriends. He’s a time management master, and I’m just his denominator.”

“Impressive—but in the end, he’s still not bad enough. You see, parents can ruin their kids’ love because of houses, cars, and household registration. Why can’t we abandon family, friendship, and moral boundaries for love?”

They both laughed and cried at the same time, watching each other cry and laugh endlessly, drinking more. The tears mixed with the alcohol, giving it the taste of alcohol diluted with broth. Gu Yi thought, even the taste buds know to deceive her at times like this. Life is full of well-intentioned lies.

By the time they finished at Ounce, Liang Daiwen, who had been working late, saw Gu Yi, who had turned into a puddle of mush, and looked at Yu Dule, who had no one to accompany him, and instantly understood. He helped both of them into a taxi. In the car, Yu Dule was in a pitiful state, still trying to twist around from the passenger seat to talk to Gu Yi. Liang Daiwen reassured him, “Don’t worry, we’re on your side. Any urgent matters can wait till tomorrow, let’s get you home first—where do you live?”

After Yu Dule gave the address, he kept looking back. The alcohol had hit him hard, his expression dazed and silly. Clutching the limp Gu Yi, Liang Daiwen was confused and asked, “Are you treating this like a last word? You must tell me today?”

“I have something really important to tell Gu Yi. But right now, I just can’t remember what it is.”

“Don’t force it. If you can’t remember, it’s not important.”

“No, it’s really important.”

“Then think carefully. I want to know how important it is.”

“Oh, I remember now. Our boss told Gu Yi to go to the company for an interview at 9 AM tomorrow.”

“...You guys really are good friends.”