Chapter 95: No One is Absolutely Good, and Sincerity Cannot Be Feigned

That was the first time Yu Zhimei experienced the power of algorithms. Two people who were originally unrelated could establish a helping relationship based on algorithmic matching. Two unconnected lives were suddenly linked together due to data analysis.

In Shanghai’s Lunar New Year, the festive atmosphere was gradually fading each year. In previous years, approaching the Spring Festival, Ou Jinghe would painstakingly search on 1688 for several boxes of New Year decorations, brightly and festively dressing up Miaolin Dessert Shop like the old alleyways of her childhood. Neighbors lived close, and the light from the shop’s red lanterns would spill over the window sills onto the door lintels of the adjacent houses. She liked frying spring rolls, pasting Spring Festival couplets, and the sound of children’s screams. People were all excitedly trying to沾 (zhān - get a touch of) the auspiciousness of “celebration.” Thinking about it now, perhaps the high-rise buildings outside the alley walls didn’t have this kind of thing that could be called “New Year’s atmosphere.” It was perhaps a kind of茫然 (mángrán - bewildered) unity, a pale and unconscious sense of ritual for adults who had nothing to show for their year’s work at the end of the year, guarding their dilapidated houses.

This year, Ou Jinghe was busy helping her parents run errands at the real estate transaction center and trying to help them rent a house before the New Year. Her parents wanted to live in Huangpu District, closer to Ou Jinghe, but after being ruthlessly rejected, they downgraded their expectations to Zhenping Road—elevator apartments outside the inner ring road were a thousand yuan cheaper. Her mother had tentatively suggested wanting to spend the New Year with Ou Jinghe in Bihu Tiandi, but after Ou Jinghe refused, she sat in the passenger seat of Zheng Zeyan’s car, hurriedly looking for tenants for Bihu Tiandi: “What a joke, renting out Bihu Tiandi costs thirty to forty thousand a month, why would I let them live there?”

“But they are your parents, and they sold their house for you.”

“I know, and I’m very touched. But they don’t deserve a house like Bihu Tiandi.” Seeing Zheng Zeyan’s expression, Ou Jinghe was a little agitated: “Think I’m unfilial? A two-hundred-square-meter place with a terrace, my dad is the type who casually brings a basin of foot-washing water home, and my mom still burns moxa sticks. If they really lived there, wouldn’t it be better for us to move in?”

Zheng Zeyan laughed: “Mengye Apartment is quite good, I don’t want to move for the time being.”

“I’m just not ready to be this close to my parents yet.”

Zheng Zeyan didn’t answer, turning into the parking lot. He heard Ou Jinghe ask, “For the New Year... do we need to go and visit your parents again? I mean, I left such a bad impression on your mother last time, we should find an opportunity to make amends.”

“It’s okay, she’s gone abroad—we don’t have the custom of celebrating the New Year in our family.”

Parking the car and going upstairs, there was more than just the two of them in the elevator. Zheng Zeyan felt a slight sense of relief. His mother had indeed invited Ou Jinghe to spend the New Year with them on the phone, but Zheng Zeyan had made an excuse to brush it off. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them to meet again, but he was slowing down to figure out if the woman in the same room as him was as selfish as he worried. In this short month of dating, Zheng Zeyan had already seen a multiple collapse of human nature. Before this, he had only treated her as a plaything... which excited him even more.

Ou Jinghe indeed preferred the house in Mengye Apartment, especially that small room where the curtains were never drawn. Sometimes she would specifically bring a book to read in this room, and the furnishings she saw would give her more bizarre imagination. And Zheng Zeyan’s recent expression always made her feel adrift. That look that didn’t carry love, only dangerously plundered her, had returned. Coupled with the new toys she bought following Lei Zheng’s “museum” lead, she even found some of the feeling from their first meeting again. Pleasure wasn’t just from the mingling of lips and teeth, but also carried coercion, restraint, and unrequited desire. Some words she wouldn’t say to Zheng Zeyan, but everything was still uncertain. The feeling of being both ambiguous and wanting to find traces of oneself in the other’s heart was the most stimulating. Stability brought boredom. Her focus and curiosity returned to herself. After having a soulless marriage like the one with Gao Yuan, she only wanted the texture of love—ethereal, elusive, dangerous. All the patching up, in short, the last condition was “stability.”

At least in her imagination, “stimulation” was like pretending to mend the road in the open while secretly marching troops through the hidden path.

In the New Year’s Day of 2019, Jian Zhaowen saw two pieces of news on the technology section of an internet media outlet. A similar matching social app named Moyu was taken down from app stores for three months, losing 2 million new users and halting company operations; and the Pudong New District Procuratorate announced that the co-founder of another app that was around the same time as lovedate (all apps and characters in the text are referred to by pseudonyms) had been approved for arrest by the procuratorate. App stores notified Moyu that it could be relisted. During this period, Jian Zhaowen’s interception system was sufficiently complete. Reported photos were immediately intercepted after being uploaded, and Day and Night’s operations were not affected in any way, directly saving two months of rectification time. Seeing Moyu’s user registration plummet and experiencing another month of business stagnation brought back memories. With complex feelings, he posted on Weibo:

For social matching apps, daily active users and content value are important measures of a company. Moyu’s monetization model is virtual gifts and avatar customization. The losses from a two-month shutdown, whether those two months could have brought a surge in user growth, and whether the reputation will be affected, are all regrettable upon careful consideration. Even in a race, I hope to compete under equal conditions. If malicious competition, this kind of industry chaos, is not stopped in time, everyone will gradually lose hope and confidence in social interaction.

Li Yin forwarded it immediately: “Let me just say it directly, malicious reporting has always existed in the industry, and there are many more underhanded methods used in secret. Lovedate likes to engage in reporting when its downloads and daily active users can’t beat others, it just hasn’t been exposed. It’s hard to imagine an app that can’t even achieve fair competition and only uses dirty tricks, playing so despicably after getting Series B+ funding.”

The current Jian Zhaowen no longer cared much about Li Yin’s public statements, and seeing the Weibo post made him feel even worse. Day and Night had grown to the point where it no longer needed Li Yin’s traffic. It was a competitive content social app in the industry, with a high proportion of users having higher education, putting it on a higher level than other apps in terms of sophistication. However, they hadn’t escaped the borderline content issues of social software. After the number of users increased, the quality of content did decline, and there were many rumors. This time, they had added another count to their list of notorious deeds.

This wasn’t exactly a good thing.

The opening of the psychological help area went live with the updated version. Jian Zhaowen was very satisfied with the pre-New Year launch, not even dodging when Lei Zheng hugged him from behind. After user growth stabilized, Lei Zheng cut 30% of the features with low retention rates and those that weren’t particularly interesting, making the main page simple and direct. It only took a few minutes to get the hang of the interface. The Day Zone quickly found matching, the square, and the flash chat page. The Night Zone’s psychological counseling was placed on a primary page, while random matching cards and the whisper planet remained the main features. The only trouble was switching between the Day and Night Zones, but for users who preferred to choose real-name or anonymous login, this wasn’t a big issue.

The day before the Little New Year’s Eve, someone suddenly posted a suicide note in the help area. Jian Zhaowen had always had keyword filtering for this, and upon receiving the warning, he immediately accessed the user’s data. He found that the girl had posted several consecutive status updates about a breakup within a week and had also sought help in the help area. Jian Zhaowen contacted the local police station and proactively provided the user’s location. Several volunteer users spontaneously went to search and contacted the landlord of the rented house, finally finding the girl in an old residential area in Fengxian, just as she was preparing to burn charcoal. When they actually found her, Jian Zhaowen’s heart pounded, feeling like the countdown timer to death was in his own hands. Sitting in the office and hearing that the user was safe, Jian Zhaowen breathed a sigh of relief and really wanted to see a psychologist.

He just felt suffocated. The psychological help area was like an emotional black hole, and it was the first thing that sucked Jian Zhaowen in. Sister He was a very good employee in terms of coordination, and the volunteers for assistance basically didn’t need much supervision. But every time he entered this area and resolved an issue, Jian Zhaowen felt increasingly guilty. So many unfair things happened: new employees sexually harassed while accompanying leaders for drinks, girls abandoned after complaining about their boyfriends’ infidelity, wives wanting to give birth to sons to avoid being kicked out by their in-laws, middle-aged husbands almost crushed by the elderly and children... Their pleas for help were so difficult to voice, and the words spoken were easily blocked by the inertia of society. All they wanted was a little external care so that they wouldn’t feel like the world was just them alone. And all that Day and Night could do was a drop in the bucket, and even that was mixed with many harassing and disruptive emails.

Returning home, he first opened Yu Zhimei’s door. The two cats were sleeping on the sofa cushions, and it was still cold. Jian Zhaowen turned on the air conditioner and sat down to listen to the rain, the pattering sound entering his mind through his ears. He didn’t send a message to Yu Zhimei, nor did he eat. He just sat in the gloomy January weather, looking out the window. Shanghai’s winter always rained. When Jian Zhaowen was quiet and didn’t speak, he was like a tree waiting to be nourished.

The next morning, Jian Zhaowen, who hadn’t slept all night, took a shower and went straight to work.

After getting off the plane, Yu Zhimei took a taxi back to the city. She had a brief phone call with Xing Ge in the car. They rented out the first and second floors of a basic office building and a space with a yard in Tiantongyuan, and the used car business could flourish. Beijing’s car playing environment was indeed much better than Shanghai’s, especially since all the self-media who genuinely liked cars were gathered in Beijing. A car could circulate through several hands for filming. Xing Ge’s used car business wouldn’t be as restricted as it was in Shanghai. In fact, car media didn’t need office buildings and creative parks in the city center, but rather spaces in the suburbs, adjacent to racetracks or mountain roads, and enough trading and repair space to park cars. In Shanghai, office and filming had to be separated, and a lot of time had always been spent on the road. It was indeed puzzling that they had persisted for so long—the only reason was that the boss lady liked Shanghai.

Pushing open the door and seeing Lulu, then looking at the litter box, Jian Zhaowen guessed that she hadn’t been able to go home the previous night. After packing her luggage and taking a shower, Yu Zhimei played with the two cats for a while and lay down on the bed to sleep. Wenwen, whom they had picked up on the highway, seemed to have grown a lot, like an adult kitten, with an amazing appetite and energy. Lulu, almost five years old, was still a aloof prince, seemingly only interested in sleeping and fighting for territory, not much else. Halfway through sleeping, Jian Zhaowen crawled into the bed, his hair still wet. The clock hand pointed to three in the morning. Jian Zhaowen, too sleepy to speak, hugged Yu Zhimei’s arm and snored—he had never been like this before. Starting a business was truly exhausting.

The next day, Jian Zhaowen stayed in bed, sleeping soundly. Yu Zhimei packed her things to go to work, only to find Jian Zhaowen brushing his teeth and about to leave. Yu Zhimei was puzzled: “Do you need to go so early on a Saturday too?”

“Yes, there’s been too much going on lately since we opened the psychological help area. How was Beijing?”

“Hmm.”

“Where is Xing Ge’s company in Beijing?”

“Tiantongyuan.”

“That’s so far out?”

“Because he wants to do used cars, and after signing with the MCN, a lot of business is in Beijing, so he’s planning to move over. The company should also have a major reshuffle recently.”

“It used to be a fifteen-minute walk or one subway stop away, and now it’s a whole different city. Is Monkey going?”

“Of course, he’s now under the company’s MCN, opened his own account with over ten thousand followers, not too bad.”

“Monkey’s going because he has nothing else to do, he can only follow Xing Ge. He has no ties in Shanghai, but you don’t have to.” Jian Zhaowen closed his eyes and stuffed bread into his mouth: “If you really want to go to Beijing, I won’t stop you. I’m also very busy with work. We could have met every day, but now it will become just WeChat contact.”

“Long-distance relationships are okay too, right?” Yu Zhimei said with a smile: “We can only see each other for a few hours a week, and the rest of the time we’re busy. There’s not much difference between us now and a long-distance relationship.”

Jian Zhaowen was absent-minded: “We’ll talk about going to Beijing later. If you really want to go, I won’t stop you.”

The moment he stood up to leave, he didn’t kiss her, nor did he complain about work or talk about his conflicts with Lei Zheng like before. Yu Zhimei noticed Jian Zhaowen’s strangeness and grabbed his arm: “I’ll go to work with you.”

Jian Zhaowen wasn’t the only one working in the office. When Yu Zhimei entered Jian Zhaowen’s office, she was overwhelmed by the stuffy smell of smoke, giving her a headache. Jian Zhaowen was indeed in a bad mood, otherwise he wouldn’t have turned himself into a walking incense burner. The engineer in charge of the architecture was right outside the door, going in and out several times, looking a bit embarrassed when he saw Yu Zhimei. The sensible Yu Zhimei went downstairs for a stroll and happened to see someone anxiously pacing beside a parking space across the street. The road was full of parked cars, and there wasn’t enough space to back up a full car length. He was in a hurry to take his child to tutoring. Yu Zhimei said, “Let me help you.”

The car was a Polo. Yu Zhimei saw that the lane was wide enough, drove the car one lane away from the parking space, pressed the accelerator halfway and turned the steering wheel half a circle. As the front of the car approached the parking space, she sharply pulled the handbrake, stepped on the brake, and turned the steering wheel back. The Polo steadily stopped in the parking space. When getting out of the car, Yu Zhimei said, “Sorry, if there are parents all around, you’ll still be able to drive out after the cars in front and behind leave.”

After driving the car, Yu Zhimei was in a good mood. She went into the coffee shop to buy coffee. When she brought ten cups of coffee upstairs, she smiled—the scene felt familiar.

Jian Zhaowen’s mood hadn’t improved much until he had worked through all the features with the team. He asked Yu Zhimei to download the internal testing version of Day and Night and answer the questions in the volunteer application entry in the Day Zone. Jian Zhaowen put his hand on Yu Zhimei’s shoulder: “This is the help window we just launched in the last two days. Because the number of volunteers and professional psychological counselors is limited, users can take a psychological test to get an invitation code to the help area and help more people. This psychological test is very strict. You know how hard it is to pass the psychological tests when joining Google and Microsoft, this is similar. But after answering these questions, I will model based on your answers, so the users you are matched with will also be different.”

“A hundred questions, it’s really easy to lose patience.” Yu Zhimei stared at the screen and started doing them. She felt like some of the hundred questions had appeared earlier, but the answers were slightly different. She might have lied in the earlier questions, and by the later ones, she had already forgotten the options she had chosen. After a hundred questions, Yu Zhimei didn’t get a personality analysis result, nor was she awarded a badge of honor. After clicking “Accept Matching,” she received a dialogue box from a user. Only then did she realize that the test for this psychological counseling entry was aimed at the aid recipients. That was the first time Yu Zhimei experienced the power of algorithms. Two people who were originally unrelated could establish a helping relationship based on algorithmic matching. Two unconnected lives were suddenly linked together due to data analysis.

Especially when holding Yu Zhimei’s hand and looking at the user information in the dialogue box, Jian Zhaowen opened his mouth in surprise. Unaware of his meaning, Yu Zhimei was a little unhappy, chasing him around the conference room with an empty paper cup: “Am I too dark and greedy? I felt some of the questions were strange, constantly asking about my attitude towards savings. Did you see that I love money? I’m not like Little Ma, I have principles...”

“No.” Jian Zhaowen shook his head with a smile, typed a few words on his phone, and Yu Zhimei’s screen lit up, showing “Didn’t expect that” sent by Jian Zhaowen. “This internal testing version invited a thousand people, and you happened to be matched with me.”

Such a terrifying probability felt like fate for a moment. Yu Zhimei was so surprised she couldn’t speak. Little Ma’s voice message came at an inopportune time: “Yu Zhimei, are you guys going home this year? Let’s spend the New Year together in Shanghai! Come back tonight if you’re free and we can discuss it!”

Still reeling from the surprise, Yu Zhimei looked at the clock, which showed 23:58—it was time to go home. Jian Zhaowen picked up his bag, his back blocking half the light: “Yu Zhimei, let’s make a bet.”

“Hmm?”

“If Day and Night can reach five million users by July 1st in half a year, let’s get married, okay?”