Before arriving, Xie Qingcheng had heard that this young woman cared a lot about men's income, but she did not expect that after telling her that her salary was not really too high, this girl would still not lose her enthusiasm.
Bai Jing smiled: "Professor Xie is a true intellectual, he is really modest. It is difficult to find such a sincere man today."
Xie Qingcheng: "......"
"Professor Xie also seems to have good taste, he is a man who knows how to enjoy life, doesn't he?"
Xie Qingcheng frowned: "No, I..."
"I realize the way you dress."
Xie Qingcheng: "......"
He was unsafe for a while, until Bai Jing restrained himself and said: "Professor Xie, that t-shirt he wears is a genuine model of our brand, there were only about ten in all of Shanghai at the time, it is so rare that it was not even available for online purchase, you are really discreet."
Only then did Xie Qingcheng finally realize that the reason for the environment rarefied on this blind date was this change of clothes that He Yu had casually lent him.
He reflected for a moment on the girl's words, and then recalled the words that He Yu said lightly: "It is not necessary to return it. I am not used to wearing clothes that have been worn by others. You can throw it away after using it, it's also old."
"......"
Perverse capitalism.
Bai Jing smiled: "Professor Xie you are not being very sincere with me on this date, this outfit of yours is worth almost the same as the salary of many people in a year, and it is difficult to buy it in China without some connections, and don't you invite me to a coffee?"
Xie Qingcheng said: "It's a misunderstanding. Borrow these clothes from a friend."
"Did you borrow it?" Bai Jing's eyes opened instantly.
The conversation that followed was somewhat mediocre, the blind date returned to reality after the ecstatic sister Bai found out the truth.
Bai Jing's interest in him decreased significantly and, apart from forcing him to take a photo together, he continued to take photos of desserts and turn the camera to photograph herself. Some customers occasionally sent her messages in the middle of the appointment, and she responded without hesitation directly by voice message...
"Mrs. Zhang, don't worry, that limited edition bag is of course reserved for you. For God's sake, you don't have to send me a gift of thanksgiving, it's very embarrassing."
"Mr. Wang, the dress you ordered last time has arrived, when is it convenient for you to come to the store? Yes, it was altered in advance to its size, plus size, but the front closure has to be 2 cm, don't worry, I have all the details noted here."
The food was unusually uncomfortable and at the end Xie Qingcheng paid the bill and looked at Bai Jing again. This girl was almost the same age as her own students. From the beginning he did not go with any sincerity to blind dates, and he did it purely to fulfill the desire of Aunt Li, so he did not take the girl's words and actions to heart. In addition, she was too paternalistic to let her go alone, so she still told her: "I will call a car for you."
"Oh, yes, yes." Bai Jing replied carefreely: "Then I will disturb Professor Xie."
But this street was one of the busiest in Shanghai, and it was the rush hour of the afternoon, so the two waited for half a day, but all the taxis came with passengers.
Xie Qingcheng sighed: "If you don't mind, I'll walk with you a little longer, it will be better if we turn around at that junction later."
Bai Jing: "Very good, but I have a live broadcast at 8 o'clock. My time is fixed. If I get lost temporarily on a date, the fans will get angry, do you mind?"
Although Xie Qingcheng does not know how to use live streaming applications, Xie Xue does, so he knows more or less about it. Hearing Bai Jing say this, she casually asked her: "Are you a streamer?"
"Yes, I'm working hard, sooner or later I'll be a well-known streamer, hehehe."
Xie Qingcheng nodded, "It's good to have a dream, come on then, I don't care."
"Thank you gege, you're not very rich but you're still pretty handsome." Bai Jing smiled and rose to her height: "By the way, it doesn't matter if I take your camera later, does it? Everyone likes to see handsome guys."
"...... Whatever you want."
Ten minutes later, Xie Qingcheng regretted saying "whatever you want" ten minutes ago.
I was so disconnected from the times that I didn't know that there was this form of live broadcast that young people were doing now. Bai Jing took a rosewood for selfies out of his bag and began to shake it, releasing phrases that seemed inexplicable and irrelevant to him, wandering non-stop for half a day, not knowing exactly what he was trying to say.
"This is the busiest street in Huzhou, with a lot of beautiful and beautiful women, do you all see that bag that passerby carries? That's a high imitation, I notice it right away, if you want to know how to identify the real one, remember to subscribe."
"Oh, yes, this one next to me is a handsome guy I met today, a magnificent temperament, a teacher with a lot of knowledge, he earns a million dollars a year, look at that discontinued t-shirt he wears, oh yes, he is the one who invited me to dinner, now he accompanies me home. Thank you all for your good wishes, thank you!"
Xie Qingcheng simply wondered if her ears were deaf, and she was about to turn her head to refute it when Bai Jing had already quickly turned the camera and in the process silenced it.
"I'm sorry brother, it's not easy to make a living, don't destroy me, right?"
Xie Qingcheng: "......"
I couldn't understand why someone would want to show false happiness on the Internet and use exacerbated materialistic desires to attract viewers.
But that was fine, I didn't want to bother the girl much.
This blind date would have ended in a stoic way, if it were not for the person they met later.
That unexpected person had appeared at the intersection of three streets.
At that time, Xie Qingcheng and Bai Jing had walked for more than ten minutes until they reached a side of the road where there were fewer people waiting for a car. Bai Jing was presenting the luxury products of the season to fans of the live broadcast.
In the middle of the presentation, the insightful Bai Jing suddenly saw a blurred shadow not far from her on the selfie camera, moving back and forth as if she were hesitant.
At first he did not pay much attention to him, but soon the shadow quickly approached in his direction and, by the time he reacted, the face of an old and dirty vagabond was reflected on the lens of the camera, pounced directly behind it.
Bai Jing froze for a moment and looked back, unable to help but scream.
He was an old tramp who stinked of stench, dressed in rags that no one would doubt could not be used again after they were removed, since they were full of holes of various sizes. The old man was accompanied by a lame yellow dog, who also approached and now barked furiously at Bai Jing.
"Daughter! Daughter! I've finally found you, daughter."
"Ahhh! What's wrong with you? Who is your daughter? Go."
"No, no, no, no, what do you mean you're not my daughter? Daughter, don't you recognize your old man? Let me see how long I haven't seen you in. ......" The old man seemed to be mentally ill, but as he shed tears, he approached to hug Bai Jing excitedly.
Bai Jing was so frightened that he lost his face and left the camera live, repeatedly retreating and shouting hysterically: "Insane! Who are you? Get out of here."
"Daughter, how can you not recognize me?" The old man burst into tears and took two steps forward, his dark gray and withered fingers peeking between the embers stretched towards her, trembling and pulling forward, "I ...... I miss you ah ...... dad I miss you ah ......"
He spoke with a heavy accent of the Central Plains, and obviously he would not be the father of Bai Jing, who is from Huzhou. Xie Qingcheng immediately judged the situation, guarding Bai Jing behind him, calmly saying: "Okay, hide behind me."
Bai Jing was in shock: "It's so scary! How is it possible that these types of people wander around, doesn't the municipal police care? Ahhhhhhh!!!
Before the words came out of his mouth, he jumped and shouted hysterically again, because it turned out that the yellow dog that followed the old man approached and sniffed his feet.
"Help! He wants to bite me! What's wrong with this dog? Don't you have a leash?"
Bai Jing screamed and ran, hurriedly picking up his mobile phone and trying to call the police.
As far as she is concerned, the old tramp was already quite afraid of her, but those ugly stray dogs scared her even more, and they should arrest them all! Not to mention the fact that she had been scared and interrupted her live broadcast ...... Wait, wait, your live broadcast!!!
Bai Jing suddenly realized that her live broadcast had been turned on and hurried to pick up her phone to take a look.
A few seconds later, his pupils contracted violently. I couldn't believe it...
Its mediocre live broadcast, which normally only had between 20 and 30 viewers, had increased to more than 300 in a few minutes due to this strange and unexpected event.
The number of people on the screen continued to grow exponentially, and the pop-up screen was overflowing with online messages they said.
"Shit, isn't this a night of terror in Huzhou?"
"It looks like you met a psychopathic vagabond! Are you okay? Can you turn on the camera and record the situation?"
"Exciting exciting, that's near my house!"
"That old vagabond will not be a libidinous, will he? He's actually trying to hug the streamer. We have to call the police immediately if there is such a situation!"
Notifications rose like a hydrogen balloon, like a rocket that suddenly rises and then explodes on the screen of the live broadcast room.
Bai Jing's body shook and the explosion woke her up.
Suddenly realizing what he had to do, he hurriedly adjusted his hair, adjusted his camera and ran away behind Xie Qingcheng before he had time to react.
Xie Qingcheng: "Watch out!"
But what I couldn't expect was that the girl who had been shy a second before, was now standing next to the old tramp with her pretty face up, despite the danger - but being careful in advance to accommodate her small and expensive bag back so as not to be rubbed by the old man.
"Look, how can you be my father if your accent is foreign? You're a libidinous old man, you want to take advantage of the situation, do you think I don't realize it? Don't disrespect me, old man, will you?"
The old man was scared and stepped back a few steps.
Now the situation was completely different. Xie Qingcheng had already realized that the old man did not seem to have any malicious intentions, but when he looked at him closely, the sadness on his face was too deep to be faked.
Qingcheng Xie couldn't help but frown: "Miss Bai, can you turn off the live broadcast? This old man doesn't seem to be well, he may have found the wrong person, so call the city administrator first and negotiate it together."
Bai Jing did not listen to him, seeing that the audience of the live broadcast was rising, he did not even care about the stench of the old man and brought his own pink face to him.
"Hey, look at this, and you who are on the other side too." Bai Jing let the tramp look at the screen of the phone she was holding, the selfie stick plus the front camera helped to take the whole body of the two, "Old pervert, look at me, then look at yourself, and compare. Could it be your daughter? Look at yourself well, look at yourself, all tattered and with pimples, and do you say you are not here to download?"
The old tramp was confused at first, but then the flow followed and turned his eyes along the selfie stick.
He must have seen the two people who appeared on the screen well, so first he froze and then, as if he had suddenly realized his misery, he rushed to run backwards.
While running, Bai Jing returned to reality.
It turned out that the only thing that was needed for a streamer with a dirt phobia to overcome her mental blockage in an instant and stick to an elderly vagabond until she rubbed with him was for her to have fun with her followers.
"Look at this, everyone! This is disguised harassment! He must be pretending to be a mentally ill person, see how I unmask him for what he really is!" Bai Jing chased the old man to put him in the angle of the camera and shouted at him: "Hey! Come here! Didn't you say it was your daughter? It is as big as Shanghai, where law and order are so good, and you dare to come and touch this type of porcelain! You haven't even seen your own stinky face! Come here."
The old man seemed to have cleared a little, but he didn't seem to be sober, his eyes half chaotic and half stunned.
While Xie Qingcheng watched, he was sure that the old man was not here to take advantage of the girl, his state of mind was so bad that, if he had to describe it, it was as if he were a skinny dog that had traveled half of China and wandered through the smoke and rain of Jiangnan. The word "search" had penetrated him to his bones, and you could see with the naked eye that he has lost something and has been looking for it.
But Bai Jing doesn't care about this, it has been a failure for most of the year, she can't attract some viewers by herself, but she is extremely jealous of those who work hard to make it work
On one occasion, when she could not gain any sight even after she had her brains, she ran resentful to those of those few famous streams to comment on insults.
One day to this: "What do you pretend to be? Isn't all this a capitalist operation? What you show is not an authentic rural life at all."
The next day to him: "A man takes the money earned with blood and sweat by women to buy mansions and villas, and says that everyone who buys him a lipstick is part of his family! Do the women who buy pretend to be silly or what?!
The next day, he said: "What modern woman who talks about self-improvement and self-confidence, all she does is complain about her work? You are tired but you earn money, they scold you but you earn money, they pay you a lot of money, what do you have to complain about?"
No one knows the horrible face that was reflected when sliding the phone under the sheets, in the turbulent subway, between busy buildings, between clothes and paper, always Cindy herself on her heels, trying to run her business and humiliating herself to please her noble customers.
Crouched, struggling to keep her manners, crouched, her delicate hands fastening the shoes of Mrs. Chan and Mrs. Lee, bowing respectfully as she accompanied them outside the large golden vestibule, no one knew how many times she had looked at those oscillating backs and thought that one day she could also make even the most arrogant of the countesses bow down and greet her.
She wanted money, she wanted to be famous, she wanted to see her eyes outlined in red, so she lost her fear, lost purity, and she could not see the trembling lips of the vagabond old man, the hot tears that clouded her old eyes.
"Is your daughter from Huzhou? Really? A disgusting old man like you, who doesn't even know if he's married, finds reasons to go crazy and go out to harass women! Why are you hiding? Didn't you keep rubbing against me? Let everyone see how you look! Come on!"
"No... no..."
The old man was terribly frightened, shrugged his neck and squatted, with crying like a child and his voice coming out like a bum snoring in his mouth.
"I'm sorry... I...... I was wrong..."
"I'm sorry? What's the point of complaining? Come here! Look at the camera! Look at your appearance! You have gone out to cheat and you should be a little honest."
On the screen, in the pop-ups, unknown viewers applauded the "heroic streamer who faced an indigent maniac on the street." The coins and comments continued to arrive and increase in number and her heart seemed to swell with them.
The old man hid because of fear, from the excitement and hysteria of having believed that he was finding his daughter to the impotence of being disappointed and having to flee. He was followed by the camera as if it were an old dog with no place to run, as disoriented and misplaced by "justice" as the stray dog he had brought with him.
"Stop filming, please ...... I'm sorry ...... don't film me ...... miss please, don't film me... ..."
The old man trembled everywhere, his legs were shaking and trembling in his loop pants.
He covered his face in front of the camera, and then tried to cover his broken and ragged clothes, and in the end he did not know where to cover himself, as if every inch of his flesh and blood, as if every strand of his body were unsightly and embarrassing. Tears ran down his old and wrinkled face, one by one, and he shrugged down, almost falling to his knees to beg Bai Jing to take pity on him.
"Please girl, do me a favor..."
"I..." Bai Jing was about to say something relentless when the selfie stick was suddenly snatched from her.
Immediately after his phone was snatched away unceremoniously, Xie Qingcheng threw his selfie stick aside.
"Hey! You! What are you doing?"
"What am I doing? I told you that this old man seems to have a mental condition and I told you not to stimulate him. Are you deaf or don't you understand?"
Xie Qingcheng was forced to disconnect the live broadcast.
Bai Jing's face instantly went from pink to red, from red to purple, from purple to green, like a horse's lamp, and finally he got on his heels and said angrily to Xie Qingcheng: "Why do you care so much? Give me my phone back! I'm free to broadcast live! I want to make money, you know! I want to be an Internet celebrity."
"It's none of my business what you want to be." Xie Qingcheng's face was cold, the strength of his patriarchal attitude had returned and lectured people without blinking an eye: "But Miss Bai, you care about your face, but can't you see what's happening to her? You choose to make a mistake even if you know that it is wrong to attract attention, you do whatever it takes even if you know the consequences, and you even know what kind of pain can cause you to treat others like that and you agree to cause them that pain by a few visualizations because it has nothing to do with you, Immoral!"
"What nonsense you say! You don't have to educate me, are you my father? You're just a person I just met on a blind date! It's none of your business." Bai Jing became furious and hurried to pick up the phone.
But Xie Qingcheng had more temperament than she was, and he held her, looking at her condescendingly, with her eyes like shaving leaves.
"The human dignity in your eyes, the human life in your eyes, does not compare to the audience you are trying to attract with your live broadcast. You're already quite monstrous."
"How dare you insult me? You, yakuza..."
Bai Jing was so angry that she threw herself forward to slap Xie Qingcheng with her hand.
But Xie Qingcheng grabbed her wrist and twisted it with fierce force, making her scream in pain.
Xie Qingcheng said coldly: "If you keep making a scene, I will not only dare to scold you, but I will also dare to beat you up."
"You, let go! If you don't let me go, I'll call the police! I'll call the police."
There weren't many people on the road, but the noise they made was so loud that people were already standing in the distance to look. Xie Qingcheng didn't care about this, he was already a person who treated the eyes of others as if they were painted cardboard, but to his surprise, a woman with sharp eyes in the crowd suddenly screamed.
"Oh, God! What's wrong with that old man?"
Xie Qingcheng immediately looked down and saw that the old man, probably the product of his own illness, after confusing his daughter and being filmed by Bai Jing, the product of great joy and grief, his heart could not stand the stimulus, his lips really turned blue and his face turned white, covered his chest and slowly his whole person bent like a shrimp before falling
The author has something to say.
Xie Qingchen: I don't know what love is, but at that moment I thought that, no matter what happens, old people always have to get married, and now that I've done it anyway, I don't want to do it a second time.
He Yu: Big brother, you are so stereotypical.
Xie Qingcheng: Teenage love is also embarrassing. In my opinion, whoever falls in love before the age of 20 is just premature in love.
He Yu: (smiles) ...... I have the feeling that you are signing me up at all times, Dr. Xie.
Translator's note:
I don't know what to say guys. When they tell me about a tramp who walked all over Jiangnam, I can't help but remember Shi Mei at the end of Erha, who ended up being just that, a wandering doctor in Jiangnam. So seeing Xie Qingchen defending the humanity of this tramp hurts me not only for the old man, but also for the memory.
Huzhou is the city where they are. And as far as I know, it is part of the territory that was once called Jiangnam.