I might be mistaken, but I think that in all my years of dating, Wu Jiayu was the very first repeat customer.

By the time my zodiac year swung around for the third time, my ma and various aunties had all but given up on me. Only Auntie Mei, whose matchmaking powers were renowned throughout the neighbourhood, persevered. She saw me as a blemish on her otherwise pristine record. Still, she wasn’t exactly giving me much to work with: the decline in the quality of dates was evident. Ma was unimpressed. ‘No one’s forcing Auntie Mei to help,’ she said. ‘Why even bother if she’s going to bring us matches like that?’ She didn’t acknowledge that even those matches were unwilling to meet me for a second date.

‘This one is a bank teller,’ said Auntie Mei. ‘A bank teller,’ Ma sneered. ‘What prospects does a bank teller have? Slave away for a decade and you still don’t get anywhere.’ She turned to me. ‘Still, she’s about a billion times better off than you.’ For all her bluster, Ma still pulled out some cash and told me to take this one seriously, to try not to screw it up.

Taking Auntie Mei’s advice, we chose Zikawei, neutral territory, halfway between Jinyang and Xingzhuang. When we met, I learned that Wu Jiayu had left her job at the bank. She described her current work as ‘flexible’. I said mine was too. Actually, she said, she
was an influencer – apparently not keen to share the same category as me. She didn’t specify what exactly her area of influence
might be.

We met at a conveyor-belt sushi place – her choice. It was a new restaurant that was meant to be fun, full of chattering schoolkids. Every five plates earned you a chance to win a capsule toy from the vending machine. We were unlucky: we tried five times and didn’t win anything. This didn’t stop Wu Jiayu from taking a flurry of photos of the machine and of the little train that delivered the food. Then she busied herself with her phone.

‘So, you’re a food influencer?’ I asked. ‘It’s best not to limit yourself to one niche,’ she said. She showed me her home page on Xiaohongshu, which featured various popular locations. Most of her posts had likes in the single digits, except for one about a Western restaurant that had over a hundred – she had pinned that one to the top. ‘I’m just getting started,’ she said defensively. ‘Soon, they’ll all be super popular.’

The photos had about a 65 per cent resemblance to how she looked in person. In the photos, she could have been fresh out of university. In real life, she wore thick make-up, especially on her nose, which had a shiny patch like the Golden-Horned King in Journey to the West. I wondered what resemblance to the photos would be left minus the make-up.

But all I dared say was, ‘That’s great.’

The meal went reasonably well, mostly thanks to Wu Jiayu. She was a good talker, and it didn’t feel like she was talking just to fill awkward silence. She was comfortable talking about herself, and didn’t seem to care much what others thought of her. And she stayed clear of the standard questions you hear on an arranged date. It was clear she was also there to fulfil a family obligation. After we finished eating, she went to the bathroom and took her bag with her. I almost fell asleep waiting for her to come back and started to wonder if she had taken the subway home. Eventually she returned and took a neat little camera from her bag. ‘Are you up for helping me take a few pictures?’ she said.

I went with Wu Jiayu to the new Zikawei Library and took a few photos according to her instructions. Actually, it was more like several hundred, because we were there all afternoon. I didn’t have time to check the quality of the images. I didn’t even see the finished product on Xiaohongshu – mainly because later I couldn’t remember the long string of characters that made up her username.

I didn’t think too much of this. On previous arranged dates, I had helped move furniture or gone to pick up someone’s kids. So, when we parted at the subway station, I assumed that she would become yet another zombie lurking in the depths of my phone contacts.

A week later, to my great surprise, the zombie came back to life and asked if I was free the next day. We started meeting once a week.

Ma was both delighted and annoyed that I was staying out so long. She vented to Auntie Mei, who explained that Wu Jiayu and I were clearly sleeping together. She had seen it many a time, she said: couples who could not come to a suitable agreement and ended up becoming friends with benefits instead. Ma flew into a rage and announced that she was going to stop paying my expenses. This didn’t bother me – Wu Jiayu always reminded me to eat before we met anyway.

To make sure she was looking her best in the photos, Wu Jiayu avoided eating during our dates, and she didn’t order anything for me when we were done. We went to Dishui Lake, Home Expo, and to every road in town decorated with unseasonal flowers – places I had never been before. She wore a different fancy outfit each time: a qipao, a Japanese sailor dress, the flared trousers and tight top popular with millennials. I didn’t know if she was a hit on Xiaohongshu, but I figured she must have been reasonably satisfied with the pictures I took of her on our first date at Zikawei.

Wu Jiayu sent me the location of a place called B-Link. I looked it up: it was just across the Huangpu River, an easy trip on the Shenchuan Special Line. We agreed to meet in the evening to avoid the heat, with the usual condition that food would not be included.

She arrived before me. This was unusual. Normally she was at least ten minutes late, and would then spend another ten minutes applying her make-up in the bathroom. This gave me a chance to grab a bowl of wonton or some rice from a street vendor. This time, her outfit was retro: the sort of tracksuit students wore to school in the eighties and nineties, her hair in pigtails, a satchel over her shoulder. The thin white stripes on the sleeves and trouser legs made Wu Jiayu look thinner than usual, and she was wearing less make-up, though the shiny patch on her nose still gleamed in the light of the setting sun.

The ‘B-Link’ was a converted factory in the industrial district, and it still retained something of its original Soviet-style design. Wu Jiayu stood at the far end of a red-brick wall, looking out at a vast construction site, all neat lines, sharp angles, and overlapping layers. I wasn’t sure if she was looking at the construction or the clouds above, or perhaps just contemplating her next pose.

I walked over. ‘Which floor would you choose to live on?’ she asked.

Near where she was pointing, a large construction machine moved up and down, sliding like the glass elevators you see on the outside of shopping malls. I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about how furious Ma would be if our apartment complex once again failed to pass the referendum on installing an elevator.