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.

‘I’ve already decided,’ said Wu Jiayu. ‘I’d live on the top floor, with the views. Closest to the Yangpu Bridge, furthest from all the bad smells of the Yangshupu River.’ The way she said it made it sound like she’d already acquired the deeds, like a price in the tens of millions was no obstacle.

We stood together for a while, until she came out of her reverie and produced her camera. We took pictures against the wall, on the lawn, and then at the designated photo spot between the two buildings, where a giant red balloon was emblazoned with the words i love b-link. Finally we took a photo at the faux street sign that said, i’m thinking of you in . . . [insert location here]. Wu Jiayu had a standard pose for these sorts of signs: she stood to the left, bent over at a right angle and leaned forward to show one side of her face. I used her favoured ratio: she took up two-thirds of the photo, the other third was scenery. Through the viewfinder, her face and the plaza behind her were tinged red like the clouds.

At one point, Wu Jiayu discovered a zebra crossing with a McDonald’s logo and immediately sat down on the M, with a pout and a V-sign. I reacted quickly, taking a few shots standing up, then a few bending down, but none of them were satisfactory. In the end, she sent me up onto the roof to take some photos from above. I didn’t have an entry card to get into the elevator of the office building, so I went through the fire exit. After a few minutes climbing up the steps, I experienced a moment of sudden uncertainty: while Wu Jiayu was pursuing fame and profit, what was I hoping to find by following her all over town? Sixty stairs and five floors later, I had come up with a couple of answers. First, it forced me out of the house, something I hadn’t done much since losing my job – in other words, a form of exercise. Second, it kept me away from Ma, with whom I had no major conflicts but still preferred to avoid. So, while you couldn’t really say that this was a meaningful use of my time, it wasn’t completely meaningless either. Maintaining a weekly habit was progress of a sort. Did this mean I could learn how to live a life of routine again, perhaps even try to return to work? Realising I was walking through an office area made me afraid to continue this line of thought. Fortunately, by this point I had arrived on the roof.

Wu Jiayu didn’t provide me with any direct instructions. Now that we had collaborated on several occasions, she seemed to trust me enough to simply sit down in the middle of the zebra crossing, exuding confidence, ignoring any side-eyes she received from passers-by. Every few seconds she switched to a new pose, positions she had clearly planned while waiting for me to climb several dozen metres above her. At this point, a third answer occurred: perhaps something deeper could develop between me and Wu Jiayu. The problem was that, like me, she was thirty-six and still living with her mother, which placed her on the lowest rung in the arranged dating marketplace. The only way out was to climb up a level, but unfortunately everyone, at every level, had the same idea. But perhaps we could find some other way out, as we were doing now, existing together somewhere beyond the family, outside the home.

Wu Jiayu stood up and dusted off her trousers, which meant I could come back down. As we wandered over to the other side of the park, we saw nearby residents out for a stroll, fans in hand, or jogging, or chatting loudly in one of the office workers’ designated smoking areas. A few were walking their dogs on the lawn that you weren’t supposed to walk on. We took a few more photos against this background. I knew for a fact that Wu Jiayu looked better in those pictures taken from a distance, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Before long, it got dark; the lawn turned from green to black, then orange under the light of the construction site opposite.

Wu Jiayu pointed to a light in the distance. Come on, she said, let’s go over there.

We cycled away from B-Link and followed a road that ran alongside the construction site, until we arrived at Changyang Road. I realised with a jolt that I had once interned at a start-up along that road, more than a decade ago now. I wasn’t sure if the company was still there. Back then, I would take the ferry across the river in the evening and walk around for miles before setting off for home. A decade on, neither memory nor reality could really be depended upon. It was probably right ahead, visible if only we continued a bit further down the road. For a strange moment I had the sensation that I was cycling back through time; then Wu Jiayu darted off into an alley, and I had to turn back and follow her. The construction site loomed again. The abrasions of the rainy season had marked the surface of the building, and in the dim evening light it was hard to tell if it was brand new or a decaying shell on the point of collapse.

It was clearly not the first time that Wu Jiayu had cycled to the temporary accommodation building. She stepped confidently past the workers, who gave us curious glances, and towards a thicket of trees beyond. A set of stairs ran down to a riverside path. Everything was finished, neat, smooth, well proportioned, and the warm stench no longer wafted from the Yangshupu River. Downriver, the red pylons of the distant Yangpu Bridge were like two sticks of incense, glowing at each tip, illuminating everything that could see them and everything that could not.

As we walked north along the river, passing stray cats, night-time runners, fishermen with torchlights and gossiping old ladies, Wu Jiayu kept her camera in her bag. When we reached a crossroads, she stopped. On the stone bridge leading to the opposite bank, two panels of rusted sheet metal barred the way to the construction site ahead.

When I followed Wu Jiayu’s gaze, I realised that we had come to the other side of the construction site, the part we had been looking out over before – our path had taken us in a U-shaped loop. Sparks were cast down from a crane up above us, glittering waves that tumbled to the darkened ground.

Wu Jiayu pointed to the only tree on the other side of the river. ‘That’s the exact height of the third floor,’ she said.

She was standing right in front of the metal barrier, looking towards the tree. There was still no camera. In her vintage tracksuit she could have been an actor, or a time traveller from the past. What she said next only reinforced that impression.

The kitchen faced south. When they took out the extractor fan, the soot made the cat’s face even darker. After the typhoon passed, the roof was carpeted with treasure. Pairs of shorts, even some banknotes. Two generations, three. More people, less space. Grandma called, told me to go out into the street and join the demonstration, to help drum up support and carry one of those red banners that said ‘I want relocation’. But the police were already there when I arrived. Five years later, when the relocation finally happened, they really did bring out the drums for the celebrations. Shame my dad wasn’t around to hear them. Me and mum didn’t see any of that government money.

With a wave of her hand, Wu Jiayu traced the edge of the building. ‘Look, these were the Shenxin workers’ quarters, and this was Xifangziqiao, and next to it . . .’

I no longer felt like I was just there to take photographs or provide her with a service. Now our relationship felt more like that of host and guest. But again, I had the vague sense that I had been here before.

Xifangzhiqiao – Bridge of the West. And next to that, was it Dongfangzhiqiao? I asked. Bridge of the East?

Not zhiqiao, she corrected me, ziqiao. The zi of child, or banknote.

When I was an intern, I used to go for walks after work to avoid the evening rush. Some of the buildings had been demolished, others had been emptied out, leaving nothing but concrete husks. After nine o’clock, legs emerged from the cracks in those empty buildings – slender ones, fleshy ones, all lined up against the wall. They smoked, chatted to each other, chatted to passers-by, and their words brought a chill to the evening breeze. I kept my gaze low, listening to the conversations, the accents, never daring to look up. I remember a pair of mauve tights that stood out from the row of black and fishnet; they made the legs look fuller, curved like an aubergine. At that moment, the mauve tights stepped forwards, and a hand reached out to cover my trouser pocket, pressing down hard just as a motorbike roared past. When I came to my senses, the hand was gone, and my phone was still in my pocket. I gave a nod of thanks.

‘Five hundred,’ said mauve tights. ‘What do you say?’

I didn’t answer.

‘I bet your phone cost quite a bit,’ she said.

That Motorola had cost me 1,500 yuan, and she had helped me keep it. So I figured I was saving money, even if I did pay her. We agreed on 300, and I went with her. The way was long and winding – amber street lights, black roads, mauve tights. We finally arrived at a row of cramped slum housing. A single room, no light, no fan, only a cool breeze blowing in off the river carrying a foul smell. In the dark, her body was plumper than it had seemed outside, but surprisingly nimble. Perhaps she was just trying to get it done quickly. She didn’t walk me back when we were done. In something of a trance, I wandered for a long time, unable to find my way out of the maze. When, at last, I ended up back where I started, I saw her climbing onto the back of a motorbike. The bike carried mauve tights away, probably back to their original position, their original set-up, like a game restarting, ready for the next passer-by. Following the fumes of the motorbike, I rushed out of the maze, pausing at the metal gate to glance up at the street sign, the end point of the game: dongfangzhiqiao, the bridge of the east. The world of Shanghai, ‘the Pearl of the East’, felt very far removed from
that place.

Now, many years later, the riddle was solved. It wasn’t ‘Dongfang-zhiqiao’ but ‘Dong-Fangziqiao’: it was bordered by the river, and divided into an east, Dong-Fangziqiao, and a west, Xi-Fangziqiao. I must have misread that one character on the sign, or misremembered. Not that it mattered, because now everything would be new, and this place could be named anything. They could come up with some kind of justification for any old name – just look at the meaningless wording on the advert above the construction site: brilliant riverside, where past and future converge. I had no choice but to believe it.

Wu Jiayu and I walked a long way along the Yangshupu River that evening. Each time the two incense sticks of the Yangpu Bridge loomed up before us, she turned around and we doubled back, like two fish trapped in a weir. When we were tired from all the walking, Wu Jiayu suggested we sit down by some outdoor fitness equipment. She looked through the photos, enlarging each one, as if checking for a particular element. She didn’t speak for a while – she never felt the need to fill silences. Though the length of this particular silence made me wonder if I should leave her to it. When she did finish, she stood up, dusted herself off, and said, ‘Let’s go back.’ Standard procedure: we each rented a share-bike, and set off towards the subway station that offered the most convenient route home.

At the Jiangpu Park intersection, I watched her lock the bike and head into the station. She disappeared down one hole, and then reappeared from another, a dozen metres away, just a few seconds later.

‘Wait, are you up for helping me take a few pictures down by the river?’ she called, with the exact same tone as when she first asked me.

Perhaps because of that night’s episode, I decided to take the ferry home when we were done with the photos. The evening air was cool, and the reflections gleamed in the water – neither the air nor the water had changed with the years.

Ma was not pleased. She followed me to my room and demanded that I tell her exactly where I stood with Wu Jiayu. Since she wasn’t leaving, I decided to provoke her. ‘We’re discussing living arrangements,’ I told her. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said, alarmed. ‘Does this mean you’re paying for a house, or she is?’ ‘It’s an old house we’ve been discussing,’ I said. ‘One that’s already been knocked down.’ A sigh of relief. ‘Oh, so she took you back to the place where she grew up – does that mean you’re serious?’ I picked up my towel and went into the bathroom without replying.

I came out of the shower to a message from Wu Jiayu, forwarded from her Xiaohongshu account. It was the last picture we had taken that night: her and the Yangpu Bridge, composed as she’d instructed. She was a small figure, lit from behind, her face indistinct. In the background, the two incense sticks of the bridge, crimson, solemn, indifferent to the blazing headlights that moved between them. The second image was a copy of an old photo. A small figure, lit from behind so her face was indistinct, the pylons of the bridge – still under construction – rising behind her. The surface of the river was calm, and the sky was broad. In the bottom-right corner, red numbers: 1992.8. It was that same summer.

It was a new post, not yet attracting any interest, but pinned to the top of her profile. The title was ‘Me and Me’.

Without hesitation, I pressed the red heart. Now I had her username, I spent several hours going through every single one of her posts, including the ones that featured my photography, and though none of them really captured what she looked like in real life, I gave each one a red heart.

Before I went to sleep, I wrote out a new message. Where are you going next weekend?

As I hit send, it felt like I had left my room behind and was standing with Wu Jiayu, together in the midnight street.

Photograph © Tianhu Yuan, Another Self, 2019