The car sat downstairs.
Zhang Lei's neighborhood—an old factory district—had no proper parking spots. Just the open ground between buildings, first come first served. He parked the Mazda 6 under the sycamore tree below his building, locked it, and stood there a moment.
He had a car.
But a problem came with it—how to sell?
He wasn't a dealer. No storefront, no showroom, no client list. Just a twenty-eight-year-old unemployed kid with one extra car on his hands.
Zhang Lei went home and opened his phone. Searched "Binjiang used car trading groups" and "sell car privately." Joined five or six WeChat groups—all some variation of "Binjiang Used Car Info Share." Hundreds of people in each, messages flying all day: car listings, inquiries, price haggling. A zoo.
He typed up a post and dropped it in three groups:
"Selling 2019 Mazda 6, 2.5L, 63,000 km. Good condition, no accidents, no water damage. DM if interested."
Attached three photos—front angle, side profile, dashboard. Shot them that afternoon. Decent light.
He waited an hour.
Nobody messaged him.
Other people's posts scrolled past—all kinds of listings, lowball offers, arguments, spam ads. His message drowned in minutes.
Zhang Lei scrolled through other sellers' posts. Some had fifteen or twenty photos. Some wrote several hundred words describing the car's condition. Some attached screenshots of inspection reports. His three casual snapshots and one line of text—yeah. Way too bare-bones.
The next day he re-shot the car, inside and out. Fifteen photos from every angle. Engine bay with the hood popped (wiped clean first). Undercarriage shot from flat on his back. Close-up of tire tread depth. Full interior panorama, seat detail, odometer close-up—all of it.
He reposted. Added a few more lines this time: "Personal daily driver, not a dealer. Condition is genuine—welcome to bring third-party inspection. Binjiang City, available for viewing."
Two people messaged him. One asked the price, said it was too high, and vanished. The other set up a time to see the car but never showed.
Third day, afternoon. Su Qing texted: "How's the car sale going?"
Zhang Lei wasn't sure how she knew—probably saw his Moments post. He'd casually put up "Selling a Mazda 6" a couple days back.
"Dead quiet."
"Your photos are terrible." Su Qing sent a voice message. Zhang Lei tapped play—"Your background is a mess. That garbage bin downstairs made it into the shot. Drive the car to the riverside, by the green belt. Better light, clean background. And don't write the listing like you're selling vegetables—list the highlights. What displacement, what features, whether the service records are complete."
Zhang Lei blinked when it ended. She was right. He'd spent three years at the dealership, listening to Wang Defa coach Xiao Ma on how to pitch a car to customers every single day—and when it came time to sell his own, he'd forgotten all of it.
"Can you help me shoot it?" He typed the words, hesitated two seconds, and hit send.
Su Qing's reply was instant: "This weekend works."
Saturday at two in the afternoon, Su Qing pulled up on her little electric scooter. She'd changed into casual clothes—white T-shirt, jeans, hair down instead of the usual ponytail. First time Zhang Lei had seen her out of the dealership uniform.
"Let's go. Drive to the riverside." She climbed into the passenger seat.
Zhang Lei drove the Mazda 6 to a stretch of greenery along Binjiang Park. The tree shade fell just right, covering half the car body while sunlight hit the front end. Looked miles better than the garbage-bin backdrop downstairs.
Su Qing circled the car with her phone, snapping over twenty shots. She even got on the ground for the undercarriage. "Buyers care about this most—you need them to see the clean chassis at a glance."
Then she got back in and reworked his listing text. Zhang Lei watched from the side as her fingers danced across the screen—adding dividers, formatting the specs into a table layout, reordering the photos.
"Post it." She handed his phone back.
Zhang Lei sent it to five groups.
Zhang Lei glanced at Su Qing. She smiled. "Go."
The buyer was a man in his thirties, ran a renovation business, looking for something cheap to drive to job sites. He circled the car three times, crouched to check the undercarriage, popped the hood to inspect the engine, then tested the gears—
"Condition's genuinely solid." He stood up, brushing dust off his hands. "What are you asking?"
"Thirty-three." Zhang Lei said. That was his listed price—bought at nineteen, listed at thirty-three, with negotiation room down to just over thirty.
"Thirty work?"
"Thirty-one."
The man thought for two seconds. "Deal."
That afternoon they made a trip to the vehicle registration office for the transfer. Thirty-one thousand, deposited. Minus the nineteen-thousand cost plus two hundred in transfer fees—net profit: eleven thousand eight hundred yuan.
After the buyer drove off, Zhang Lei stood outside the registration office and checked his phone's transaction notification one more time. Thirty-one thousand even. Real money.
Su Qing stood beside him, the corner of her mouth curved up.
"You've got an eye for this," she said. "Why not do it on your own?"
Zhang Lei pocketed his phone. The wind picked up and he caught a hint of something—couldn't tell if it was the willow trees or Su Qing's shampoo.
"Yeah," he said. "It's time."