“Zhao Jin, male, twenty-seven, ancestral home in Guangzhou…”
Thanks to the neat brush-written characters on the card, Qiao Yan quickly made out the information.
Unfortunately, space on the card was limited.
Apart from his name, age, and the fact that he had graduated from Shen City University’s Department of Computer Science, there was no other information.
A photograph was even more out of the question.
His profile had been posted on the board. How could there possibly be a photograph?
Still, even that limited information was enough to set Qiao Yan’s heart racing.
She no longer had any attention to spare for her earlier “matchmaking” activities. Her thoughts were entirely occupied by the four Chinese characters on the card:
“Department of Computer Science.”
The reason Qiao Yan cared so much about those four characters had everything to do with her roommates back in 2025.
In their final year of university, all the graduating students faced the prospect of finding employment.
Some were taking the civil service exams, some were taking postgraduate entrance exams, and others were looking for jobs. Every so often, enviable good news about someone would emerge from one dorm room or another.
One moment, someone had secured a recommendation for postgraduate admission without taking the entrance exam. The next, someone was returning home, where their parents had arranged a respectable job in a small county town.
Then someone’s family had arranged a blind date with a rich man, or another student had landed an internship at a major tech company.
All that good news seemed far removed from Qiao Yan’s dorm room.
That was because they were English majors.
At some point, humanities degrees, including English, had become notorious for how difficult they made finding employment.
Major tech companies had nothing to do with them.
Banks had even less to do with them.
Places for recommended postgraduate admission were limited, while the postgraduate entrance exams and civil service exams involved fierce competition and endless rounds of elimination.
Just when every young woman in their dorm room looked utterly down on her luck, good news suddenly came from Qiao Yan’s upper bunk one day.
“Wow, my boyfriend signed with ByteDance!”
Her roommates immediately perked up.
“Congratulations, Qianqian! What’s the salary? Tell us.”
Qianqian replied modestly, “He doesn’t know the exact amount yet, but according to the previous graduating class, it should be at least three hundred thousand yuan a year.”
“How much? Three hundred thousand?”
“Yes. It’s ByteDance, after all.”
Qianqian’s voice was full of pride.
Qiao Yan was impressed too. Setting down her practice papers for the Administrative Aptitude Test, she said, “Programmers really do have it good. They can earn that much straight out of university.”
Another roommate agreed. “Exactly. Programmers really do have it good. We go to the same university as your boyfriend, and we were all at about the same level when we started. How did the gap get so big by graduation?”
Qianqian said, “They’re benefiting from the times! If this were the 1950s, English majors like us could benefit too.”
“That’s true.”
The other roommates smiled.
Qianqian continued, “But speaking of benefiting from the times, I actually think my boyfriend missed the best years. AI is developing so quickly now. Who knows whether programmers at major tech companies might suddenly lose their jobs one day?”
“Don’t worry, Qianqian,” Qiao Yan reassured her. “Even if people lose their jobs, he won’t be first in line. We’re at a Project 985 university, after all.”
But Qianqian still seemed unable to let it go. “It’s better than other majors, sure. But sometimes I still wish it were earlier. You have no idea how much money the first generation of programmers made.”
One roommate asked, “What do you mean by the first generation of programmers?”
Qianqian said, “The first generation of programmers from when the internet was just getting started.”
“Oh.”
“All these familiar names today, QQ, WeChat, Taobao, NetEase… they all started with that generation. I once saw a photo on Xiaohongshu. It was a group photo of one of the earliest classes of computer science graduates. Guess what? People online looked them all up, and every single person in that photo is now worth over a hundred million yuan!”
“Good grief, over a hundred million? Seriously? If that’s true, now that’s what you call benefiting from the times!”
“Exactly! Think about it. The internet has been developing for almost thirty years now, hasn’t it? That generation of programmers was the first to reap the benefits.”
“I’m so jealous… My dad is from that generation too. Why didn’t he think to study computer science?”
“Your dad at least had a chance to study computer science. Mine only went to junior high. None of those opportunities had anything to do with him.”
“My dad only went to junior high too. He probably didn’t even know what a computer was back then.”
“My parents were the same.”
“Exactly. So those programmers must have come from fairly well-off families to begin with, right? Otherwise, if their families didn’t even know what a computer was, how could they study computer science?”
…
“Coming from a well-off family isn’t everything. What really matters is what the man himself has to offer!”
Qiao Yan snapped out of her thoughts.
Nearby, Mother Qiao and Liu Meixia were in the thick of an animated debate.
Each had taken a liking to a different young man, and they were arguing over which one suited Qiao Yan better.
The man Mother Qiao favored had two working parents. He himself was a specialized secondary school graduate and a high school teacher with a permanent state-funded position.
The man Liu Meixia favored came from a slightly poorer family, but he had a university degree and was a senior manager at a securities trading company.
The two women went back and forth, neither able to convince the other. Only when they were practically spraying saliva as they spoke did they realize they hadn’t asked Qiao Yan.
So…
“Qiao Yan, tell us. Which one do you like?”
Having snapped out of her thoughts, Qiao Yan smiled and glanced at the forms in their hands.
“This man’s face is too square. I don’t like him.”
“That one has a mole on his face and looks too calculating. I don’t like him either.”
Liu Meixia looked a little embarrassed at her words, though Mother Qiao took them in stride.
“A mole means he’s blessed with good fortune… Then tell us yourself, what type do you like?”
After muttering under her breath, Liu Meixia put the question to Qiao Yan.
“This one.” Smiling, Qiao Yan pointed at the card she had studied earlier and asked sweetly, “Aunt Liu, I think this man seems quite eligible. Would you be kind enough to let me see his detailed profile?”
“Who? Which one?”
Mother Qiao was the first to react.
Liu Meixia didn’t even need to put on her reading glasses. One look in the direction Qiao Yan was pointing, and she immediately recognized whose card it was.
“Oh, you mean Zhao Jin.”
“Zhao Jin?”
Mother Qiao still looked puzzled.
Qiao Yan asked in surprise, “Aunt Liu, you know him?”
Liu Meixia waved a hand, picked up the tea mug in front of her bearing the words “Serve the People,” and took an unhurried sip. “I might not know the others, but how could I not know him? Eight out of ten young women who come here take a liking to that card. But in the end, not a single one has met him.”
“Why?”
Mother Qiao and Qiao Yan asked in unison.
“I’ll get his form out, and you’ll understand once you see it,” Liu Meixia said.
She stood up and walked toward the filing cabinet behind her.
First, she unlocked the little padlock on the cabinet door with a key. Then she searched through the document envelopes with practiced familiarity, took out a form, and placed it before mother and daughter.
Qiao Yan looked closely. The handwriting on the form was unmistakably in the same style as the writing on the card, pleasing to the eye.
Then she noticed the photograph attached to the form, and her heart lifted further.
What a handsome, refined-looking young man!
He looked scholarly and gentle, with well-proportioned features and rimless glasses. Even an identification photograph couldn’t diminish his good looks.
Although he wasn’t handsome in the same way as Takeshi Kaneshiro or Andy Lau, he was undoubtedly attractive, with a distinctive air about him.
With looks like those and an educational background like his, it was no exaggeration to say that Qiao Yan wanted to settle on him right then and there.
What was she waiting for? If she let this opportunity slip by, she might never find another like it!
Still, everyone else had eyes too.
With so much going for him, why was he still single at twenty-seven?
Qiao Yan looked at the other information on the form.
“What? His parents are divorced? No, absolutely not.”
The sharp-eyed Mother Qiao immediately spotted the “major flaw” in Zhao Jin’s profile.
In her eyes, having divorced parents was almost no different from having been married before himself.
Although marriage and divorce were common these days, everyone knew how complicated divorced families could be.
What’s more, if both parents had started new families after divorcing, how could they still have the time or energy to look after the child from their previous marriage?
Getting married these days wasn’t like it had been in the past, when a couple could scrape by on a handful of rice.
Prices were soaring. Eggs were almost four yuan a jin, and a carton of Yantang milk cost over twenty yuan.
If Qiao Yan had no parents-in-law to help her after marriage, how would she manage?
Not to mention having children and recovering during the postpartum confinement period.
In short, as someone who had been through it herself, Mother Qiao crossed Zhao Jin off the list of candidates the moment she saw “Parents divorced; both have families of their own.”
Who cared whether he was handsome or a university graduate?
Divorced parents meant an absolute no!
Liu Meixia wholeheartedly agreed. “Exactly, Sister-in-law. We’ve both been through it, so we understand. The young women who come here are attracted by his beautiful handwriting and university degree too, but once they see that detail, they don’t dare meet him. That’s why I didn’t even dare suggest him to you earlier. If I handed this form to Qiao Yan, I’d be afraid you’d think I was deliberately making things difficult for her!”
“You’re worrying too much, Sister Meixia. You’re helping Qiao Yan find a partner. How could I fail to appreciate that and blame you? But coming back to the point, this man’s parents are divorced.”
Mother Qiao looked deeply worried, several more creases appearing around her eyes and brows.
“How can a couple manage these days without dependable parents-in-law to help them?”
Liu Meixia nodded. “Besides, Zhao Jin’s job isn’t particularly good either.”
“What’s wrong with his job?” Mother Qiao asked.
Liu Meixia said, “I’ve only heard about it myself, but apparently, he started playing on computers as soon as he graduated from university.”
“What kind of job involves playing on a computer?”
“I’m not sure.”
Liu Meixia shook her head and declared, “He seems to work at some internet company. In any case, it’s hardly a decent, respectable occupation!”
Mother Qiao was appalled. With no parents-in-law to help and no stable job, wouldn’t choosing him be like jumping into a pit of fire?
No, no, absolutely not.
She hurriedly moved to ask Liu Meixia to put his form away before her daughter’s “boy-crazy affliction” flared up again and she fell for this pretty boy.
But she was too late.
While Mother Qiao and Liu Meixia were talking, Qiao Yan had already taken the thin sheet of paper in both hands and carefully studied it several times.
As she examined it, she even offered her assessment.
“Playing on computers is good. Doesn’t that mean he’s a programmer? A programmer in this era, wow… Good. Absolutely wonderful!”
Mother Qiao: “…”
So was Liu Meixia.
To stop her daughter from recklessly leaping into a pit of fire, Mother Qiao hurried to throw cold water on her enthusiasm and bring her to her senses.
“Qiao Yan, look carefully. His parents are divorced! When you have a baby and go through postpartum confinement, you won’t have anyone to help you!”
Yet Qiao Yan put down the form, entirely unafraid. Her pretty face even showed a hint of delight.
“Isn’t it good to have no parents-in-law around? That way, I won’t have to wait on them later. Grandma did come when you were recovering after childbirth, Mom, but how did that turn out?”
Mother Qiao, who often complained to her daughter about all the ways her parents-in-law had mistreated her during postpartum confinement and left her with lasting health problems, was speechless.
She really had shot herself in the foot!