On Wednesday morning, the tai chi had just finished its closing moves when the phone in Zhou's pocket buzzed.
It was the team's work chat. At 6:38, Lu Heng had posted a screenshot of his dashboard. The big number in the middle read 301.
Three thumbs-up had already piled up under it.
Zhou's own survey was still sitting on the shared drive, stuck on Question 1. Wen Yining had said she wanted to see responses tomorrow. Tomorrow was today.
The box in the lower left corner of his vision was lit up too.
Games: 0 won, 7 lost | 2 days left
At midnight it had knocked off a day all by itself.
Zhou put his phone away. From his other pocket he took out a notebook and a pen.
He'd bought the notebook on his way home from work last night. The cover said Large Print, and the lines inside were spaced wider than in an ordinary notebook. If an older person leaned in, they could read whatever he wrote.
Over on the plaza, the morning exercise group was breaking up. Some people were sliding their fans back into cloth sleeves, some were unscrewing thermoses for a drink, and they drifted toward the exits in twos and threes.
The first person he stopped was an auntie who'd just folded up her fan.
"Excuse me, ma'am, can I have one minute? What apps do you usually use on your phone?"
She glanced down at the notebook in his hand, waved him off, and kept walking. "No thanks, no thanks."
The second was an old man listening to the radio through earbuds. Zhou got half a sentence out. The man turned sideways, slipped past him, and waved a hand next to his ear.
The third, he tried at the chess tables.
The tables were just past the back row of the plaza, behind a few scholar trees. Three of the four stone tables were taken, and a ring of old people stood around watching. Zhou went up to a man at the edge of the ring who stood with his hands clasped behind his back, and asked the question again.
The man's eyes didn't leave the board.
"My phone's just for taking calls."
He waved a hand too, and moved around to the other side of the ring.
The notebook was still blank.
If you sent out a survey, you could at least wait for responses to come in. Here, he couldn't even get a read receipt.
"Horse! Move your horse!"
The shout drowned out the whole chess corner.
It came from a round-faced old man standing behind one of the players, leaning half his body over the board, finger nearly jabbing the pieces.
The player didn't turn around. "Are you playing, or am I?"
"Can't help it. I'm worried for you."
"Old Ma, one more tip out of you and this loss is on you."
The whole ring burst out laughing. The round-faced man pulled a face and was about to fire back when he turned his head and saw the notebook in Zhou's hand.
"Asking about apps?"
He elbowed his way past two people and came out of the ring, not bothering to lower his voice.
"Ask me!"
Before Zhou could say anything, the old man looked him up and down. "What do you do, young fella? Reporter?"
"No. I work in an office building in the new district. We make phone apps for older people."
"Then you've come to the right man." The old man slapped his thigh. "The name's Ma. Everybody around here calls me Uncle Ma. And I'm telling you, all that stuff on my phone? I can't stand a single one of them."
This copy came from the author's official page without permission; the chapter published there supports the creator through readers.
A full screen of icons, red and green and yellow, with little red circles hanging off the corners of a bunch of them.
"My son put all of these on. I don't know what any of them do, and I don't dare tap around."
Zhou opened the notebook and wrote on the first line: My son put all of these on. I don't dare tap around.
He wrote it carefully, one letter at a time, nice and big.
Uncle Ma leaned in, squinted at the line, and got even more fired up.
"Last time on the bus, my hand slipped and opened one, and out pops some girl dancing, loud as anything! I couldn't turn it off, and the whole bus was looking at me. And the writing's tiny. Tiny as an ant's legs. I put my reading glasses on and still have to hold it out like this."
He held the phone out at arm's length and squinted, leaning toward it.
"If you've got to hold it like this to read it, is that still a phone?"
Zhou wrote it down the way he'd said it: Tiny as an ant's legs. If you've got to hold it like this to read it, is that still a phone.
"And those prizes!" Uncle Ma was talking faster and faster. "Whichever one I open, a prize pops up first. Congratulations, you've won! Won what? I didn't do anything, and it's congratulating me. To close it you've got to tap the little x. The x is the size of a sesame seed, squeezed up in the corner. I tap a tiny bit off, and I'm in again. Then it wants you to fill in this and fill in that. And I'm thinking, this is just after my money, isn't it? A prize, a prize. When has a prize ever not ended with me paying?"
Zhou thought of the survey on the shared drive.
Four options under Question 1, and not one of them had room for that.
He wrote the whole thing down, word for word.
"What I'm scared of is tapping the wrong thing once and losing money. If it takes my money, who am I supposed to go to?"
There was a clatter from the far end of the stone tables.
Old Gu was sitting at his table, his cloth bag on the ground by his feet, a whole box of wooden pieces already spilled out across the stone. He was setting them out on the board, and he jerked his chin their way.
"Playing or not?"
Uncle Ma jumped in before Zhou could answer. "Playing? Forget playing! The young fella's here to see me on real business. Those lousy moves of yours are only good for beating kids. Aren't you ashamed?"
Old Gu didn't even look up. "Did I ask you?"
"You didn't, and I'm telling you anyway!"
Zhou glanced at the lower left corner.
Games: 0 won, 7 lost | 2 days left
Two days, and not a single win. If he went and sat down now, he might get two games in before work.
The phone in Uncle Ma's hand was still lit. A prize sat in the middle of the screen, and the x in its corner really was no bigger than a sesame seed.
"Tomorrow morning," Zhou called over to Old Gu.
Old Gu grunted and pressed his General into the palace.
Zhou looked down and kept writing.
"Where was I?" Uncle Ma scratched his head. "Oh, right, customer service! One time I really did tap the wrong thing. Didn't even know if it took my money or not, so I called the customer service number. A machine picks up. Please state your problem. So I stated it, and it says, Sorry, I didn't catch that. I said it in Jiangzhou dialect eight times, and eight times it didn't catch it. So I switched to Mandarin, and it didn't catch my Mandarin either."
Someone watching the chess game piped up. "Nobody can catch your Mandarin."
"What are you laughing at!" Uncle Ma turned around and bellowed, then turned back. "Write that down, young fella. It can't understand Jiangzhou dialect."
After that, Uncle Ma went from booking a doctor's appointment to paying the electric bill, and from the electric bill to the package lockers downstairs, and wherever he went, he found his way back to that x the size of a sesame seed. Zhou took it down line by line, the big letters filling the notebook one row after another.
By the time the first page was full, his phone said 7:22.
"Uncle Ma, I have to get back for work."
"Leaving already? I'm not done yet." Uncle Ma looked a little put out. Then he looked at the notebook in Zhou's hand and cheered right up. "You're all right, young fella. You actually listen when people talk."
The words were barely out of his mouth before he'd turned back to the stone tables.
"Elephant! Move your elephant!"
"Old Ma, shut up!"
Zhou closed the notebook, put it in his pocket, and headed for the east gate.
At nine sharp, Zhou was standing by Wen Yining's desk.
"I'm holding off on the survey. I'm going to the park to ask people in person."
Wen Yining kept typing. She didn't look up.
"Suit yourself. If you've got nothing by the end of the month, you explain that to the reviewers yourself."
He went back to his desk. On the wall of monitors across the way, the big number was already up to 313.
Lu Heng leaned out from behind the wall with a coffee in hand, half his face showing, and smiled.
"Your research subjects are grandpas doing their morning exercises?"
Song Xiaobei's chair spun around before Zhou could answer. "Bro Zhou's going straight to the front lines."
Then he looked down, opened his note, and typed in entry number five.
I'm holding off on the survey. I'm going to the park to ask people in person. (Going straight to the front lines.)
At 5:30 on the dot, Zhou closed his laptop and left.
At 6:30 he was at the plaza by the east gate. Auntie Fang was at the very front, leading the dance. The red speaker sat on the flower bed, blasting music loud enough to shake the ground.
He stood at the edge of the group for a while before he went up to an auntie at the far end of a row.
"Excuse me, ma'am, sorry to bother you. I wanted to ask, on your phone, what do you usually..."
The music cut off.
Auntie Fang straightened up by the flower bed and headed right for him.
"Just what is it you do?" She was staring at the notebook in his hand. "We had people with notebooks last time too, asking about this and that. A few questions in, and they had everyone paying."
"I work in an office building in the new district. We make phone apps for older people."
"For older people?"
Auntie Fang turned around and flung a hand up at the dancers.
"Nobody talk to him."
The auntie he'd just spoken to stepped back into her row.
The speaker started up again.
The dancers turned with the intro, rows and rows of backs facing him, and lifted their arms all together.
Zhou stood at the edge of the plaza and opened the notebook.
The first page was packed, all of it Uncle Ma's words, big letters filling it one row after another.
The second page was blank.