After graduation, Xia Lei’s first job was as a technical engineer at a construction site, working for a trading company in the consumer electronics industry.

That year, the average salary for Shanghai graduates was known as “3-6-9”: three thousand for bachelor’s degree holders, six thousand for master’s degree holders, and nine thousand for doctoral graduates. Xia Lei’s starting salary landed right at three thousand yuan. That same year, there were a hundred thousand graduates — just like Xia Lei — who either stayed in Shanghai or poured into the city. They were the fresh blood of this rapidly changing metropolis, bringing it endless vitality and energy.

At first, Xia Lei lived with classmates, four of them sharing an old public housing unit: two bedrooms and a living room. The rooms had only ceiling fans, no air conditioning. Later, as classmates gradually found jobs, living together became less convenient, and they slowly drifted apart. The 3C company Xia Lei worked for relocated several times, and he moved along with it each time. Fortunately, he didn’t own much — aside from clothes and shoes, his remaining belongings fit into a single suitcase.

After moving so many times, Xia Lei gradually figured out the tricks of real estate agents and subletting landlords. Agents would often take clients to see three properties in one go. The first was almost always a grimy, run-down, cramped old place — not even cheap — and this was purely a setup. Most clients wouldn’t want it, but agents always insisted on showing it. Once clients had seen it, their psychological expectations for quality and price would shift upward. The agent would then show the second and third properties, which were better environments but at considerably higher rents. In this way, clients nominally compared options, but in reality had already been led into a trap. When deals were finally closed, the rent often exceeded the original budget.

It took Xia Lei several rentals before he understood this. After that, he told agents to show him only the “old, dilapidated, cramped” options and firmly refused to exceed his budget. The agent sneered: “However you look at it, you’re a university graduate, a future member of the middle class — how can you be at the same level as a migrant worker?” Xia Lei shook his head and said: “I’m just a worker too. I can’t afford to be middle class.”

On winter nights, the temperature inside the old rundown apartment was no better than outdoors. Xia Lei simply placed an electric blanket on his chair, wrapped himself in a cotton quilt, and sat at his computer studying CAD and Java online courses. He often encountered Xiao Dan on MSN; she was studying for her master’s degree in Europe, nine time zones away from China. It was often ten o’clock at night in Shanghai while she had just finished lunch in Belgium.

The little green man on the MSN screen kept spinning, and with a “ding-dong” sound, she came online. Xia Lei saw Xiao Dan’s avatar light up and sent a greeting.

Xiao Dan: Still not sleeping?

Xia Lei: Just got back from a business trip. No need to get up early tomorrow.

Xiao Dan: Where did you go?

Xia Lei: Taicang — laying cables, setting up the network. What are you up to?

Xiao Dan: At the library, preparing for tomorrow’s discussion class.

Xia Lei: Have you gotten used to Western food?

Xiao Dan: It’s high in calories. I’ve put on weight. How’s Xiao Man lately?

Xia Lei: He’s become the billiards master at Xi Tie Cheng now.

Xiao Dan: Does Xiao Man have a girlfriend yet?

Xia Lei: Probably not. He said he’s considering working abroad — going to Japan.

Xiao Dan: That’s wonderful. He’s finally come to his senses.

Xia Lei: Actually… he was already laid off a while ago.

Xiao Dan: A moving tree lives, a stationary tree dies. If the factory isn’t working out, he should have made a move long ago.

Xia Lei: At Xi Tie Cheng, a lot of people are actually like stationary trees — they can’t move.

Xiao Dan: Have you sorted out your personal life?

Xia Lei: I’ve just started seeing a Shanghai girl.

Xiao Dan: How does it feel?

Xia Lei: The girl is fine, but her mother… that’s a whole other story.

Xia Lei had dated two local Shanghai girlfriends, and both relationships fell apart because the girl’s family disapproved.

Once he visited a girlfriend’s home — which was essentially a disguised interview. Her parents asked about Xia Lei’s family background, and he answered honestly: “My mother and father both work at an old state-owned enterprise in the northeast. They’ve just recently bought out their years of service.” The girlfriend’s mother said nothing for a long moment, then said flatly: “We Shanghai people value knowing your limits — we don’t take advantage of others, and we don’t like owing anyone favors either.”

Xia Lei understood that Shanghai people didn’t like climbing on others or being climbed upon. The girlfriend’s mother wasn’t entirely unreasonable — every mother in the world hopes her daughter won’t end up with a pauper. He could only feel ashamed and put his head down to work harder and earn more bonuses.

In order to earn more travel allowances, Xia Lei spent years going on business trips constantly, rushing from one city to the next, from one construction site to another. Sometimes, when the company was short-staffed, the manager would ask Xia Lei to take on two roles at once, including collecting payment on-site after project completion. He always kept a bill-counting machine in his tool bag, and whenever smaller clients couldn’t transfer funds immediately, he would take cash directly.

The principle of delivery was straightforward: cash and goods exchanged simultaneously, goods and person inseparable, payment and person inseparable. This seemingly simple principle was one where Xia Lei once suffered a significant setback.

One winter, Xia Lei went to a county town to deliver goods and lay cables. The delivery point was a storefront in the old part of town. The buyer was a middle-aged man carrying a “Seven Wolves” brand briefcase, who said he wanted to convert the storefront into an internet café and had placed an order with Xia Lei’s company for a batch of high-performance gaming computers and SOHO routers.

The briefcase man first handed Xia Lei forty thousand yuan in cash. Xia Lei ran it through the bill-counting machine twice — everything checked out. The briefcase man turned and locked the four stacks of cash in a safe against the wall, then said: “Young man, you go ahead and lay the cables. I’ll take the goods home. We’ll each mind our own work. When you’re done with the wiring, give me a call, I’ll come back, open the safe, and hand over your money. The sooner you finish, the sooner you can get back to Shanghai.”

Xia Lei agreed without much thought. He had watched the cash go into the safe with his own eyes, and since he wasn’t going to leave the room while laying cables, it didn’t count as being separated from the money.

The briefcase man drove off in his pickup truck with the goods, leaving Xia Lei alone to do the wiring. Halfway through the job, Xia Lei started to feel something was off. The layout of the room wasn’t actually suited for an internet café. The previous year, a fire at the Lanjisu internet café had tightened fire management regulations for internet cafés across the country, and this storefront had only one exit — it would be nearly impossible to pass the fire inspection.

Intuition told Xia Lei something wasn’t right. His first thought turned to the payment. He glanced back at the safe — nothing seemed unusual. He pulled out his phone and called the briefcase man. The phone was turned off.

Something was definitely wrong here. Which step had gone wrong?

Xia Lei crouched by the doorway, racking his brain. Eventually, his suspicions circled back to the safe. When he pushed open the heavy safe, he felt around and sure enough, discovered that a brick behind it, against the wall, was loose. He looked at the safe again and was struck speechless: the safe had no back panel, and the cash inside was gone!

Needless to say, while Xia Lei had been working, the briefcase man had clearly gone around to the outside of the building, prised out the loose brick, reached through the opening into the back-less safe, and removed the money without ever setting foot inside the room. Both the safe and the wall had been rigged in advance. The supposed plan to convert the storefront into an internet café was completely fabricated — the real owner of the shop was certainly not the briefcase man.

Xia Lei collapsed onto the floor, gasping, his mind a complete blank. The money and goods were both gone. Despite all those years of schooling, he had still failed to see through this street-level illusion. It took him a long while to recover. He took a deep breath to steady his heart rate, first called his manager, then went to the county police station to file a report.

Back at the Shanghai office, Xia Lei handed the police report receipt to the manager. The manager stamped his feet and gave him a thorough tongue-lashing, then spread his hands and said that the company was jointly owned by a few partners, and the other shareholders had all said the loss must be compensated at full value — there was nothing he could do. Xia Lei said: “Manager, don’t put yourself in a difficult position. I’ll compensate the company out of my own pocket. Consider these forty thousand yuan my tuition for entering society.”

Forty thousand yuan amounted to roughly half a year’s wages and bonus commissions for Xia Lei — an undeniably painful and heavy price to pay. The case was later solved. The fraudster — the briefcase man — turned out to be illiterate, having never even attended primary school. Xia Lei thought it over carefully: the world was vast and society complex. He had been far too narrow in his focus on technical skills alone — all the more so given that his employer was heartless and cold. On the month he finished repaying the compensation, he resigned and moved to a fast-moving consumer goods company, starting from the bottom as a “management trainee.”

That year, many companies were hyping up the concept of “management trainee programs.” By the time the term had been so overused that even hair salons were calling junior hires “management trainees,” the whole concept had lost meaning. Originally, management trainee programs were intended to cultivate future business leaders. In reality, however, many companies’ leaders couldn’t even figure out which direction their industry was heading or how to develop talent. They blindly recruited batches of management trainees, only to have them doing repetitive frontline work.

After completing the onboarding formalities, Xia Lei’s cohort of new employees was sent by the HR department to Chongming Island for closed training. During the first week, the group was repeatedly pumped full of motivational fervor by a training company. Every class required them to sing “Fighting Hard to Win,” meals were preceded by “A Grateful Heart,” evenings were spent writing reflective journals, and the group collectively voted for the “worst student.” Although Xia Lei found it all repugnant, for the sake of this job opportunity, he forced himself to appear enthusiastic.

By the second week, the training company divided the trainees into the “Foolish Old Man Team” and the “Jingwei Team” for competitive group activities. Xia Lei was unexpectedly chosen as captain of the “Foolish Old Man Team.” Every day before dawn, he and the “Jingwei Team” captain each led their group on a five-kilometer cross-country run. During the day, they stood at military attention for hours under the blazing sun. With peeling skin, team members followed the trainer in shouting slogans like “Forge the spirit, be reborn!” — the voices piercing the clouds, drawing curious farmers from the surrounding area.

On the final day of training, the “Jingwei Team” and the “Foolish Old Man Team” remained neck and neck on points. After consulting with the HR department, the training company decided to add a final competition module called “The Style of Future Leaders.”

The purpose of “The Style of Future Leaders” was to make employees appreciate just how difficult leadership truly was. When explaining the rules, the trainer made special mention of the brutal nature of the contest: “The style of a future leader — first, it means challenging the impossible; second, it means taking full responsibility for victory or defeat. A showdown between leaders has never been about sharing honors equally. It’s always a fight to the death, and there can only be one winner…”

At these words, Xia Lei felt a chill run down his spine. He and the “Jingwei Team” captain were the nominal “leaders” — this fierce confrontation was going to happen between the two of them.

“Now, let your team members pass their confidence and blessings on to your captain! This transmission needs no words — come on, express it fully through your body language!” The trainer began building energy for the warm-up.

Even a fool could understand what this meant. So the members of the “Foolish Old Man Team” took turns giving Xia Lei enthusiastic hugs and encouraging pats on the back. Xia Lei knew he’d been set up with a great hat placed on his head — even if a ten-thousand-foot pit lay ahead, he had no choice but to jump.

“I will now announce the competition rules!” The trainer grabbed the microphone and spoke word by word: “The two captains will compete in a push-up contest. The rule is simple — fight to the end. The one with the higher number wins!”

“What?” The entire room let out a gasp. “Fight to the end” meant an unlimited duel — both men were bound to end up with muscle injuries. Xia Lei felt a jolt in his chest. This was indeed a zero-sum game. He glanced at his opponent. The “Jingwei Team” captain also wore a complicated expression.

Whether you stick your neck out or pull it back, the blade still comes — he had no choice but to jump in. Xia Lei put on an air of fearlessness, strode onto the stage, and waved to his team members, shouting: “Fight to the end! The Foolish Old Man Team will prevail!”

“Fight to the end! The Jingwei Team will prevail!” The Jingwei captain also walked onto the stage amid cheers.

“Very good, excellent!” The trainer quickly wove in a motivational point: “This battle is not only a test of physical endurance — it is a contest of willpower. As long as these two captains refuse to give up or abandon their teams for the sake of collective honor, this competition can go on indefinitely! Alright! Take your positions, ready, begin!”

At the command, Xia Lei and his opponent on stage began lowering and raising their arms.

“One, two, three… nineteen, twenty… forty-eight, forty-nine…” The team members below counted aloud. Xia Lei could hear the anxiety in their voices. He didn’t yet know that the “Jingwei Team” captain had already reached eighty.

“Everyone take a good look at these two captains struggling to hold on,” the trainer recited from his error-riddled script, launching into the first chapter of emotional manipulation. “Do they remind you of the parents who bear all responsibility for you? They too have moments when they can barely hold on, when they can’t even let their tears fall. All the loneliness, all the desolation, all the bitterness — they swallow it back down, wrapped in tears they force inward!

“Look again at these two captains fighting to hold themselves up. Don’t they remind you of your boss? Can you truly understand the helplessness, the grievances, the heartache they endure? For the company, their children often only see their fathers or mothers in dreams; for the company, their wives and husbands can only wait for them to come home by the light of a lit window; for the company, they have even paid a price beyond what ordinary people can imagine…”

Xia Lei, straining through each repetition, wished he could stand up and slap the trainer across the face. He had never heard such shameless glorification — and he had been dragged in as a prop in the spectacle. What garbage about “future business leaders” — he, Xia Lei, was nothing more than one of tens of millions of graduates simply trying to gain a foothold in Shanghai. His only ambition was to not have Shanghai’s city gates shut in his face. Nothing more than that basic struggle for livelihood.

Half an hour later, the competition entered its most grueling phase, with cheers from both sides rising and falling.

“Two hundred and ninety-five — Jingwei, keep going!”

“Two hundred and seventy-five — Foolish Old Man Team, you must win!”

Xia Lei’s arms began to tremble uncontrollably; he was visibly on the verge of collapse. Then, from the other side of the stage, came a sudden “thud.” The Jingwei Team captain had fallen face-forward onto the platform. “Oh!” A gasp rose from the crowd below, and several people rushed to the stage. The Jingwei captain appeared close to exhaustion and couldn’t stand steadily even after being helped to his feet.

Only Xia Lei remained on the stage. A drop of sweat trickled into the corner of his eye. He had no way to wipe it away — he could only close his eyes and let the sweat turn to what looked like tears, flowing out from the corners of his eyes.

Seeing Xia Lei appear to cry, those below felt a heaviness in their hearts. A few of the young women began to sob quietly. The trainer quickly pressed play on a recorder, and in the mournful female aria of “Goodbye, Police,” he pulled out a handkerchief at just the right moment, feigned a choked voice, and continued reciting his script’s second chapter: “Trainees, do you feel this is cruel? The cruel marketplace has no sympathy for the weak. When a company collapses, who sympathizes with its leader? Employees can always find new jobs, but who bears the pain of failure? Have you ever tried to understand your company’s leaders? Have you given your all for the company?”

Finally, people below began to nod silently, and some burst into loud sobbing.

“Last twenty! Don’t give up!” The trainer turned back toward Xia Lei and shouted: “We all understand you now — you, the great patriarch of the enterprise. You must not fall! Hold on!”

Xia Lei made no response, expressionless. He began to cough, shaking so violently he could barely hold himself up. He recalled his father once saying that when a person is utterly exhausted, they start to cough for no apparent reason. But he had no choice — he had to grit his teeth and see this performance through to the end.

“Ahhh—” He let out a cry like a cornered beast at the end of its rope, and continued mechanically lowering his arms.

“Two hundred and ninety-four… two hundred and ninety-five… two hundred and ninety-six! Well done, Foolish Old Man Team — you’ve won!” The whole room erupted in cheers. Team members surged onto the stage and lifted Xia Lei — who looked like a puppet on the verge of death — into the air, weeping and embracing him.

The onboarding training on Chongming Island was a tremendous success. The “fight to the end” motivational segment in particular had pumped the trainees to the brim with enthusiasm.

At the graduation ceremony, Xia Lei was invited onto the stage to take a photo with company leadership. The HR director presented him with a red banner inscribed “Future Leader.” His poor arms ached so badly he couldn’t raise them — he could only cradle the banner in front of him like a snowman holding a broom, nodding gratefully to the audience below.

The trainer was also excited. The success of the training had secured him a long-term contract with the company. He pulled out a tube of Voltaren pain relief gel and pressed it into Xia Lei’s hands, draping an arm around his shoulder: “Best wishes to you, future leader!”

“Get lost!” Xia Lei had no desire to look at him even a moment longer. He squared his aching shoulders and walked away. “Have you no conscience? You stirred us up against each other just to get your contract signed?”

For the entire following week, Xia Lei couldn’t lift his arms to put on clothes — the inevitable consequence of severe muscle strain. His opponent, the “Jingwei Team” captain, had not only a swollen arm but urine that turned the color of tea — reportedly a case of rhabdomyolysis, requiring hospitalization for dialysis treatment. Xia Lei felt a deep and sincere pity for his opponent. Both of them had been adrift on the sea of uncertainty, but in this round, the Jingwei captain had failed to knock on Shanghai’s door and could only retreat in quiet defeat.

After joining the company, Xia Lei and the other sales management trainees all began from the most basic level of retail store sales — in industry terms called “street sweeping,” or “ground promotion.”

Every morning they would set out with backpacks loaded with product brochures, partnership proposals, crackers, and water bottles, visiting retail stores street by street, calling on each store manager to propose cooperation. Being turned away several times a day and walking twenty to thirty kilometers was simply par for the course. Fortunately, Xia Lei didn’t feel the hardship of constant movement. He believed that every trial was a necessary part of life’s journey. Sometimes when his feet swelled from walking, he would go to a bench in a street garden, lean back, and prop his feet up on the back of the bench to reverse the blood flow.

Then came an incident that began to shake his resolve. It was a difficult client visit — the other party was a notoriously hard-to-deal-with chain distributor. The distributor’s boss had refused Xia Lei’s requests to meet several times before finally agreeing to a five-minute meeting.

When Xia Lei respectfully presented his business card with both hands, the distributor’s boss took it lazily, glanced at it, and said with a cold laugh: “This place of mine is practically turning into Sandy’s Quicksand River!”

Xia Lei didn’t understand.

“Do you know that Sandy was a monster before he joined the pilgrimage?” the distributor’s boss asked.

“Yes — Sandy was banished from heaven and became a river demon in the Quicksand River.”

“You seem to be educated,” the distributor’s boss tested him further. “Sandy, when he was a demon, wore nine skulls around his neck. What were those skulls?”

“The heads of the nine previous pilgrims who had all died in the Quicksand River.”

“Good, then you’ll understand.” The distributor’s boss pulled open a drawer and retrieved a business card holder, fishing out five cards and tossing them onto the desk. “Take a look — all from your company.”

Xia Lei leaned forward to look. Every one of those cards was identical to his own, except for the names.

“There you have it — these are your predecessors at this position. The one before you, the one before that, and the one before that… You can see just how chaotic your company is!” The distributor’s boss held up five fingers. “Within two years, five different sales representatives from your company have come knocking on my door to propose cooperation. Every one of these young men arrived with his head held high, talking grandly about partnership visions — but before long, every single one of them had resigned and left.”

Xia Lei was bewildered. He genuinely hadn’t known so many before him had fallen by the wayside.

The distributor’s boss arranged the five business cards in a row, then placed Xia Lei’s card at the end — six in total. “To save time, I’ll ask you one direct question: you’re number six, right? How long do you plan to last? What makes you different from the previous five? Why should I trust your cooperation plan?”

Xia Lei was momentarily speechless.

“Young man, we don’t yet have any personal credibility between us. But I do have to consider the credibility of the company standing behind you. Your company is so short-sighted, constantly cycling through people — do they have any sustained business strategy? Any stable market cultivation? This place of mine is practically turning into the Quicksand River! Young man, am I being clear enough?” The distributor’s boss knocked on the tabletop with his knuckles.

Leaving the distributor’s office, Xia Lei was so disheartened he nearly forgot to pick up his backpack. The other man’s criticism was not without merit: many companies endlessly cycle through personnel on a tactical level, while their strategy remains vague and erratic, without any long-term plan. This visit had struck a chord with Xia Lei and led him to realize that he must not only keep his head down and pull the cart, but also lift his eyes to look ahead. Choosing a career in Shanghai was a complex application problem — to score high marks, you had to examine the question carefully and repeatedly.

The classmates who had once shared the old apartment with Xia Lei all, without exception, stumbled and struggled when they first entered the workforce. Some persisted for three or four years and still saw no direction, then left Shanghai and returned to their hometowns. As he saw classmates off one by one, Xia Lei had wavered too. But the state-owned and private enterprises back in the northeast never offered any good opportunities, so his persistence was, in truth, also a lack of any other road to take.

By the end of that year, Xia Lei quit the management trainee position. He didn’t rush to find the next job. Instead, he settled himself down in the library, reading books and newspapers. He went through every industry interview article in the financial press with great care, turning key data into brief analytical reports, and finally used the Competency Model Handbook to conduct a personality and ability assessment on himself.

When March came and companies entered peak hiring season, Xia Lei first screened the job listings in growing industries by sub-sector, then cross-referenced them against his competency model and set aside positions that were highly paid but didn’t suit him. To understand the industry background and career prospects of specific roles, he even went to office buildings to chat with the cleaning staff. Most of these cleaners were laid-off workers in the “40-50” bracket — people between forty and fifty years old — and they were all happy to help this hardworking young man from out of town.

With thorough preparation, Xia Lei ultimately landed a job, hired by a well-established foreign company for the position of Commercial Specialist.

The title of Commercial Specialist sounded grand — like some sort of special envoy or research officer — but in practice it was just an entry-level clerk. Described generously, it was an all-rounder; described less generously, it was someone who could be summoned and dismissed at will, a minor aide earning not much more than the receptionist. From then on, Xia Lei spent every day dealing with a pile of miscellaneous tasks: correcting errors in raw data, restoring various reports, cataloguing and registering exhibition materials, sorting and classifying the samples warehouse. He stayed late to count and file everything one by one. Foreign company computers didn’t allow QQ to be installed, so Xia Lei kept MSN running on his computer at all times, and occasionally managed to exchange a sentence or two with Xiao Dan.

Xiao Dan: Working late again?

Xia Lei: Yes, yes — a huge pile of odd jobs.

Xiao Dan: Did your new boss ask you to pick an English name?

Xia Lei: I’m old-fashioned — I’m not doing that. Oh, by the way, are you coming back to China after you graduate? There are more development opportunities here.

Xiao Dan: Haven’t decided yet. Immigration in Europe is very difficult. Oh right — how’s Xiao Man lately?

Xia Lei: Forgot to tell you — he really did go to Japan to work.

Xiao Dan: I hope the glittering world over there doesn’t change Xiao Man.

Xia Lei: Xiao Man won’t go down the wrong path — he’s kind-hearted at his core.

Xiao Dan: It’s precisely because he’s kind that he’s also guileless. That’s the thing I worry about most…

Xia Lei was the young workhorse of the office. He could never bring himself to refuse anyone’s request for help, reasonable or not. He simply couldn’t get the word “no” out of his mouth. He had been the tireless labor monitor in middle school, and he carried that habit into university and into every workplace. He was always the last to leave the office at the end of the day, so much so that his colleagues mistakenly assumed working late was his hobby.

There were a few young women in the administrative support team in the office. They always dressed beautifully, lips precisely done, touching up their makeup in the mirror after every visit to the restroom, smiling radiantly every time they saw a department manager, and going shopping at Xintiandi and Isetan every two or three days. Sometimes when their own work piled up, they would call on Xia Lei for help: “Be a dear and give us a hand, won’t you?”

“What is it now?” Xia Lei’s head throbbed.

“We’re going to aerobics after work. Could you help tabulate the receipts for us?” the young women said.

“Good heavens, you’re going to be the death of me.”

“Come on, we’ll treat you to Häagen-Dazs next time.” The young women deposited the receipts on Xia Lei’s desk, waved goodbye, and left.

Xia Lei wiped his glasses and checked his watch — another night staying until ten o’clock.

A senior female employee couldn’t stand watching this group of young women take advantage, and quietly advised Xia Lei: “In a foreign company, everyone has defined responsibilities. Helping out a little here and there is fine, but some people are offloading half their workload onto you. Have they shared half their salary with you?”

Xia Lei shook his head. All the thanks he’d received were a few scoops of ice cream — he hadn’t even been taken to a proper meal.

“You end up working overtime every day. People who understand know you’re helping others. People who don’t understand will think you’re lacking in ability and efficiency!” The senior employee spoke with genuine insight. “Besides, it’s always the people who do the most work who get the blame. The more you do, the easier it is to make mistakes. When mistakes happen, the blame falls on you — while the people who did nothing have nothing to answer for. You understand, don’t you?”

Xia Lei nodded.

“Whoever finds you as a husband will be truly fortunate,” the senior employee concluded. “It’s just a shame my daughter is still in high school.”

As the year drew to a close, the office was exceptionally busy, especially the administrative team. The young women were responsible for organizing the year-end awards banquet — the company’s grand finale for the whole year. Employees from branch offices around the country would fly in specially, all hoping to hear their names called at the awards banquet in recognition of a year’s work.

The young women had long since ordered custom-engraved trophies — a large collection of beautiful crystal glass pieces engraved with things like “Outstanding Team Award,” “Best Sales Manager Award,” “Sales Elite Award”… These crystal trophies were tokens of recognition for outstanding employees, to be presented one by one at the banquet.

On the day of the banquet, around noon, the young women begged Xia Lei to help set up the venue. As usual, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse. He set down his own work, and together they hailed a cab to the venue.

When they arrived at the hotel lobby and were waiting for the elevator, one of the young women suddenly shrieked: “Oh no! Oh no! The trophies — I left them in the trunk of the taxi!”

Xia Lei was startled. He turned and ran out of the hotel.

If there were no trophies at the awards banquet, it would be a catastrophic mistake. The young women might well all be fired on the spot. The more they thought about it, the more frightened they became, and they began crying together. Having new trophies made in time was out of the question. The only hope was to find the taxi they had just come in. But in the stream of endless traffic, who could guarantee it could be found?

Xia Lei sprinted out of the lobby and first asked the doorman which direction the taxi had gone. The doorman pointed toward the elevated highway on-ramp not far away. Without time even to say thank you, Xia Lei ran up the on-ramp and onto the Yan’an Road Elevated Expressway.

Pedestrians on the elevated highway constituted a serious traffic violation, but Xia Lei couldn’t afford to care. His figure moved against the westward-slanting sun through the river of cars, searching — and still couldn’t find that taxi. He ran with all his might, drenched in sweat, heart pounding like a drum, the honking of cars behind him forming a continuous roar.

At the next off-ramp exit, Xia Lei finally caught up with the taxi they had come in. Not caring that the sole of his shoe had split open, he threw his arms wide and flung himself onto the hood of the taxi — like a man clutching at the fleeting hand of good fortune.

“Are you trying to die?” The taxi driver was half-terrified out of his wits.

“You’re the one who should worry!” Xia Lei, exhausted as a dog, gulped several great breaths of air and slapped the hood. “Open the door — let me in!”

The taxi brought Xia Lei and the trophies back to the hotel venue, rescuing the livelihoods of those young women.

That evening, the awards banquet proceeded smoothly, every trophy finding its rightful recipient. No one except Xia Lei and the young women knew about the harrowing episode that had unfolded that afternoon. In the festivity of song and dance at the banquet, Xia Lei crouched in a corner, fiddling with the sole of his shoe that he had reattached with clear tape, murmuring to himself: Shanghai, oh Shanghai — I have given you my sweat!