How did hiring someone to press a pig image during Chinese New Year become a top trend?

His steps faltered.

The feeling of six pairs of eyes staring at him made his back tense slightly. This was a lingering social anxiety reaction, but it was different from the stiffness he felt three months ago. Now, he only tensed up for a moment and then relaxed.

"Whose kid are you? I've never seen you before." The speaker was the oldest man, wearing a gray baseball cap. Under the brim was a face full of wrinkles, with small but bright eyes.

"If you're just passing by, come in and take a break."

"You're just passing by? Then sit over there on the dam, it's hot here."

Xu An didn't walk that way. He went to the table and glanced at the cell phone in the hand of the old lady closest to him.

The WeChat video call interface was open on the screen, but the old lady's finger hovered above the screen, hesitant to press it. Her finger was trembling slightly, not from cold or illness, but from the tension of being afraid of pressing the wrong button.

"Grandma, would you like to make a video call?"

The old lady looked up at him.

This old lady was different from the others we'd met on the street. Her expression showed neither weariness nor restraint, but pure anxiety, much like a child scratching their head in frustration because they couldn't answer a test.

"Oh, it's this video and that video. My daughter got me a new phone last month, saying it was better than the old one. But now I can't even make calls. I could dial with my eyes closed with the old button phone, but this one with all the swipes makes me dizzy."

An elderly woman in a floral shirt next to her chimed in.

"Her daughter has been working in Shenzhen for five years and hasn't come back. She had a baby but hasn't even seen the baby's face yet. She just wants to see the baby one last time."

The chat in the live stream started moving.

"Here we go again, An Shen is going to get bogged down in everyday matters."

"There are really not many people with the patience to teach the elderly how to use a mobile phone. When you tell an elderly person to open WeChat, they ask you what WeChat looks like. If you say the green one, they will say, 'Which green one? I have three green ones on my phone.'"

"To be honest, I almost got internal injuries from anger when I was teaching my mom how to use a mobile phone, let alone teaching an elderly person who has absolutely no experience with it."

Xu An pulled up a plastic stool next to the long table and sat down.

He pointed to the green dial button on the old lady's screen.

"Grandma, do you see this green circle?"

"Green? Which green one?"

"The biggest one right in the center of the screen, with a telephone icon on it."

The old lady held the phone about five centimeters from her eyes and squinted for three seconds.

"Oh, this? You can see people by pressing this?"

"Yes, but you need to choose who you want to call first. Is your daughter's WeChat in your contacts?"

The old lady looked blank for a moment.

Which contact list are you referring to?

Xu An took a deep breath.

He took the phone and started teaching from the most basic steps.

He repeated each step at least three times, from how to unlock the screen to how to find the WeChat icon, from how to enter the contacts to how to find his daughter's name. Each time, he used the simplest language, saying "press" instead of "click", "pull up" instead of "swipe", and "press the triangle in the bottom left corner" instead of "go back to the previous page".

The old lady learned extremely diligently but also forgot extremely quickly. She had just been taught how to find her contacts when she forgot how to unlock her screen, and after being taught how to unlock it, she forgot what the WeChat icon looked like.

Five elderly people gathered around to watch, craning their necks, their faces showing the same tension as if they were watching a surgery.

The number of viewers in the live stream quietly climbed to over four hundred.

"I admire An Shen's patience. He taught me five times and never got impatient once."

"Have you noticed that when teaching calming the mind, you don't use words but directly press your fingers on the area so that she can feel the location? This method is a hundred times more effective than verbal descriptions."

"To be honest, seeing this scene reminded me of my grandma. She never learned how to use video calls before she passed away. The year she died, I still had more than a dozen voice messages she sent me on my phone. Every single one started with 'Grandson, how did you teach me to do that?' but I've forgotten."

After teaching her for the seventh time, the old lady finally pieced together the whole process.

With her age-spotted index finger, she shakily opened WeChat, found her contacts, scrolled to the word "Yatou" (丫头), entered the contact, and then clicked the video call button.

An animation of a call appeared on the screen, with green ripples spreading outwards in concentric circles.

The whole room fell silent.

All six elderly people stopped what they were doing.

The electric fan was humming.

Five seconds.

ten seconds.

Fifteen seconds.

The old lady's fingers started to turn white; she was gripping the phone too tightly.

Twenty seconds.

Xu An's heart also tightened a little.

At 23 seconds, the screen flickered and then suddenly lit up.

A young woman's face appeared on the screen. The background was a noisy workshop. The lighting was not good, but her features were still visible. She looked to be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. Her hair was wrapped in a net bag, revealing stray hairs on her forehead. Her lips were chapped and there were fine lines at the corners of her eyes, but her eyes were bright.

"Feed? Mom? Mom, how did you learn to make videos?"

The old woman stared at the face on the screen, her lips trembling slightly.

Then she spoke.

The first sentence.

"You brat, you've gotten fat again."

The live stream chat exploded.

"Hahahaha, the first thing a Chinese mother says will never disappoint you."

"After five years of waiting, I finally saw my daughter's face. The first thing she said wasn't 'I missed you,' but 'You've gained weight.' That's the subtlety of a Chinese old lady."

"Why did my eyes suddenly well up with tears while I was laughing?"

"Look, the old lady's hands are trembling, but her voice isn't; she's holding it in."

The woman on the other side of the screen paused for a second, then her nose turned red.

"Mom, please stop scolding me. I work overtime every day and eat in the cafeteria, how can I not gain weight?"

"Have you finished eating? Is the food in the cafeteria good?"

"Delicious, delicious!"

"You're lying, you've never liked eating in the cafeteria since you were a child."

The woman wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and then smiled.

"Mom, is the baby over there? Let him see Grandma."

The old lady then seemed to remember something and quickly called out. The old lady in the floral shirt next to her hurriedly ran out and came back in half a minute later carrying a little boy who was a little over two years old.

The old lady turned her phone upside down and pointed it at the child.

"Girl, look how big your son has grown. He just learned to call me 'Grandma' last month."

When the woman on the screen saw the child's face, she covered her mouth but couldn't stop her voice. She cried, cried loudly but quietly. The sound of the machines in the workshop drowned out most of the noise; only her shoulders could be seen shaking.

The little boy looked at the unfamiliar face on the phone screen, tilted his head, and then reached out to touch the screen.

"Mother."

The child's voice was not loud but clear.

The eyes of the six elderly people in the room reddened at the same time.

Xu An stood up and took two steps back, giving the scene to the old lady and the child.

The live stream chat was flooded with comments, so fast that it was almost impossible to read the individual messages, but the keywords kept appearing: tearful, emotionally overwhelmed, call mom.

After the first video call, the old lady's hand was still trembling as she held the phone. She carefully placed the phone on the table, wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, and then turned to look at Xu An.

"Young man, could you teach them too?"

Xu An glanced at the other five old men.

All five of them stared at him intently, their eyes filled with anticipation, nervousness, and a little bit of embarrassment.

"middle."

For the next hour and a half, Xu An taught them one by one.

The second one was the old man in the baseball cap. His cell phone was the oldest one, with a crack in the upper right corner of the screen, which was taped back together with transparent tape. He was going to call his son who was building the railway in Xinjiang.

After dialing, the other end rang six times before answering. A dark-skinned, square-faced man appeared on the screen, with the Gobi Desert sky and a section of steel rail behind him.

The old man grinned at the screen.

"You son of a bitch, do you even know you haven't called home in three years?"

The man's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Dad, the signal is bad at the construction site."

"Bullshit, if your signal was bad, how come you got through now?"

The man lowered his head and remained silent.

The old man stared at the screen for about ten seconds, then his voice suddenly dropped.

"Fine, I won't scold you anymore. Turn your face to the left so I can see if that scar on your face has healed."

Someone said something in the live stream, and the comments scrolled by very slowly.

"Chinese fathers only start to feel sorry for their children after they've finished scolding them."

The third elderly woman dialed her niece's number in Guangzhou. The niece was cooking, the spatula clattering loudly. When the video call connected, the niece was surprised at first, then laughed, saying, "Auntie, how did you learn this?" The elderly woman replied, "A young man passing by taught me." The niece said, "Then thank him for me." The elderly woman said, "Thank him yourself," and then turned the phone upside down, pointing it at Xu An.

Xu An's face suddenly appeared on someone else's screen. He was stunned for a moment, and before he could even smile, the other person took a screenshot.

"An Shen's expression was so classic, that clear bewilderment when someone suddenly shoves a close-up shot in the face."

"He still has lingering social anxiety, but he didn't shy away from it, which is progress."

The fourth was an old man who was so thin he was almost unrecognizable; his phone only had one number saved in his contacts.

No one answered after I dialed.

No one answered the second time.

No one answered the third time.

The old man placed his phone on the table, his expression unchanged, except that the corners of his mouth drooped slightly.

"Never mind, I'm probably busy."

Xu An did not ask who the number belonged to.

The old lady in the floral shirt next to me said something quietly.

"That's his son's number. It was disconnected five years ago, but he didn't believe it. He's been topping up his phone with 30 yuan every month just to call that one number."

The live stream was silent for several seconds.

"My phone was disconnected five years ago, but I'm still topping up my phone credit every month."

"He knew he couldn't get through, but he just wanted to call. He felt that the number was still there, and as long as the number was there, the person was there."

"I'm fine, I just got some sand in my eyes."

The fifth elderly woman called her husband, who drove a taxi in Chengdu. After the call connected, neither of them spoke to the screen; they just stared at each other for a full thirty seconds. Then the elderly woman said, "Your hair has turned so much whiter." Her husband replied, "You have too."

The sixth one was the youngest, in his early sixties, wearing a gray short-sleeved shirt, and sat in the corner without saying much.

When it was her turn, she handed the phone to Xu An.

"Young man, could you check if this number is still reachable?"

Xu An glanced at the number on the screen. The area code was local, but the number format was the old seven-digit number, which had been manually padded with three zeros to make it eleven digits.

"Mother-in-law, this number format is incorrect; it might not work."

"Press the button even if you can't get through."

Xu An pressed the button.

After three beeps, a mechanical female voice came through: "The number you dialed is not in service. Please verify and dial again."

The old lady nodded, as if she had known this outcome all along.

"He left this number when he left in 2012, saying he would call back when he got back. I've had it saved for fourteen years and it's always been a dead number, but what if it gets back someday?"

Xu An paused for a moment on the edge of the phone.

2012. Fourteen years have passed since I last returned. I saved a dead number.

He remembered the bowl of white rice by the roadside.

"Grandma, if you want to find him, you can go to the police station to register."

The old lady shook her head.

"I tried to log in, but they couldn't find it. I went back again and they said this person had no travel records or employment registration. It's like they've vanished into thin air."

She took a neatly folded photo out of her pocket and spread it on the table.

The photo was an old-fashioned one-inch color photo that had yellowed. It showed a man in his thirties standing under a tree, smiling, wearing a dark blue jacket and a bag slung across his right shoulder.