The story opens with a flashback to a time when the protagonist, a thirty-year-old man, was a bachelor. He had lost his ring, his finger, his cot, and his cigarette, but he had not lost his purpose in life. He was now a woodcraft instructor, and he had bought a "hello" , a greeting card, and was looking for a quiet place to have dinner with a group of other people. He asked one of the instructors if he could have dinner together, and the instructor agreed. The protagonist then asks the instructor if there was anything he was not satisfied with, and if it would be okay for him to switch to Zhenhua. The instructor says that he would leave the protagonist to his own devices, and that he will see the protagonist again sometime. He asks the protagonist if there is anything he would like to change about Zhenhua, but the protagonist says that there is nothing he is not dissatisfied with. He then asks if it is okay to switch Zhenhua to him. The narrator says that it is, but that he does not want to see him off. He tells the protagonist that he has to clean up the apartment and that the little fei that came back to China to make up for Fu yicheng has already been "pretty messed up" . The