I came from the countryside, and everyone in the village knew that my family had been farmers for generations, and there were few educated people. My aunt who lived next door had gone to school for a few days, married well, and always spoke in a superior manner, and would make fun of us from time to time.

My father was a tough guy who could not stand such grievances. He wanted me to be successful, so he looked through the dictionary and named me "Peng", hoping that I would have a long and bright future. As far as I can remember, the only communication between him and me was sticks and grades.

Under his stick, I finally became one of the few college students in the village. On the day I received the admission letter, my father snatched the letter from my hand and went to the village to tell everyone. On the contrary, I didn't feel anything because I was actually admitted. I was secretly happy that I would not have to be beaten by my father in the future.

Although my father and I were incompatible, we also had many similarities - we were both stubborn and arrogant. After graduating from college, I had a different vision and naturally different pursuits. I wanted to go to a bigger place and make a name for myself. So I quit after working for a year, found a job in Shanghai online, and bought a train ticket to Shanghai with 1,200 yuan in my pocket.

My father didn't understand. He probably thought it would be embarrassing for a country kid like me if I couldn't make it in the big city, so he picked up a stick and wanted to beat me that day.

That day, he didn't catch up with me. I fled to the train station overnight and sat on a bench in the waiting hall all night.

 

That summer was terrible. It was only after leaving the mountainous area of ​​Shennongjia that I saw the "flat land" on the plains of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai for the first time.

The day I arrived in Shanghai, it happened to be the morning rush hour. The main road in front of the train station was jammed with cars. I had never seen such a wide road, so many cars, and even more so many people.

Having never seen such a scene before, I became a floating duckweed in the crowd and came to the clock tower of the station. While taking a break, my attention was attracted by the advertisement on the electronic display on the clock tower. It was a Mercedes-Benz advertisement. Apart from the logo, I knew nothing about luxury cars, but I was fascinated. Looking at the obviously expensive luxury cars in the advertisement and the towering city skyline in the distance, I became more confused about my future, but more determined about my goal.

The company that generously hired me was a stock software company in Jing'an District.

The company posted a job advertisement for a sales position online, with the minimum salary being 6,000, which was much better than my previous job. I was a little nervous when filling out my personal information online, but I didn't feel relieved until I received a call from the company's HR department saying that they had decided to hire me.

When I arrived at the company, I was obviously a little embarrassed after going through the Shanghai train station and subway. The company's front desk mistook me for a salesman and almost kicked me out. After I explained my purpose, the lady at the front desk smiled awkwardly and then called the HR department: "Xiaoxiao, come and pick up the new person."

Xiaoxiao was a tall, thin, and beautiful girl. She walked with a breeze, and the wind carried the sweet fragrance of flowers. I didn't dare to look at her directly, but just glanced at her out of the corner of my eye - she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

"Why don't you call me Brother Jia?" Xiaoxiao was a little angry.

"I can't call you." The lady at the front desk was very straightforward.

"You're just causing trouble for me." Xiaoxiao complained and turned to look at me: "Newcomer, what's your name?"

"Ah?" I was still in a daze. "Yes, yes, I'm a newcomer, my name is Xu Peng."

"follow me."

The company's office was very noisy, with people either working together or on the phone, looking very prosperous. The corridor in the office was extremely narrow, only wide enough for one person to pass through. The desk was piled with client materials and what seemed to be flyers prepared for an event.

Xiaoxiao was very capable and it took her less than ten minutes to complete the onboarding process. She told me that she had only been employed a few days earlier than me, but she was still my senior. I didn't know whether I should admire her outstanding ability or the efficiency of an international metropolis.

After a simple handover, Xiaoxiao pointed to a big brother in the corner and said, "That's Brother Jia. From today on, you follow him and he will make arrangements for you."

I felt a little disappointed after hearing this. I thought Xiaoxiao would accompany me the whole time, but I didn't expect that she would hand me over to a big man.

Brother Jia was in his early thirties. Although he looked calm and sophisticated, he was wearing a cheap suit. No matter how you looked at him, he didn't fit in with the high-end temperament of a stock software company. He was also a capable person. Without saying anything, he led me to a dilapidated area. In front of a room, he stuffed a bunch of keys in my hand. The keys corresponded to the iron door downstairs, the door to the house, and the wooden door of the dormitory. They were all the same style provided by street stalls, and you had to rely on the shape of the keys to distinguish them.

"The house has two bedrooms and a living room, four people in one room, eight people living in it. The conditions are like this. If you want to live a better life in Shanghai, you have to work hard. If you don't work hard, you can't blame anyone if you can't climb up." Brother Jia said without any politeness, "I'll wait for you at the company at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. If you are late, get out."

Then Brother Jia left me and went back to the company alone.

I tried all the keys that Brother Jia gave me before I could open the door of my own dormitory. The smell of sweat and mildew in the room was a mixture that made me feel a little sick. Fortunately, there was an old-fashioned wooden-framed glass window. Although I lost privacy from the residents across the street, it at least solved the ventilation problem.

Although the experience of this day was somewhat turbulent, it allowed me to see the prosperity that I could not have imagined in the first half of my life. That night, I lay on the stiff bed and figured out a truth: Shanghai does not support idle people, and if you do not advance here, you will retreat.

 

The first day of work was not glamorous.

In order not to be late, I rushed to the subway station without eating breakfast. Even so, I was even more embarrassed than yesterday when I rushed to the company. Brother Jia didn't say anything when he saw my appearance. He threw me a stack of flyers and took me into the subway station. He showed me the essential skills of a real Shanghai drifter: being able to get in and out of the subway without messing up your clothes.

We carried a large pile of flyers, took several subways, and arrived at a vegetable market in a corner of the city. The vegetable market was very old-fashioned, with cement countertops and rusty crossbars, which were obviously left over from the 1990s. In addition to the aunties buying vegetables, there were also hawkers hawking their wares. I couldn't understand a word of the Shanghainese spoken on the street.

I looked at the flyers printed with the advertisements for stock trading software in my hand, and thought that these flyers would not be welcomed by the uncles and aunts in the vegetable market. But the task went surprisingly smoothly, and the uncles and aunts were particularly interested in stock trading. Brother Jia said: Most of China's stock investors are in Shanghai, and most of Shanghai's stock investors are uncles and aunts.

I was surprised, big cities are just different.

I barely finished the task of distributing flyers very late. When I returned to the company, it was already getting dark. Although I was exhausted, I could still feel the excitement brought by the high-intensity work.

In the company, my colleagues had not left work yet and were still crowded in the conference room for class. The content of the course was related to the software we sold, and of course it was also accompanied by a lot of stock-related common sense. Brother Jia and I were arranged in a corner because we were late, and we could only barely take notes on our thighs.

The big screen in the conference room displayed "Today's A-share index: 2029". The big screen was obviously old and flickered from time to time. Every time it flickered, I would inadvertently look up, and when I looked up, I could just see Xiaoxiao's profile. No matter what the reason was, I found it difficult to concentrate.

"What do you think the market will be like tomorrow?"

"It has to fall..."

"How to say?"

"Look, it went up yesterday, it went up again today, and it will most likely go down tomorrow."

After the meeting, my colleagues were talking nonsense about the numbers displayed on the big screen. Whether it was to fit in with my colleagues or to have some fun in my high-pressure life, I also joined their predictions:

“I think it will go up.”

"Why?" My colleagues were silent, expecting me to give a well-reasoned analysis.

"Hmm... intuition?"

That day was September 25, 2012. It was the first time I knew what K-line was, the first time I looked at market trends, and the first time I made a prediction.

 

For three days, my predictions were very accurate and in the opposite direction. I was not convinced, but I became very interested in the market trend.

My colleagues don't care about my forecasts, they don't even care about their own forecasts. For us sales people, it's just a string of numbers, and our discussion of the index is as irrelevant as the elders in my hometown discussing the situation in the Middle East.

During these three days, the company invested a lot of manpower and material resources to hold a lecture, and invited an "internationally renowned economics professor" to participate.

Because the content of the flyers became a lecture promotion, the task of distributing them became much easier. In the most conspicuous place on the flyers, it was clearly printed that "participants can receive 10 eggs for free." Because of this, the time we spent distributing flyers every day was reduced by half. When I was young, I thought the company had done something stupid: these people were here to make money, so how could we give them a bargain?

Brother Jia scoffed at my idea: "What do you know? This is called marketing. Don't look at these old men and women who are stingy, they are very rich! As long as one out of a hundred people is willing to buy our software, the cost of eggs will not be a problem!"

What he said makes a lot of sense.

On the day of the event, all the people who came to attend the lecture were old men and women. As Jia said, among the Chinese stock investors, the proportion of old men and women is not low. The old men and women who came to listen to the lecture were not here for eggs as I guessed. Instead, from their communication, I could hear that they were all veterans in stock trading for many years.

Before the lecture started, we salesmen were busy delivering water and eggs to them. What was particularly crucial was that we needed to ask for their contact information so that we could develop them into our customers in the future.

When the professor came on stage, the whole audience burst into warm applause. He was very stylish, with deep and wise eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses, and he walked with a swift and steady pace, without any signs of old age. But what I noticed most was that his suit was more expensive than ours.

The professor's first words were very obscure and I didn't quite understand them. But the audience seemed to agree with what the professor said, and I was once again refreshed by the Shanghai grandpa and aunt. The second half of the course included content I had recently learned, and coupled with the professor's unique charm when he lectured, I couldn't help but put down my work and listen.

The climax of the lecture was to analyze the stock trend of Huadian International through our company's software. The professor pointed at the big screen with a laser pen, and his words were full of learning charm:

"Look, this is the latest K-line of Huadian International. According to our company's software analysis, the stock showed a buy signal on June 5 and a sell signal on July 25. The highest profit point in more than a month is 100%. It is definitely impossible for us to achieve such a high return by operating on our own, but if you use software to assist in trading, even if the deviation in buying and selling time is taken into account, you can still make a profit of 80%. Times have changed, and software is the future of the stock market..."

The professor’s lecture was very fascinating. I was deeply shocked by the performance of the software and started chatting with Brother Jia who was sitting next to me.

"Do you believe it?" Brother Jia looked at me with eyes that showed concern for the mentally retarded.

"Shouldn't I believe it..."

"Ah."

"But the professor said..."

"What professor?" Jia Ge sneered, "He's just an actor who was paid to perform."

Looking at the "professor" who was talking nonstop on the stage, the cheap suits of my colleagues, and the eggs in the hands of my customers, I suddenly understood a lot. The eyes of the uncles and aunts in the venue became more and more hot. Thinking of the way Jia Ge looked at me and the flyers I had recently distributed, my conscience slapped myself hard.

He slapped me so hard that the palm print is still there.

 

On the sixth day after joining the company, it was cloudy with light rain.

After lunch, I looked around the company and found that Xiaoxiao and I were the only ones who hadn't eaten yet. I had hardly spoken to her since the day I started working. After what happened at the lecture, I had a lot of things to say to someone, and at this moment, I thought she was the only one I could say them to.

"Xiaoxiao, would you like to have lunch together?"

She checked the time first, then looked up at me: "What's up?"

"I guess so. How about the clay pot meal downstairs?"

Xiaoxiao was very perceptive and could tell at a glance that I was worried about something other than personal matters. I'm sure a colleague had invited her to dinner before and even confessed his feelings to her. She didn't think I had bad intentions, probably because a clay pot meal was obviously not a place for romance.

Downstairs in the company, we happened to meet other colleagues who were returning from lunch. There were many hungry wolves in the company who coveted her, and a few of them were there. Seeing her and me, a nobody, together, my colleagues started to talk about her without even saying hello.

Xiaoxiao didn't care at all, she walked past her colleagues with her head held high, still walking with the wind, and the fragrance still floated in the wind.

After the peak period of lunch, the number of people at Clay Pot Restaurant was obviously reduced, and it was rare to find a table where we could sit opposite each other during lunch. The boss, who had just experienced the peak period of lunch, looked a little tired and seemed absent-minded when taking our order. Fortunately, the speed of serving the food was the same as before, and we didn't have to wait too long as we were hungry.

"Tell me, what's wrong?" she spoke first.

“We have a problem at our company.”

"What do you think."

"Look," I lowered my voice, "I did go to the event two days ago to hand out flyers. The places where flyers were distributed were all places where the elderly gather, such as vegetable markets. If it was a real stock prediction software, why didn't they go to the Shanghai Stock Exchange?"

"Yeah, that's right." She thought of something, "Go on."

"Also, Brother Jia told me yesterday that the professor giving the lecture was a paid actor."

She stopped eating with her chopsticks, looked at me for a while with her thoughts racing, and then put the chopsticks aside: "I have my doubts too."

"What's the doubt?"

"Although I've only been here for a short time, I'm also in the Human Resources Department." Her voice was not loud. "Have you seen our company's labor contract?"

I shook my head.

"It's not just the labor contract," she continued. "The company doesn't even mention the five social insurances and one housing fund. I secretly looked at the payroll last month, and everyone actually only received about 2,500 yuan."

Two newcomers, even if they lack experience, are not fools. She and I combined the information we knew, analyzed some details in the work, and came to a conclusion: this is a shell company that sells fake software to deceive the elderly.

"I'm quitting tomorrow." I made the decision on the spot.

"I can't stay in this company anymore," she said with certainty, "I will quit tomorrow too."

That afternoon, I stared at the clock in the office, feeling uneasy. I came to the big city with great expectations, but my first job was to scam the elderly.

The word "idiot" is clearly written on my face.

The evening classes continued as usual. Xiaoxiao and I, two new people who were determined to resign, sat in a corner and secretly wrote our resignation reports. The strange looks from my colleagues made me feel uncomfortable. Xiaoxiao didn't care, rolled her eyes at me, and continued to write quickly.

After class, I finally got rid of a group of gossiping colleagues and stayed alone in the conference room, lost in thought. Looking at the day's index displayed on the big screen, I made another self-deprecating prediction of the market.

The next day, Xiaoxiao and I submitted our resignation reports together. The HR looked at our resignation reports and didn't say anything else, just asking when we would move out of the dormitory. We both got out of the company smoothly, but unfortunately, in order to get out as quickly as possible, we didn't dare to ask for a penny of the salary we worked hard for a week.

The first week of my struggle in Shanghai is over. I lost my job and gained a friend. Life in a big city doesn't seem as easy as I thought...

And my last prediction at the company finally came true.