Peaches and Plums Don’t Speak – Chapter 42

A Darling of the Lesbian Circle?

In early November, Xiao Yutong successfully gave birth to a baby boy weighing over six jin​¹ in the hospital. The baby was healthy. After a nurse took him away to be fed, she leaned against the headboard and wiped away tears, not yet having fully recovered her strength.

Although the rest of the Yan family was also a little disappointed, the arrival of a newborn was still a joyous occasion. After all, as Auntie Xin’s catchphrase went: “Never mind having kids, those younger ones don’t even know where to find a spouse!”

            

Auntie Xin gently coaxed her, “You can’t cry, you can’t cry. You’re in your postpartum confinement!”​²

“It’s fine, it’s fine. In the future, your son will marry a wife for you, and that will count as having a daughter,” Auntie Xin continued to console her.

Xiao Yutong was on the verge of tears. “How is that the same? ‘A son forgets his mother once he marries a wife’—that’s an immutable truth since ancient times.”

            

Yan Yidong stood stiffly to the side, clumsy with words and unsure how to comfort his wife. They had all thought it would be a girl. All the baby supplies they’d bought were for a baby girl; they had even painted the walls of the new nursery a gentle pink.

He had just been about to say, “A boy is great, too…”

Xiao Yutong shot him a resentful glare. “This is all your fault!”

            

The younger siblings watched their First Brother get shut down and stifled their laughter.

Yan Yidong: “…”

Forget it. I’ll just shut up.

            

Since their First Brother wasn’t talking, the younger ones didn’t know what to say either and began making excuses to leave.

“Just rest here for a few days, and then we’ll transfer to the Postpartum Care Center. I’ll go home first to get the baby’s clothes…”

Xiao Yutong wore an expression of someone with nothing left to live for. “You don’t need to get anything new. Just grab the clothes Da Pang and Xiao Pang wore when they were little…”

            

In the Yan family, girls were far more precious than boys. When Anzhi found out about this later, she couldn’t help but find it amusing.

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Beishi TV’s newly planned cultural program series began broadcasting during the National Day holiday. Leading the lineup was a poetry program—《Poetry Conference》. It featured an innovative competition format with a cumulative scoring system and invited university professors and cultural celebrities to serve as judges.

After three episodes, the viewership ratings were decent, but it made no splash online. Although the higher-ups nodded in approval, the team, having meticulously prepared for over two months, couldn’t help but feel a bit deflated.

            

Beicheng wasn’t like Shuicheng and Jiangcheng, the two major hubs for variety show television stations. They were adept at drawing from Korean, European, and American experiences—buying copyrights, hyping up memes, and hiring popular celebrities. As a result, their ratings were always booming and breaking records.

This program, however, was original. There was nothing wrong with the format, and the contestants were people from all walks of life who loved culture. From on-stage to behind-the-scenes, every single part was solid. Moreover, it aired during prime time. Yet, with no buzz online, it just couldn’t take off.

This situation took a turn thanks to a chance occurrence.

            

One day, a long post appeared on Weibo: “Wow! This Beishi TV show is interesting. It’s hosted by two queenly sisters, and I’m actually sensing some baihe vibes.”​³

Co-hosting with Yan Xi was Lin Wei, who had joined the station two years before her. She was about the same height as Yan Xi and had previously been with the Children’s Channel. She didn’t have a professional background and had gone through many twists and turns before finally managing to transfer to the Variety Channel.

She had a glamorous beauty and a soft, charming voice. For the first episode, she wore a red qipao that accentuated her curvaceous figure. Despite her light makeup, she looked captivating whether she was pouting or smiling. Yan Xi, on the other hand, wore a two-piece, modern-style white qipao with exquisite frog fasteners and a single ink-wash lotus painted on the skirt. Just standing there, she was like “the one on the side of the water” from the poem.​⁴

            

The cover image for the long Weibo post was a picture of them standing side-by-side, one in red and one in white, smiling at the camera.

The post included many screenshots of them. The show’s flow followed the competition format, with the two taking turns announcing topics, checking answers, and asking the judges for explanations. Occasionally, they would have small interactions, cracking pre-scripted jokes. But when captured in GIFs, the two stunningly beautiful women—one alluring, the other ethereal—exchanging glances and laughing together, really did seem somewhat ambiguous.

The original poster’s wording, in particular, kept steering things in an ambiguous direction, even bringing up the “red and white roses” trope.​⁵ They stopped just short of writing a soul-stirring baihe epic. The post ended by holding up a few words high: “Baihe is the one true way!”

            

This Weibo post was published at eleven in the morning and had only a handful of shares by five in the afternoon. But around seven in the evening, a Big V​⁶ reposted it, then several more Big Vs followed suit, drawing everyone’s attention. Some of the girls who were into baihe discovered it, and the number of shares immediately multiplied.

They were almost all “screen-lickers.”​⁷

Unexpectedly, the show’s online clicks for that week surged, and the television ratings also saw a small increase. The show was well-produced to begin with, and it piqued the interest of many young people. As youths who grew up under an exam-oriented education system, who among them couldn’t recite a few lines of ancient poetry? Coupled with a growing resistance to “foreign” variety shows in recent years, they appreciated this program even more. Competition-style variety shows have an advantage: once you get invested, especially when you’re answering questions and competing alongside the contestants, you get a sense of immersive participation.

            

A storm of grassroots fans​⁸ began brewing online. The show subsequently became more and more popular, earning high praise.

Only then did the team truly breathe a sigh of relief, feeling their great ambitions had been fulfilled.

It turned out this promotional idea had come from Liao Chengyu. He had friends who ran new media operations, mostly doing promotions for celebrities, and they were very familiar with these kinds of hype tactics. It was just that Beishi TV had always held itself aloof in the past, and even its promotions were slogan-heavy and overly official. This time, Liao Chengyu had taken an unconventional path, and the results were a pleasant surprise. The Chief Director gave his approval. On one hand, they strengthened the usual official promotions, targeting schools. On the other hand, they targeted the young audience’s “moe points” online, intentionally or unintentionally fanning the flames.

            

When did Yan Xi realize she was getting a little famous? It was the day she came out of a shopping mall and a few young girls, who had been sneaking glances at her, couldn’t resist coming forward. “Yan Xi-xiaojiejie,​⁹ can we have your autograph?”

Yan Xi: ????

Xiaojiejie?

            

Liu Yiyi laughed over the phone. “Congratulations, Xiao Wu. You’ve become the newest goddess of the lesbian circle.”​¹⁰

Yan Xi: ????

She searched on Weibo. First, she was baffled. Then, she shook her head and laughed.

            

She asked Liao Chengyu, “Is this really okay?”

Liao Chengyu said with a smile, “It’s just a promotional tactic.”

Yan Xi felt a little uncomfortable deep down. She had also discovered that someone on Weibo seemed to be writing fanfiction​¹¹ about them. It felt like things were escalating. How could those perfectly normal on-screen interactions be interpreted this way in other people’s eyes?

            

And in reality, her relationship with the other host, Lin Wei, was just average. They were merely on nodding terms, the type to chat about the weather or clothes. The thought that a group of people online were fantasizing about their relationship made Yan Xi feel both awkward and repulsed.

Unlike Yan Xi, however, Lin Wei seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the situation. She even verified her own Weibo account under her real name. One day, she posted a selfie from the dressing room. In the photo, she was winking, sticking her tongue out, and smiling at the camera, while Yan Xi could be seen getting her makeup done in a corner of the background.

She even copied the phrase a certain celebrity couple used when they went public with their relationship: “Us.”

            

In a single day, it was reposted over fifty thousand times. The comments below were filled with messages like: “Baihe is the one true way!”, “Officially stamped! Xiaojiejie is the best!”, and “Ahhhhhh!” Aside from the niche circle that was shipping them, other Big Vs were just joining in on the fun and teasing.

Yan Xi suppressed her displeasure and pretended not to know.

What made things even more wonderful was when Lin Wei said to her in private, “Hey, Yan Xi, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not interested in women…”

            

Yan Xi glanced at her and said flatly, “I’m not interested in women either.”

“Oh?” Lin Wei took out a compact mirror to check her makeup and smiled. “It’s fine. I just think it’s a little incredible that a girl as beautiful as you is still single… Pfft, what kind of society are we in now… If you really were gay, it’d be no big deal… I really have no problem with homosexuals…”

A hint of coldness touched Yan Xi’s expression.

            

From the time she was partnered with her, the good-natured Zhou-jiejie had quietly told her that Lin Wei’s reputation at the station was strange. She was a completely different person in front of men and women. She didn’t have a professional background to begin with and had supposedly pulled some strings to get in. At first, she was just doing odd jobs. Later, with her sweet-talking, she found a mentor who treated her like a little sister, guiding her step-by-step, even helping her correct her pronunciation and practice her diction.

But she repaid kindness with enmity, getting involved in an ambiguous relationship with her mentor’s husband.

It was unclear what tricks she used, but the couple fought so intensely they nearly broke up. Yet she acted like a little white flower,​¹² crying about how wronged she was. She claimed it was the mentor’s husband who pursued her, and that she didn’t dare expose or accept him out of respect for her mentor. By striking first, she made the whole situation murky and confusing, with everyone sticking to their own version of the story.

            

In the end, nothing happened to her, but her mentor, disheartened, got a divorce and resigned.

Zhou-jiejie wasn’t one to gossip. She only gave Yan Xi a few words of warning because they had a good relationship. But from her words, Yan Xi guessed the real story was probably even more dramatic than she let on.

Having been forewarned by Zhou-jiejie, Yan Xi kept her guard up. Lin Wei was a smooth and slick operator. She was beautiful, knew she was beautiful, and was adept at using her beauty. You could hear her laughter from a distance before she even arrived, and she was on good terms with all the male colleagues on the team.

            

The female colleagues on the team couldn’t stand it and secretly told Yan Xi, “I don’t know what’s going on, but the director is cutting to her shot way too often. Some of those should clearly be yours.”

Yan Xi could tolerate all of that, but she couldn’t stand listening to her passive-aggressive words.​¹³ She retorted, “If you truly had no problem with homosexuals, you wouldn’t bring it up at all. Because it’s really none of your business.”

After speaking, she turned and walked away.

            

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