Captain An and the Little VIP

The second installment of The Boys We Loved Back Then. An Yu, the 28-year-old head of the urban management team in Lianxi Town, handles sidewalk vendors with an iron fist while being driven frantic by her family’s endless matchmaking efforts. Her days are a whirlwind of bumpy rides in enforcement vehicles and her mother’s barrage of “blind-date price lists.” Then an unexpected six-year-old girl barges into her life: Chen Siyu, the daughter of the high school sweetheart An Yu gave up for adoption. The little girl turns her single-woman persona completely upside down, like a sweet bomb. “Mommy’s valuable! She can ride on a big airplane!” When the little girl marches through the streets promoting Captain An with a “First-Class Blind Date Men” price list, An Yu wants to issue herself a ticket on the spot. Amid hot pot dinners and laughter with her close friends, bank president Lin Xiaoran and insurance company manager Wen Wen, and the contrast between greasy blind-date texts and stubborn stains on her uniform, An Yu suddenly realizes that all those expectations of being “gentle and virtuous” mean far less than a pair of clumsily tied pigtails and a quiet “Mommy” in the night. Chen Siyu has upgraded the fine of An Yu’s life: not to first class, but to an irreplaceable “little VIP.” Who says life has to follow a “blind-date price list”? Her ticket book and her parenting wisdom are equally full of conviction.