On the Xiaohua Lantern

In the autumn of 2021, Shanghai has seemingly recovered from the shadow of the epidemic, office buildings are crowded again, and the capital market is still talking about growth, digitalization and new opportunities. On the eve of his forties, Yuan Xiaohua became one of the youngest senior partners of Jincheng Consulting. She comes from an ordinary background and has no outstanding academic qualifications. With twelve years of work and almost strict self-discipline, she has gradually entered the urban elite. However, on the day the promotion notice was released, the team she had trained for many years had been taken away in advance, and the company handed her a state-owned enterprise digital transformation project that was full of internal conflicts and almost impossible to implement. Yuan Xiaohua soon realized that this promotion was not entirely a reward. If the project succeeds, the credit belongs to the company's strategic judgment; if the project fails, she will become the best victim to prove that "unconventional promotions are too aggressive". She still won the project with her professional skills. After returning home, her husband He Shengshu calmly analyzed the workplace situation for her as he had done for the past eight years and reminded her not to trust anyone in the company. He Shengshu is the vice president of an investment bank. He is gentle, restrained and respectful of her career. He is the most suitable husband for her in everyone's eyes. That night, Yuan Xiaohua received six photos from an unknown number. In the photo, He Shengshu behaves intimately with a young man. Yuan Xiaohua did not question him on the spot, but saved the photos, backed up evidence, checked the shooting information, and began a secret investigation. She gradually discovered that the marital boundaries she had understood as "respect" for many years might just be a safe distance established by her husband to maintain the appearance of marriage. At the same time, a young intern named James was assigned to her project team. Dr. James is studying and was a former sports student. He is smart and sharp, but he is not familiar with the power rules of consulting companies. Because he refused to modify a set of problematic data as required by his superiors, he was returned by the original project team. Yuan Xiaohua initially chose him because he had a clean background and was not involved in the company's internal factions, but James soon discovered an anomaly in the project data: Guoxin Group's digital transformation was not just a management consulting project. It was vaguely related to the IPO project in which He Shengshu participated, some supplier relationships, and the dismissal of personnel within Jincheng. As the investigation deepened, Yuan Xiaohua discovered that the young man in the photo was named Lu. Lu is not just a third party. He met He Shengshu when he was at his most vulnerable, and their relationship was based on desire, dependence, control and fantasy of salvation. Lu suffered serious injuries and was implicitly excluded during the job search process for calling the police and defending his rights. While He Shengshu tried to protect him, he was still unwilling to give up the security brought by marriage, career and social status. Yuan Xiaohua therefore entered a complicated situation. She was not only a victim who was deceived into marriage, but also gradually realized that Lu was also trapped in the order established by He Shengshu. She was unwilling to reduce everything to an ethical struggle between wives, husbands and lovers, but began to ask: In a society that attaches great importance to marital dignity, career history and family integrity, who is bearing the cost of concealing their identity? The workplace crisis also continues to expand. On the surface, Li Mo, a partner of Jincheng, continued to help Yuan Xiaohua, but in fact, he gradually weakened her team through secondments, project assignments and division of responsibilities. As economic expectations changed, the growth of the consulting industry began to slow down, client budgets tightened, and internal contradictions that could have been concealed by expansion were quickly exposed. What partners are competing for is no longer just better projects, but increasingly limited living space. Yuan Xiaohua gradually realized that Li Mo's actions against her were not purely personal jealousy, but an industry that was beginning to shrink and was looking for risk takers. The deeper she got into the Guoxin project, the more she discovered that the so-called digital reform in the project was very similar to her own marriage: the old structure had not really changed, but new systems, new languages ​​and new explanations were constantly used to cover the underlying relationships that were no longer functioning. In 2022, Shanghai will enter a long-term lockdown. Before the lockdown began, Yuan Xiaohua and He Shengshu were already on the verge of breaking up. An intimacy that was almost a farewell did not repair the marriage, but made the two people more aware that what remained between them was the dependence formed by habits, responsibilities and living together, rather than complete love. But the city suddenly grinds to a halt and they are forced to live in the same house for months. In the past, they relied on business trips, projects, flights and late-night meetings to escape the void in their marriages; after the lockdown, all exits were closed. It was the first time Yuan Xiaohua observed He Shengshu for a long time, and it was also the first time he truly faced why he had been able to ignore so many anomalies in eight years. He Shengshu must face Yuan Xiaohua, Lu and the double life he has been trying to maintain at the same time. The lockdown also caused changes in the professional world of the two. Consulting projects were suspended, client decisions were frozen, and payment collection was delayed; the IPO business that He Shengshu relied on began to waver. For the first time, a professional identity that once represented success and security offered them no answers. After the lockdown ended, society resumed mobility, but the prosperity of the past did not return. In 2023, companies will no longer be keen on grand transformation narratives, but will begin to emphasize cost reduction, layoffs and cash flow. The number of projects at the consulting firm dropped sharply, and internal teams began to be restructured and employees eliminated. Investment banking business has also shrunk, and He Shengshu's position and income are no longer stable. Yuan Xiaohua discovered that the career barriers she had built over the past twelve years were losing certainty in a new economic cycle. Her relationship with James also changed during this stage. James is not the young lover who saves her, nor does he depend on her for career advancement. He gradually established independent judgment in the project, was able to question her, and was able to take responsibility at critical moments. Yuan Xiaohua saw in him a workplace logic that was different from her own: her generation believed that patience, accumulation and obedience to rules could lead to advancement, but when James entered the workplace, the rules themselves had begun to fail. The attraction between the two does not come from a simple age difference, but from the understanding and questioning of each other's lifestyles by people with completely different experiences in the two eras. Yuan Xiaohua appreciates his honesty and vitality, but is always wary of the difference in status between the two; James understands her strength and gradually sees the loss behind this strength. It wasn't until James had an independent career choice and the superior-subordinate relationship between the two was lifted that they could truly face their relationship. In 2024, generative artificial intelligence will begin to enter the consulting industry. Data compilation, information retrieval and preliminary analysis that used to take junior consultants several days to complete are quickly compressed by new tools. While the company sells artificial intelligence transformation solutions to customers, it also reduces the recruitment of young employees. James can use new tools faster than the previous generation of consultants, but is also closer to being replaced by automation than anyone else; Yuan Xiaohua still has customer judgment, organizational experience and complex negotiation capabilities for the time being, but the knowledge barriers on which she relies to establish authority are also beginning to collapse. The emergence of artificial intelligence made Yuan Xiaohua truly realize that what the era has destroyed is not just the business of a certain company, but the value system that her generation of intellectual elites once believed in: knowledge is no longer naturally scarce, experience is no longer bound to appreciate, and there is no longer a stable causal relationship between effort and reward. At the same time, the interest relationships behind the Guoxin project, the IPO project and Jincheng's internal struggles gradually became clear. Yuan Xiaohua discovered that he, He Shengshu, Lu and James were not involved in each other's lives by accident. The funding, supplier and decision-making relationships between multiple projects ultimately point to the same set of capital and organizational networks. The anonymous photos are both a revelation of the marriage and a warning in a larger game. She once thought that as long as she found the real manipulator behind the scenes, everything could be restored to order. In the end, she discovered that no one person could independently explain the entire crisis. Li Mo is protecting his position as a partner; He Shengshu is protecting his career, family and identity; Lu is fighting for the minimum chance of survival; James is looking for a future in an industry that continues to eliminate young people's positions. Everyone is making a choice and transferring the cost of their choice to others. In 2025, the consulting industry will further decline, and the sense of security represented by real estate and asset appreciation has completely changed for the middle class. Jincheng begins a new round of organizational reorganization, and Yuan Xiaohua must decide whether to stay in the old system and compete for a shrinking position, or to admit that the road he has worked for for twelve years has come to an end. In the final project confrontation, she uncovered the fact that the company had been diverting project risks for a long time, sacrificing executive employees, and using customer reforms to cover up interests. She also paid the price of losing her position and established identity. She and He Shengshu eventually divorced. This divorce is not a punishment for a bad person, but an admission by two people: they have used each other to maintain a complete life in the social sense, but they have never really had an equal and honest intimate relationship. Yuan Xiaohua did not decide the future for Lu, nor did he let James be his compensation after leaving the marriage. He Shengshu must bear his own concealment and choices alone; Lu also needs to get rid of his dependence on He Shengshu as his only outlet; James must complete his growth from an intern assigned to a project to being able to choose his own career path independently. What Yuan Xiaohua ultimately lost was not only his marriage, but also his status as a senior partner, his vision of security in assets and class, and his belief that "as long as you work hard enough, your life can be managed." She started over, not because she had regained a younger lover, nor because she had achieved a more successful revenge in the workplace, but because she finally accepted that life cannot be fully diagnosed, planned and delivered like a consulting project. The work takes 2021 to 2025 as the timeline, and through the relationship between Yuan Xiaohua, He Shengshu, Lu and James, it shows how the epidemic lockdown, the ebb of capital, changes in real estate expectations, the decline of the consulting industry and the rise of artificial intelligence have entered the marriage, career and self-perception of urban people. Marital crisis is only the first crack to appear. Behind the cracks is an entire model of life that a generation believed in is failing. Purpose: Workplace Growth and Economic Change