18 Days Without Leaving Home, Living Only on Internet Services | Day 17: A Day With a "Kid"

唐云路 · 2015-08-20 · English translation

This is not a contest to see who can stay home longest. The QDaily Research Lab wants to know whether the new wave of at-home services can give us a better life.

I have no pets, so I had never had a reason to try a mobile pet grooming service. Today nobody was free to look after Qiuqiu, the dog that belongs to our website's front-end programmer, so he simply sent her over to keep me company, and I took the chance to have her groomed.

Qiuqiu is a toy poodle with boundless energy, and a day with her is a different kind of day. For one thing, I had done a full day's exercise by noon.

This is the second-to-last day of the stay-at-home experiment (full explanation here). By spending "18 days without leaving home," we want to put today's popular at-home services through an intensive stress test and see how much they can really improve our lives.

Here is my log for today:

[Pets] Bagong Meichong | Wait: 37 minutes

Booked for: 10:00; arrived: 10:37; finished: 13:14

Cost: 108 yuan, new-user discount; 98 yuan actually paid

The Bagong Meichong groomer set up a folding table in the bathroom

Once I heard last night that Qiuqiu was coming to stay, I started researching pet services. I tried the pet-booking section of Dianping and went one by one through the mobile pet-service apps Weibaquan, Haogougou and Momoda. None of them could get me a groomer for today.

In the end I found Bagong Meichong on the Daowei platform, booked a groomer for ten o'clock, and paid with WeChat.

Half an hour before the appointment, the groomer called. The owner at his previous appointment had run into an emergency, he was helping sort it out, and he might be late. Qiuqiu, as it happened, was also stuck in morning rush-hour traffic. I used the gap to keep working.

My colleague the programmer treats Qiuqiu like a daughter. A little after ten he arrived at my door with the dog on his back. He left me a toy ball and one instruction, "Whatever you do, don't let them cut the fur around her ears short," and then it was just Qiuqiu and me, staring each other down. Actually, that's not quite right: I rarely saw her eyes. She was either sprinting after the ball or circling my feet with it in her mouth, demanding that I play.

Fortunately, the groomer soon took charge of this lively little creature. The full package includes a ten-point physical check, a bath, coat care, styling and trimming, and cleaning up afterward. While the groomer murmured softly to Qiuqiu in the bathroom, I finished my morning's work and even found time to have henna painted on my arm.

Bagong Meichong started out in pet boarding; grooming is a new business it launched this year. Today's groomer has been in the trade for about two years and has two dogs of his own. "I got into this line of work purely because I love dogs," he told me.

"This groomer is very thorough," my colleague said when he came to collect Qiuqiu in the afternoon. "A grooming shop usually charges between 140 and 180 yuan, but it only takes about an hour." This groomer took more than two hours, trimming slowly. Luckily, Qiuqiu cooperated the whole time and let him fuss over her.

Groomed and back to being a "girl as swift as the wind"

[Body painting] Helijia, "Good Looks" category | Wait: 49 minutes

Ordered: Aug 18, 14:22; booked for: 10:00; arrived: 10:49

Cost: 77 yuan, big-sale discount; 62 yuan actually paid

A Helijia henna artist needs few tools, just a few kinds of pigment

The writer Yi Shu has a novel called Indian Ink (《印度墨》). Its heroine, Liu Yinzi, leaves the hero the way an Indian-ink tattoo fades as the skin renews itself: when it is time to go, she goes. That was my first impression of henna body art. When I saw an artist offering henna tattoos in Helijia's new "Good Looks" category, I used yesterday's big sale to book one.

The henna artist, Piupiu, has studied drawing since childhood and now runs her own body-painting studio. Before joining Helijia, she took orders at markets and pop-up events. "I make around two or three thousand yuan a day," she told me. "But next we want to open a physical shop, so we're trying out the Helijia platform first."

"Good Looks" is a new category at Helijia. For now it mainly offers at-home lessons in drawing, guitar, singing and spoken language, plus photography. Unlike Helijia's established services, such as manicures and eyelash extensions, the people in the "Good Looks" category are more like a collection of the "hundred trades," each with a different skill.

I picked a fairly simple pattern from her phone's photo album, and Piupiu finished it quickly. Because she had gotten lost and arrived late, she also drew a small heart on my collarbone for free. Once the pigment dries, the raised crust flakes off on its own, leaving a dark brown design that lasts on the skin for a little over a week.

Once the color and pattern are chosen, the painting goes quickly

As I was seeing Piupiu out, I forgot the pigment was still wet and absent-mindedly touched my neck. Sigh. Please don't ask why my palm now has an irregular red mark that won't wash off.

[Food delivery] Baidu Maps | Wait: 39 minutes

Ordered: 13:13; delivered: 13:52, 21 minutes ahead of the promised one hour

Cost: 23 yuan, plus 5 yuan delivery; 28 yuan total

Meizhou Xiaochi snacks delivered by Baidu Waimai

Only after seeing the groomer off did I realize I had forgotten to eat, and forgotten to order lunch.

Playing ball with Qiuqiu with one hand, I scrolled through my phone for food delivery apps I hadn't tried yet. I had never ordered through a map app, so I placed an order on Baidu Maps. Oddly, the same restaurant lists its dishes in a different order on Baidu Waimai, Baidu Nuomi and Baidu Maps, even though all three run on Baidu Waimai's delivery service.

A while later the courier called from the restaurant: one dish was sold out and I would have to reorder. After some back and forth, the food arrived close to two o'clock. A pet in the house really does change things. To keep Qiuqiu from running out, I opened the door only a crack to take in the boxes, and even so she kept trying to squeeze through.

In all the days of the experiment, this was the only time I ate alone and didn't want to look at my phone.

With eyes like these on you, there's no way to feel lonely

Sorry, you really can't eat this one!

[Cleaning] 58 Daojia, dust and mite removal | On time

Ordered: Aug 18, 15:28; booked for: 15:00

Cost: 310 yuan

The tools a 58 Daojia gold-medal cleaner brought with her

This was my third try at booking a cleaner through 58 Daojia. The first two times I had asked for ordinary cleaning, and both times I went elsewhere because no cleaners were available. Last month I took part in Dyson's "household dust mite survey," and the report that arrived a couple of days ago convinced me to book a dedicated dust and mite removal service.

The vacuum cleaner would be loud, and my colleague worried that once Qiuqiu got used to me she would "stop recognizing her own dad." So after we played ball together for a good while, he picked up the toy poodle who had kept me company for half a day and took her to the office.

As when I booked 58 Daojia's moving service, a customer service agent called in the morning to confirm my address and the charges. At the appointed time Auntie Liu arrived with her tools, in uniform and wearing a Bluetooth headset. Her rate is high, but her orders keep coming. She told me that after starting in September, she completed nearly two thousand orders before being promoted to gold-medal cleaner.

Step one of mite removal: vacuuming

Mite removal takes three steps: vacuuming, an ultraviolet mite-killing device, and high-temperature steam disinfection. Auntie Liu treated my sofa, mattress and curtains, and also fixed a broken curtain clip while she was at it.

Before coming to Beijing, Auntie Liu had retired from a public-sector job in Shandong. She took up cleaning so she could live near her son, who works in Beijing, and look after him. She wore careful makeup, brought indoor slippers with a soft pink pattern, and carried herself with obvious confidence. "I don't mind if a client follows me around step by step," she said. "Client watching or not, I work the same way."

[Fresh groceries] Weiku | Delivered as two separate orders

Ordered: Aug 18; delivery window: 11:00 to 16:00; delivered: 13:59 and 15:28

Cost: 49 yuan

A bitter melon and pork rib soup kit delivered by Kangyipin Farm Products

Cucumber with shrimp delivered by Jingcai Kitchen

After I had ordered prepped vegetables from Qingnian Caijun, a friend suggested I try Weiku's "grocery helper." Qingnian Caijun runs its own operation; the grocery feature that this recipe app has added works more like a marketplace for prepped-vegetable suppliers across the city. You order a day ahead, and the next day choose a convenient time slot for delivery to your door.

Only after ordering did I discover that my two dishes came from different suppliers, and in the end they were delivered by different logistics companies.

The soup kit contained a good deal of raw meat and came packed in an insulated bag with ice. The other dish, from Wanjiakang, was handed over by a courier who took it out of a cooler box and told me to put it in the fridge right away.

[Fresh groceries] Xiaocaixian | Wait: 32 minutes

Ordered: 16:55; delivered: 17:27

Cost: 20.5 yuan

Ingredients Xiaocaixian delivered from a wet market

This was my third order from Xiaocaixian in a dozen or so days. The first time, a flyer slipped under my door prompted it; the second and third times, friends were coming for dinner at short notice. The service delivers from a nearby wet market, so it is the fastest, and both the prices and the quality of the fresh food are reliable.

As dinnertime approached, a friend announced that he wanted to bring someone over to "come and watch" before the experiment ended. Once again, Xiaocaixian came to the rescue.

If you happen to live in its delivery area and are willing to cook for yourself, this is one more service worth recommending, even at the risk of sounding like an advertorial. Of course, if you have time to go to the wet market yourself, ignore this one.

With the experiment almost over, maybe I can answer the question I'm asked most often: Is it lonely? Is it boring?

Not really. But a day with a pet (even a borrowed one) was fuller. Even if I hadn't needed to work, and hadn't needed any of these at-home services, Qiuqiu alone could have kept me from the danger of cutting myself off from the world. In the same way, it was the friends who checked in now and then, or simply showed up to entertain me, who kept this experiment a test of at-home services rather than a philosophical inquiry into the individual and society.

Thank you.

Today's at-home tips:

Mite removal at home is needed only once every two to three months;
Whether it's a manicure or body painting, don't touch anything until the pigment dries (this one may apply only to the absent-minded, like me)
Today's spending: 567.5 yuan