The Last Day of the 18-Day Stay-at-Home Experiment | One Boyfriend Short of a Perfect Date

唐云路 · 2015-08-21 · English translation

This is the Day 18 report. Look out for the final guide on August 22.

This is my 430th hour without going outside. Eighteen days ago, we decided to run a high-intensity test, "18 days without leaving home," to see how far the new wave of at-home services can solve the problems of daily life.

To make the test a fair one, we set some rules:

For the 18 days of the experiment, barring force majeure, we do not go out at all. Work, daily life and exercise all happen at home.
This is not a contest to see who can stay in longest. It is an attempt to find out, under test conditions, how much at-home services can actually raise the quality of our lives.
Every service must be booked through a phone app, not by calling directly.
Test at least four at-home services every day.
Every evening, publish an article describing the day's experience of living on at-home services.
Finally, friends may visit, but may not bring anything for us. Every need that involves the outside world must be met through an app.

The final summary, along with a guide to the at-home services that make life at home better, will be published on Saturday.

First, the Day 18 report. Like it or not, the theme is unavoidably Qixi (Chinese Valentine's Day). Companies large and small try to hitch their marketing to it, and in itself the day is nothing special. Couples show off, couples break up; after a whole day of Qixi-themed push notifications from apps, I even began to find the holiday a little off-putting.

But since it fell on my last full day indoors, I took the chance to see how you can celebrate a holiday without going out.

[Snacks] Benlai Convenience | 31-minute wait

Ordered: 10:14; delivered: 10:45

Cost: 77.8 yuan

Snacks delivered by Benlai Convenience

Holiday or not, work goes on. I got up as usual, read the news, sat through a meeting, and before I knew it I had missed breakfast. On the last day I couldn't be bothered to cook, so I ordered some snacks from Benlai Convenience to fill my stomach.

Benlai Convenience is a fresh-food delivery service that Benlai Life (Benlai.com) launched recently, and it runs fairly independently of its parent. It partners with convenience stores across Beijing and relies on these scattered street-corner shops to cover the "last mile" of delivery.

This was my third time using it, and every time the items listed in the app have failed to match the store's actual stock. The nearby shop responds and delivers promptly, but it always calls to ask: "That item is sold out. Can we refund you in cash?"

This time was no exception. Luckily, the hawthorn sticks I like were in stock. Everything else was only there to reach the free-delivery threshold, so if it was out of stock, so be it.

[Makeup] Meidaojia | Arrived on time

Ordered: August 19, 10:36; appointment: 13:00; arrived: 12:54; left: 15:34

Cost: 168 yuan; with the new-user discount, 68 yuan actually paid

The tools laid out by the Meidaojia makeup artist

The full look includes makeup and hair

The finished result

At-home makeup is a service I had always wanted to try. But staying in and calling a makeup artist over for no reason, to fuss over me for more than two hours, always sounded a bit odd.

A few days earlier I had booked a chef to come to my home and invited several friends over for dinner. That gave me a reason to have my makeup and hair done: to take the dinner party seriously.

The makeup artist, Zhong Hua, told me he usually works on film and TV sets and rarely takes orders through the platform. But for contracted artists like him, the platform pays an extra 200 yuan per order on top of a fixed monthly subsidy, so even a craftsman who already earns well is happy to take an order when he has time.

Like every at-home service worker, he arrived with a 28-inch toolbox and put on shoe covers at my door before coming in. Before starting, he asked carefully about the occasion and decided on a light look.

The makeup took even longer than it used to when I was made up for stage performances. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel him working the brushes as if painting a picture. With the braiding, the whole process lasted more than two hours. Once the experiment is over, I thought, I will probably never again find this much time to spend on my appearance.

[Clothes] Youyi | 238-minute wait

Ordered: 10:28; delivered: 14:24

Cost: 500 yuan/month; Qixi special 177 yuan/month

Youyi's clothes are delivered by personal stylists

Three garments can be delivered at a time

Youyi has been online for less than two months. It runs on membership: members pick three garments at a time on the website, and a stylist delivers them to the door. When you tire of them, you ask customer service to collect them for cleaning and ironing, and you pick more. Its goal is plain: to make sure women always have something to wear.

My reason for finally trying it was simple. Scrolling through my phone before bed last night, I got a push notification from its official WeChat account: on Qixi day only, the first month's fee would drop from 500 yuan to 177 yuan. Suddenly trying it was cheap. My wardrobe is always one item short of what I want to wear that day anyway, so I picked three pieces from the website's photos of models wearing them.

In the morning, customer service called to say that, because of the flood of Qixi orders, two of the dresses were no longer available in my size, and suggested I choose again. Since I had already paid the month's membership fee, the new order only needed a delivery address; then I just waited for the clothes to arrive.

Honey, the stylist assigned to me, showed up carrying two enormous paper bags. Because one dress might not fit, she had brought it in two other sizes for me to try. Honey told me they already have more than 2,000 garments in circulation, from brands including Kate Spade, Michael Kors, Hollister and Zara, but the service covers only Beijing's Chaoyang District.

I chose one of the dresses, cut off the tag and changed into it on the spot.

New clothes always put me in a good mood. One thing I'm curious about, though: when winter comes, will coats and trench coats also be delivered for the same 500 yuan a month?

[Chef] Chulinmen | 4 hours

Ordered: August 18, 14:26; dinner booked for: 17:00

Cost: 268 yuan per person, four people

The chef brings all the ingredients and equipment, including an oven

Once the guests had all arrived, the chef served salad, soup, main course and dessert in order

Chulinmen sends high-end private chefs to your home to cook custom meals. I put off trying it until now for one reason: it is expensive.

After registering, I received a 200-yuan new-user voucher, so I decided to invite a few colleagues with "no holiday to celebrate" to eat well together on Qixi. When booking, I found that chefs on the platform are in short supply; I clicked through several in a row, and each showed "fully booked for the next seven days."

After I placed and paid for the order, customer service called to confirm the size of my kitchen, when someone would be home, and the diners' dietary restrictions. This morning the chef called too. Chef Zhang walked me through how he works and confirmed when dinner would be served.

I live in an old residential compound with no elevator. Chef Zhang made two trips up and down the stairs to carry in all the ingredients and cookware. He had bought the ingredients himself that morning at the Xinyuanli market; the tableware, tablecloth and plates came later in the afternoon from Chulinmen's headquarters by Shansong courier.

Chef Zhang used to work in hotel restaurants at places such as the Shangri-La and the Hong Kong Macau Center. To look after his child, he switched to a more flexible way of working. "I only need to work ten days a month," he said. "The rest of the time I can do what I like."

But because Chulinmen does not provide waiters for parties of six or fewer, the chef also had to serve the food and wash the dishes. "I never had to do this before," he told me.

From the bread and salad to the borscht, the main course and the dessert, the chef explained the ingredients and cooking method of each dish. He used cauliflower puree, for example, instead of the mashed potatoes that usually come with steak, and he had made the cranberry sauce for the dessert himself.

After dinner, the chef packed up everything he had brought, cleaned the kitchen and left. The place was so clean it was as if nothing had happened.

Under yesterday's article, a commenter asked me to try renting a boyfriend to come over. And yes: on this day I had my hair and makeup done, picked out new clothes, laid on a big dinner, and received hydrangeas from the girl with the biggest eyes in our office. It proved that you can set up a perfect date without going out. The one thing standing between me and that date, the boyfriend, I never managed to rent.

In the morning I opened a service that offers "rent a boyfriend to come to your home," and found that bookings were open only for the 18th and 19th. Of course, in a few days users can go back to booking the usual way, asking its craftspeople to come over when they are free to teach singing, painting, guitar or spoken English.

Still, my colleagues said the teacher in the photo with me had such a great haircut that in the picture he looks exactly like a boyfriend.

That was my incomplete experience of Qixi without going out. In a few hours the experiment will be over. Which services worked and which did not, we will cover in detail a little later in a "Hack Your Life" special (click here to see past specials).

Now that the moment to go out has finally come, I honestly feel nothing much. Life is like that: there is no script. Things happen one after another when you least expect them, and not every ending comes with a ceremony.

That's it. Look out for the final guide on Saturday.

Today's At-Home Tips:

A chef generally arrives four hours ahead to start preparing. In practice that much time is rarely needed, so confirm arrival times with your dinner guests in advance;
Clothes delivery works like online shopping with returns and exchanges. When talking to customer service, give accurate body measurements, plus the brands and sizes you usually wear, for reference.
Total spent today: 1,194.8 yuan