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On social platforms, people who leave big companies complain about their former employers or share their lives after leaving. These are all common practices. But in Hangzhou, four Alibaba P7-level employees did not look for new jobs after being promoted, but got together to open a steamed bun shop. In Alibaba, P7 usually means an annual salary of hundreds of thousands, an "elite halo", and a certain social status, while being fired often means losing all of this and being pushed to passively find a new way out.
Of all the possible options after leaving the company, selling steamed buns with colleagues is obviously the least imaginable one. But it really happened. Four people who had never worked in the catering industry - HR, interaction designer, product manager, and operation - kept adding functions to the steamed bun shop according to their own imaginations, which is called "empowering the steamed bun shop" in Internet jargon. In the end, it turned it into a place that is both a steamed bun shop and not like a steamed bun shop.
They call this experience "middle-aged rebellion", like a willful attempt after experiencing the glory, involution and wear and tear of a big factory. As the store owner Daxi said: "Life is so interesting, why do you have to do a serious thing?"
Now, this "unorthodox" steamed bun shop is still making losses.

Text｜Yi Fangxing

Editor:Li Tianyu

Picture｜(Except for special notes)Photographed by Yi Fangxing

"How to relieve worries? Only buns"

This is an alternative bun shop.

It is run by four Alibaba P7-level employees who were optimized in cost reduction and efficiency improvement. It is hidden in a remote and deserted office building in the northern part of Hangzhou's Xihu District. The passenger flow here is not high, and the nearby bus station has even reduced the number of buses. If you walk to the nearest subway station, you need to walk two kilometers.

The way it is so capricious is that if you come here before 10 am, you can't eat the buns - because the store manager has given up on making breakfast. For Chinese people, a bun shop not making breakfast is as rare as a barbecue restaurant not being open at night. You know, xiaolongbao, wontons, and mixed noodles are the authentic breakfast trio for Hangzhou locals. The decision was made simply because the store manager felt that "I need to ensure my sleep quality and don't want to get up in the early morning to make buns."

The manager of this "Xiao Qing Ma Baozi Shop" is named Da Xi, 32 years old. She just resigned from Alibaba in April this year. The so-called passive resignation is actually being optimized, but this statement is more decent. Shortly before leaving, she was promoted to the P7 level, but then encountered business line cuts-just like many large companies in the contraction stage during this period. In the end, between the options of "changing departments" or "taking a big gift package and leaving", she chose the latter and decided to open a steamed bun shop. In addition to her, there are three other operators of the steamed bun shop. They are all Alibaba P7s, and they have all been optimized in cost reduction and efficiency improvement. With different coincidences, they all became interested in selling steamed buns.

Since the opening, Daxi would stay in the bun shop whenever she had nothing to do. This place was equivalent to her office after she left. On July 27, I asked her to meet at the bun shop to talk about the story of selling buns. But she had something to do in the morning, so I decided to go to the bun shop and wait for her.

I have had many fantasies about this steamed bun shop. In the "jargon" of Internet giants, Alibaba was the first to talk about the word "empowerment", which means to give a certain characteristic to a certain business. I am curious about how these former Alibaba people will "empower" this steamed bun shop.

This is a relaxed street with few people and restaurants. There is a KFC across the street, but there are not many customers. In front of the rather conspicuous red-and-black sign of the bun shop, there stands a parasol with four lounge chairs under it. A young female employee in a black uniform is resting on a lounge chair. When you walk into the store, Jay Chou's "Give Me a Song" is playing on the speakers. Two young female employees are working at the operating table while listening to the song - they are not very fast at making buns. According to them, they have only learned to make buns for less than two months.

The bun shop is about 20 square meters. The interior is decorated in black and red, just like the sign. There are 5 black round tables on one side and a red bar on the other. There are dozens of empty beer bottles hanging on the bar, showing another kind of willfulness here - in addition to buns, they also sell other things - such as cocktails, books, and yakitori (roasting chicken parts on skewers). None of them have anything to do with buns. In the future, they may sell more unrelated things, just like the big companies that used to expand new businesses everywhere.

Opposite the bar, the most eye-catching thing is the slogans that cover the entire wall. Different from the progressive slogans that can be seen everywhere in Alibaba's office area, the slogans here focus on emotional values ​​and have many traces of the current era. There is the popular "Life is a wilderness", the resistance to involution "What the hell", the desire to "get rid of the smell of work" and the escape of "How to relieve worries, only buns". The clerk said that these slogans were written by a customer who is good at calligraphy. In a sense, this seems to be the voice of the four Alibaba people who just left.

Plants can also provide emotional value. There are more than 30 kinds of plants inside and outside the bun shop. When the flower pots are spread out, it looks like a small garden outside the shop. In this season, the lotus is in full bloom. In the hot summer, if it rains, the staff will move the plants outside to "quench their thirst."

The small garden outside the store. Source: store owner Daxi Xiaohongshu

Each plant has its own function. The rainy season in Hangzhou had just passed, and mosquitoes were flying everywhere. Mint can be used to repel mosquitoes; rosemary grew vigorously and can be used when making yakitori; and more than a dozen pots of aroids in the room are used to purify the air. While waiting, a large beetle flew into the store and lay on a plant. A female clerk did not kill it, but carefully wrapped it in paper and released it outside.

Finally, even the main business here - steamed buns - is different from other places. In many cities, "Hangzhou Xiaolongbao" can be regarded as famous throughout the country. Not only does it require a small size, but it also pays attention to the combination of pork and chopped green onions in the filling. It is steaming hot, and the pork is fresh and juicy when you take a bite. But in this store, you can't find xiaolongbao, nor do they sell wontons. On July 27, the store only offered three large buns - as big as a fist, with chicken wing filling, pork intestine filling, and leek, egg and vermicelli filling. The meat ones are 9.9 each, and the vegetarian ones are 6 each. Since they are all made on the same day, the first basket of buns can only be steamed at 10 am.

"Iterate the buns"

At 10 o'clock, I became the first customer of the bun shop that day and ordered a chicken wing bun.

Holding the still hot bun in my hand, I took a bite and opened the bun skin. The stuffing inside was not minced meat, but strips of chicken wings and meat fillets. I have eaten buns in many cities over the years. Shanghai's crab roe buns, Wuxi's xiaolongbao, Kaifeng's soup dumplings, Tianjin's Goubuli... It was indeed the first time I had a bun stuffed with chicken wings. Although it was not as expensive as the crab roe buns, it was not cheap either.

At 11 a.m., the store owner, Daxi, appeared in the store wearing a short casual dress. A few months ago, she was still working in a cubicle wearing a T-shirt and a work badge. But from her discourse system, one can immediately feel the shadow of an Internet company.

She said that the emergence of this type of bun was all due to "user demand". This is her high-frequency word. At the beginning, as an innovative bun, the stuffing used relatively cheap chicken wing root meat. But after it was made, customers reported that "the meat was too tough", so later they used more tender chicken wing meat. After the chicken wings were marinated and cooked every day, someone was needed to tear the chicken wings.

They used the R&D thinking of Internet products to "iterate the buns", basically "changing what the users need". In the early days, the chicken wing buns not only had skin, but also crispy bones. Later, some customers reported that the buns with chicken skin were a bit greasy and the crispy bones didn't taste good, so the skin and crispy bones were removed. This caused the cost to rise - at least three chicken wings had to be packed into one bun, and the oil used was also more expensive peanut oil.

This also makes the price of the buns in the store relatively high. For example, a chicken wing bun costs 9.9 yuan. Some customers complained about the price, saying, "It's the most expensive bun I've ever eaten." But many people also said that "the ingredients are good." Daxi said, "We have very high requirements for production. A bun should not be less than 130 grams, and the filling should not be less than 80 grams." The requirements for the production indicators of each bun are also very similar to the detailed requirements of certain project indicators of large Internet companies.

When I was pouring vinegar, I found a golden makeup mirror and lipstick in the seasoning tray. My first reaction was that someone had left it in the store, but later I found that there was a set on each table.

Makeup mirror and lipstick are provided on each table.

Attaching great importance to "user experience" may also be a consensus among the four of them. As an interactive designer, Nan Guo, one of the four Alibaba P7s, is responsible for the art design of the bun shop. When she was in Alibaba, she had short and capable hair, but now she has long hair and wears a cheongsam. She found that when girls eat buns, lipstick easily sticks to the buns. After that, she put a set of makeup mirrors and lipstick on each table to facilitate touch-ups. She hopes that "even eating buns can be elegant." In addition, she also hopes that "the store smells good", so she puts an aromatherapy machine in the corner and uses essential oils when cleaning.

There is a saying in Alibaba that "customers come first", and the four former Alibaba people followed this principle in every decoration of this small shop. The biggest change they made to the decoration of the store was to remove the glass wall of the back kitchen, which cost them a lot of money. Before, like many restaurants with "transparent kitchens", the back kitchen and dining area of ​​the bun shop were separated by a glass wall, and the inside was like a glass cage. Now that the glass wall has been removed, the whole bun shop gives people a relaxed feeling of a bar. Da Xi did have this idea. Once she heard that the Tiaohai Bar in Beijing was originally just a few friends getting together to play, "and later it evolved into a bar, which is equivalent to another place for friends to play. I hope the bun shop can be like this."

She likes these innovations very much. “Why does a bun shop have to look like a bun shop?”

As former members of Alibaba, they have all worked there for more than five years, have experienced the expansion era of Internet companies, and have enjoyed the dividends brought by innovation.

Behind the innovation of Xiaoxiao Baozi Shop, they miss the past, "everything was new then". They miss Alibaba in 2019, when big data and cloud computing became the new hot spots. At the annual meeting that year, tens of thousands of people cheered and roared through the largest stadium in Hangzhou, with confidence and excitement on everyone's face. Pinduoduo and Douyin also started to exert their strength from that time, like catfish breaking into a pond.

This kind of innovation also makes Nan Guo feel valuable. For example, when the Metaverse was still popular in 2023, she participated in a business that required the transformation from flat to three-dimensional modeling. "For example, when holding a new product launch conference, the new product launch conference that can be seen offline needs to be restored to a 3D version online, which is equivalent to building a building online and incorporating brand products into it."

Nan Guo's dream was to be an architect. To this end, she studied architecture for eight years from college to graduate school, and later joined Alibaba. She still remembers that when she was responsible for modeling a 3D block, her colleagues involved in the 3D production did not know much about the building structure, resulting in the facade and structure not being beautiful enough. "I used my original architectural skills to tell him how to improve the building model and interactive experience, and it was finally successful. This feeling is magical. Every step I have taken is meaningful."

The thinking patterns learned at work often stay with a person for a long time. For example, during communication, the conversation sometimes becomes a little Alibaba-like. The employees of the Baozi Shop once participated in an activity with the theme of personal growth. Nan Guo casually said in the summary: "The number of users participating in the activity is good, and the user feedback is very good. We have accumulated a lot of video materials, which can be shared with you when the time comes."

The era of involution

After leaving Alibaba, they found that in an increasingly shrinking market environment, it is not just the big companies that are affected.

Just like how the bun shop can innovate, it can't change the fact that the catering industry is getting more and more competitive. Just two months ago, Daxi went to Chengdu to learn about catering, but it also made her more frustrated. "If you want to control costs, there are actually many ways, but I don't want to use them." In contrast, she prefers to use on-site production methods. For example, the chicken soup in the store is freshly boiled, and it has received a lot of praise.

They all have the same wish, that the bun shop can make people feel at home. "Mom will not give you pre-prepared food, and only mom will give you the freshest ingredients. Many people work in a foreign land, and if we can taste the taste of home, we will feel very happy." said Daxi.

In the Internet industry, when one track becomes tiring, people usually seek a second growth curve. The second curve of this steamed bun shop is to start selling cocktails.

Nowadays, the wine list of Baozi Shop is also very capricious. There is no name of the wine on it, only two kinds, one with alcohol and one without alcohol. After the customer orders a drink, the bartender Xiao Zeng will mix a personalized drink according to the customer's state, environment, and mood on that day. This makes each glass of wine different.

Later, the wine in the store also became a feature. In order to add the element of wine, Nan Guo originally planned to buy some empty wine bottles to decorate the store. But in the end, she found that the price of buying an empty wine bottle, including the postage, was more than the price of a whole bottle of wine. "We decided to drink out the bottle ourselves."

During that week, the girls drank heavily almost every day. After each bottle was finished, Nan Guo would hang the bottle at the door of the bun shop. Later, the entire wall was covered with bottles.

Xiao Zeng used to work as a product manager at Alibaba. Now she jokes that even if she leaves the company, she will still be working on products. She actually just learned how to make cocktails in the past few months. "It's not difficult. I've been drinking for more than ten years, and I often go to bars to ask bartenders for advice, and then come back to make my own cocktails."

This was also Daxi's idea. "When I was working at Alibaba, there was a concept of having to have all, all, and all. I told Xiao Zeng that our drinks must be good-looking, tasty, and have good names." At first, Xiao Zeng came up with a bunch of names for the drinks menu, but Daxi thought they were not good enough. In the end, he simply didn't want any fixed names. Every day when the cocktails were made, Xiao Zeng would name them whatever he thought of. "As long as the customer says it's not unpalatable, we can serve it. The most important thing is that this drink is unique."

Xiao Zeng mixed me a glass of wine, the whole glass of wine was bright orange-red, she said this glass of wine is called sunset. But after half an hour, even she herself forgot what name she gave this glass of wine. The name is not important, but it is also important. Some customers are moved by this way. For example, one time, a girl came to eat buns at night, and she looked very sad. Xiao Zeng mixed her a glass of wine and told her the name of the wine. The girl cried at that time. Xiao Zeng was deeply impressed by that scene, "She felt that her self was accepted."

A steamed bun shop where you can drink cocktails.

Daxi and the others all felt the same way about this "moment of self-acceptance". In a sense, they took care of themselves by opening a self-willed steamed bun shop. However, their previous work in a large factory often meant suppressing themselves.

In April this year, when Onishi was promoted, she had been working as an HR for six years, doing talent development work. She also thought about looking for a job at first. Usually after leaving a large company, people will try to submit resumes to other large companies. "I considered ByteDance or other companies."

However, the problem was writing her resume. "When I was writing my resume, I reflected on myself and thought that my life was very boring." She suddenly felt that she had worked for many years and had indeed done some internal projects in the company. "Before, others cared about you because you were in charge of this work, but now I am independent, those platforms and resources have disappeared, what is my core competitiveness?"

To give the simplest example, although she has been working in the local life business, she has no idea how a restaurant operates and makes a profit. "I feel uneasy. I don't know how to list food on the food delivery platform, how to take pictures of the products, or how to purchase paper towels at a lower price. We work in the middle and back-end of large companies, and we have been doing things that add icing on the cake, but we don't know the actual problems."

For Ohnishi, this feeling of self-denial continued and reached its peak in 2022. "I was very tired that year."

At that time, her boss valued her very much and asked her to be responsible for the growth of thousands of salesmen across the country. "This requires building a learning system from scratch. Later, when the courses were produced, many people just took them but did not listen. There were many similar negative feedbacks." In addition, her mother was ill at that time, which also increased the pressure.

When she was most anxious, she would start to have difficulty breathing after 7 o'clock every Sunday night. "Because I had to go to work the next day, I started to think about work, and I resisted inside and didn't want to take out the computer." When she woke up on Monday morning, she felt like there was a stone pressing on her heart, and she dreamed about work at night.

"I used to live in the eyes of others and in the framework of society." Even though she was promoted from P6 to P7 during that period, she was not happy. "You will feel unworthy and fearful, because other people's expectations of me will become a pressure for me, and I will be afraid that I will not be able to achieve it."

At that time, she began to save herself and went to psychological counseling for half a year, and gradually got rid of this state of "needing others' affirmation". She realized the importance of self. In the past, "I felt like I was floating, and I didn't actually experience the business front. Now, I want to really go to the catering front to take a look."

Among all the choices, she finally chose the most down-to-earth steamed bun shop, which seemed to have the biggest psychological gap. "This was casually proposed during a chat. Several of us thought it was interesting, so why not? We still have the time and energy to try and make mistakes now. If we wait a little longer, we may not have it anymore."

The resistance to involution is reflected in the slogans on the wall.

Utopia

"The meat is in the buns, not in the folds." The small bun shop has become a life station for finding oneself, with an added layer of healing meaning, and it has also gathered a group of similar people.

Xiao Zeng first met Daxi and Nanguo at an offline event, but she decided to officially join the bun shop because of a staff meal in the shop.

At that time, she only occasionally went to the bun shop to help out and caught up with lunch. "I am a carnivore, and they cooked a meat dish specifically for me. Meat dishes must not be fried with other vegetarian dishes, such as shredded pork or sliced ​​pork, which are not considered meat dishes for me. They must be very hard dishes such as braised spareribs and braised pork." Xiao Zeng said.

At that time, she had just resigned from Alibaba for two months and was experiencing a one-year gap year. Before that, she had a very unpleasant experience when she tried to be promoted to P8 from P7 at Alibaba. After eating a few employee meals at the Baozi Shop, Xiao Zeng's process of joining it was also very simple. "We were outside in the sun, chatting casually for a few minutes and then decided. You can't treat it as a workplace. If I make a decision and have to sign a contract with the boss, then this is not the state I want at all."

On the afternoon of July 27, I also experienced the employee meal of the Baozi Shop. It was not like other restaurants, where employees "eat for the sake of eating" with a few simple dishes in a big bowl, but it was like a family dinner with great care.

The dishes for the staff meals are all freshly cooked. Since the kitchen and dining area are completely open, you can smell the cooking fumes. This is also the "wok smell" that you can't smell in many restaurants nowadays. The chef joked with everyone: "This is the smell of fireworks."

The staff meal that day consisted of three meat dishes and two vegetarian dishes. The meat dishes were steamed prawns, grilled clams, and stir-fried meat with tofu, and the vegetarian dishes were garlic water spinach and stir-fried rapeseed. Everyone chatted as they ate, from domestic news to the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. On the second day of the Olympics, Daxi even moved a TV to the middle of the bun shop so that he could watch the games.

The clerk and the customer are watching TV in front of the steamed bun shop. Photo courtesy of the clerk Xiao Zeng Xiaohongshu

Under this business philosophy, Onishi, who has worked as an HR, will also recruit some "unconventional" store employees.

Today, there are six female employees in the Baozi Shop, some of whom used to be international tour guides and some of whom are tarot readers. The one who washes dishes and cleans the shop is a 28-year-old girl from Sichuan, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in international trade. Every employee here has obtained a psychological counselor certificate. The shop owner, Daxi, calls the employees "teachers" or "sisters", and the employees often call each other "baby".

"They are all people like us who used to work in cubicles and have never worked in the catering industry. Even the girl who is in charge of making dumplings learned it temporarily," said Onishi. "If you want, the staff can even tell you Tarot cards."

Before coming to the steamed bun shop, the dishwasher "Little Sun" had a unhappy life. She had a controlling mother who often said that she was not good in this or that. She was also depressed in junior high school because of being isolated. Once, she fainted beside the podium due to hypoglycemia, but was laughed at by the boys in the class. After graduation, she also had trouble finding a job. She worked as a customer service in Chongqing for a while. "Every day, she had to deal with the emotions of the front-line takeaway users, and even unreasonable troubles." Soon, she couldn't continue and returned to her hometown.

She came to the Baozi Shop to participate in an offline event as a volunteer, but because she worked hard, she became a regular employee. "I used to be very depressed and thought I was the most miserable person in the world. No one paid attention to me. But everyone in the Baozi Shop is very nice. They will ask me if I need anything and help me."

Her mentality has also gradually changed. "I used to feel ashamed that I graduated from college and ended up being a kitchen cleaner. At first, I was reluctant to pick up the garbage on the ground with my hands, so I wore gloves. But later, I got used to it after touching it many times, and I didn't need to wear gloves anymore. I didn't feel disgusted anymore."

In a sense, it was after joining the Baozi Shop that Nan Guo rediscovered the sense of value of "doing something meaningful that I approve of." She said, "The Baozi Shop means a lot to me. It is my second spiritual home."

Nan Guo doesn’t care about the gap in evaluation from “elite of a big company” to employee of a steamed bun shop. Before leaving Alibaba, the four partners were all P7s, and this level has an unspeakable embarrassment: in Alibaba, most P7s have not yet reached the management level, “they are just people who do the work.” Moreover, it is relatively simple to be promoted from P6 to P7, but it is very difficult to be promoted from P7 to P8. Especially in the past two years, the promotion channels of many teams have been narrowed, and the situation of P7s has become even more embarrassing. There are a lot of P7s in the crowd, and they have no psychological advantage in status. From an economic point of view, the income of P7s cannot be considered to be worry-free.

What has a greater impact is the cycle of the times. For Nan Guo, what she does is valuable when the business of large Internet companies is growing. But when the business shrinks, she is like a message in a drifting bottle, and her business lines are constantly being cut. Every time they are cut, she is put into a new department until she is finally optimized.

Drifting to the steamed bun shop to meet, they all let go of their anxiety and found their ideal state - they do whatever they think of and decorate the shop the way they want it to be. They seem to use this method to touch new freedom. As Xiao Zeng said: "We hope that no matter what stage of career or life people are in, when they walk into this shop, they can get some warmth and strength when they see us who are willing to remove the original halo and start from scratch to do these things."

Image source: TV series "Restart Life"

The end of career

However, no matter how you pursue your ideals or escape from the internal circulation, when it comes to opening a bun shop, you still have to face some practical problems.

Many working people may have read a book called "The Cafe at the End of the World". This book, which is called "a magical book with a high resignation rate after reading it", tells the story of a person who found the answer and meaning of his life in a cafe. For Onishi and others, this bun shop also serves the same function. In a sense, this is also a "bun shop at the end of the workplace".

However, unlike the relatively idealized situation in the book, the real steamed bun shop has to face a core problem first and foremost - profitability.

As a former HR, Da Xi has high expectations for employees’ growth, so she has raised the recruitment standards and offered higher salaries. For example, the employees who wash dishes can earn about 7,000 yuan a month, while the employees who make dumplings earn even more. “We earn about 1.5 times the average salary outside,” Da Xi said. However, the cost of personnel and the cost of raw materials for dumplings have caused the dumpling shop to be in a loss.

In addition, the store's natural traffic has not been ideal. In Hangzhou, this is a rather remote area in the northwest of Xihu District, and there are not many people working in the nearby office buildings. Take July 23 as an example. There were only 26 tables of guests on that day, and no more than 100 buns were sold in total. "Basically, we can only sell dozens of buns every day through natural traffic." According to this sales volume, losses are basically a foregone conclusion.

"In the first two months, we basically lost about 50,000 yuan every month," said Daxi. She has reserved some losses in her savings. At the same time, she also found an investor who was interested in the bun shop to invest. The four of them gave themselves a year, which was like a rare relaxation, and more like a willful attempt.

Daxi is trying to use the bun shop to participate in some activities and provide some group meals for the event organizers, hoping to increase revenue in this way. It seems that the business situation in July is slightly better. They just negotiated the next group meal and sold 500 buns in two days. "Our current goal is to break even." Daxi said that as for making money, that is something that can be considered later.

However, they care more about other gains than making money immediately.

The most direct change can be seen from their appearance. In the store, they look through their cell phones at photos taken a year ago, and they often look like two different people compared to now.

Since opening the steamed bun shop, some former colleagues have come to support her after hearing about it. They often say to Da Xi, "You are in such a good state now." Da Xi used to leave her colleagues with the impression of being serious. When she spoke, she would hold the microphone with both hands and shrink her whole body. But now she smiles more often and gives people a brighter feeling.

Nan Guo and Xiao Zeng are the same. When she was working at Alibaba, Nan Guo had short hair, wore T-shirts, and went for a neutral style. She said, "No one ever told me I was pretty before." But now, she has grown her hair long and started wearing clothes like cheongsam. "After leaving the company, I often hear people say I'm pretty. This feeling is quite fresh."

Xiao Zeng's change is also reflected in her weight. "Stress makes people fat." After leaving her job, she lost 10 kilograms, and even her personality changed. "In the past, I remembered exactly what time I had meetings every day, but now that I've relaxed, I don't even remember the dates." She even forgot the date she decided to join the steamed bun shop.

Take bartending, for example. According to her previous highly disciplined personality, "once the bartending ratio is set, it is impossible to change it." But now, she enjoys the ease of free bartending, "which was unimaginable before."

They concluded that the root cause was the change in the evaluation system. In the past, in large companies, their own value was determined by other people and the assigned business, but now, they see themselves more and decide what to do.

Daxi has always had a complex about food. In her memory, when she just graduated, she worked in Shenyang. She didn't know how to do many things. She was busy and anxious. She would go to a small stall to eat every night. The one who made fried rice was an auntie. "Because the rice in Northeast China is very sticky, I would tell the auntie that I need to stir it loose. Later, I got a good relationship with the auntie. When I got there, she would fry a bowl of special rice for me."

At that time, eating fried rice almost became a ritual. "I felt that eating Auntie's fried rice was like healing a day of fatigue." Now, she hopes that her bun shop can also give people such a feeling.

In such a meritocracy, she has always played the role of a good girl since she was a child, and all her rebellions were "quiet". For example, she required herself to stay in the top three in order to "not disappoint her parents". Now, in middle age, she said she wanted to "rebel in middle age" once so as not to disappoint herself.

The experience of exploring caves in her childhood still remains in her body. At that time, she was in the first grade, and she and four or five other children took sickles and cut thorns along the way to find caves. There was a cave, and the deeper you go, the darker it gets. When you go to the deepest part, you can pick up a swallow-shaped stone, which is the best reward she could find at that time.

Opening a steamed bun shop is also such an adventure for her. Not long ago, Onishi and her colleagues held a "talk therapy session" about resignation. Someone saw the event and left a message for her online: "You did what I wanted to do but couldn't do. Seeing you is like seeing hope."

She felt that this was enough. "Today is the most important. Maybe tomorrow is also important. What will happen the day after tomorrow? We'll talk about it the day after tomorrow."

(All interviewees in this article are pseudonyms)

Image source: TV series "Boyhood"