Chapter 3
I Can Help People Now
Chapter 3: I Can Help People Now
Five months in, people started calling me “Big Sis Lánlán.”
The first time I heard it was late March, from a member who’d just joined. Her name was Yǔqíng — twenty-three, couldn’t sleep after a breakup, found the group in the middle of the night. She’d shared a long post in the group chat, and I was the first one to respond.
The way I responded was something I’d learned from Fúqú — don’t rush to give advice; first let them know they’ve been heard. “So what you’re saying is, you’re not sad that he’s gone — you’re sad because you can’t figure out what went wrong. Is that right?” Yǔqíng went quiet for a long time, then said: “Yeah. That’s exactly it.” And called me Big Sis Lánlán.
My mom was forty before anyone called her that. I’m twenty-eight, and I got there how exactly? By being five months into a support group. Still, it counts for something.
Five months, now that I think about it, was a strange milestone.
Right up until March, I’d thought of myself as one of the people being helped. I’d cried my way into the group, after all. On the Google form, I’d written: breakup, insomnia, not sure what’s wrong with me — hardly a shining résumé. For the first two months, Fúqú would check in on me in the group chat now and then, or send a private message saying “you seem better today.” Being noticed felt so significant that for a long time, I didn’t quite dare try to help anyone else. I still felt too broken myself.
Then, on some night I can no longer pinpoint exactly, I realized I’d gone six weeks straight without waking up at three in the morning.
I told Mǐnkuí. By then we’d been messaging each other fairly often — she was the first “senior member” I’d connected with in Good People. Thirty-five years old, two-plus years in the group, consistently ranked first in points. When I told her, she said: “Lánlán, I think you’re ready to start trying to help others. You’re ready.”
I didn’t overthink it. I just said sure.
Only later did I learn that in Good People, the words “you’re ready” carried a kind of ceremony.
The points system — Fúqú had set it up about a year after the group was founded.
She didn’t call them “points.” She called them Kindness Miles. The mechanics weren’t complicated: whenever you helped a member make real progress — when the person said “thank you, this helped me get clarity” or something similar — Liào Tíngxù would add one point to your name in a Google spreadsheet. Fúqú personally maintained the spreadsheet, and every Monday morning she’d post a link in the group chat: “Leaderboard updated for the week, thank you everyone.”
I didn’t even know the spreadsheet existed until my third month. I clicked the link, thought it looked vaguely like a departmental sales report, and closed it without a second thought.
At the time, Mǐnkuí had posted in the group chat: “I honestly don’t care about points at all, haha — what matters is actually helping people.” With a smiley sticker attached.
Her Kindness Miles were at eighty-seven. Liào Tíngxù, in second place, had forty-one.
Later I noticed something interesting: the members with lower scores were the most eager. They’d go actively hunting for new “cases” — whenever someone posted a longer message, the low-scorers would rush to respond at a speed that rivaled concert ticket drops. At the time I found it kind of sweet. That “I want to help too” energy looked so genuine. I didn’t stop to think about what the structure itself was producing.
Voting for Helper of the Month started in April.
That wasn’t an original feature either — it had been added later. Fúqú said it was “a way for everyone to see each other’s contributions.” Every month, at the end of the month, she’d host a Zoom meeting: nominations, voting, awards, the whole process about two hours.
The month I got nominated was my first Monthly Assembly.
When I opened Zoom, I paused. It was a four-by-five grid of faces, twenty people, each in a different room — one person was in a kitchen, a pot visibly on the stove behind her; someone had set a virtual background, a beach, clearly one of the built-in Zoom ones, slightly unconvincing; two or three windows were completely dark, cameras off. Fúqú’s window was in the top-left corner — first position. Her background was a pale wall, a potted plant, good lighting. The whole frame had an indefinable sense of readiness.
My face was in a square somewhere in the bottom-right. I hadn’t expected the camera to turn on automatically when I joined, so my first few seconds were me looking down at my phone. I scrambled to look up and adjust, then spent the rest of the meeting glancing at myself in the bottom-right corner every three minutes or so — checking my expression, making sure nothing looked wrong, then looking away again.
Liào Tíngxù opened the meeting with a throat-clearing and “Alright, let’s begin.” His tone was exactly like someone kicking off a company all-hands. Everyone seemed completely used to it.
Three candidates had been nominated: Mǐnkuí, a guy named Yáng Hànshēng, and me.
We each had two minutes for a self-introduction.
Yáng Hànshēng went first. He’d been in Good People for a year and a half, helped three members this past month, very smooth delivery, language like he was reading from his CV. Mǐnkuí went second: “Hi everyone, I’m Mǐnkuí, um, I honestly don’t care about the points, haha, but this month I feel like a few cases were really meaningful for me too —” She produced a sheet of A4 paper covered in bullet-point notes, which she said was the thank-you list she’d prepared for tonight — she wanted to thank all the members who had given her opportunities to grow.
I watched her in the bottom-right corner, reading through her thank-you list, and felt something I couldn’t quite name — like being at a barbecue while someone next to you provides a literary analysis of the thermodynamics of charcoal. Nothing actually wrong with it, just slightly off-frequency.
Then it was my turn.
“I’m Wèi Zhànlán, still a newer member, but I’ve helped around twelve cases this month.”
I caught myself a second after saying it. Why did I sound like I was reporting KPIs?
I kept going: “I mean — I was the one being helped here not that long ago, so being able to help others now, that’s, I don’t know how to put it, it’s just really — meaningful to me. Thank you all.”
When I finished, Fúqú gave a small nod toward the camera from her window.
Before the vote, there was a segment called “Most Touching Helper Moment of the Month.”
Submissions had been collected in the group chat in advance, with a cutoff of nine p.m. the night of the meeting. Around eight-thirty I’d seen someone in the chat pushing: “Come on, submit, thirty minutes left!” At eight fifty-eight, someone rushed in going “wait wait wait I just thought of one” and posted a long block of text. Liào Tíngxù said: “Okay, two minutes to cutoff, this is the last one.” He sounded like a referee.
Three moments made the final selection, and Liào Tíngxù read them aloud. The first was Mǐnkuí staying up until two in the morning to do breathing exercises with a member until the member said “I think I can sleep now.” The second was Yáng Hànshēng helping a recently-laid-off member work through a career analysis together over three hours. The third was me.
When I heard my name, I didn’t quite register it. Then I realized what had been read was from last week — the forty-odd minutes I’d spent with Yǔqíng, working through the “I can’t figure out what went wrong” thing with her until it finally made sense.
I said “thank you.” I wasn’t sure if any sound came out. My microphone might have been muted.
The Most Meaningful Case award was something I hadn’t expected.
Liào Tíngxù said: “Next up is the nomination for Most Meaningful Case of the Month — this award goes to cases that led to growth for everyone in the group, and to — the member themselves.”
The nominated member was Jiāyí. This month she’d brought the same struggle to the group several times — her mother didn’t accept her career choices, and they’d been in a cold war for four months. Every time she posted, someone responded. But the next week she’d post again, phrased almost the same as before. I’d been in those conversations a few times; honestly, by the third round I wasn’t sure I had anything new to say, but I kept showing up.
In Zoom, Jiāyí was one of the dark windows. When Liào Tíngxù said her name, the dark window shifted, then a voice came through: “I… does this mean I’m difficult?”
Her voice was hesitant.
Fúqú said gently: “Jiāyí, the Most Meaningful Case nomination means — the process of being with you helped all of us grow. Thank you for continuing to speak. For continuing to let us be here with you.”
Jiāyí was quiet for a few seconds. Then she said: “I thought it meant I was too much trouble.”
A few people laughed. Through the microphones the laughter sounded slightly fractured. Then Jiāyí said: “Thank you all… I really didn’t know…” Her voice began to waver.
Then Fúqú cried.
Not loudly — her eyes reddened, she pressed a finger to the corner of her eye, and said: “It’s okay. What you said was beautiful.”
When Fúqú cried, Jiāyí cried harder. When Jiāyí cried harder, Liào Tíngxù tilted his head to the side and dabbed at his eye with his sleeve. When Liào Tíngxù dabbed, the window next to mine — to the right of my screen, I mean — the person there just picked up a tissue and pressed it to their face.
The Zoom grid looked like someone had knocked over a glass of water. Tears spread from one square to the next.
I didn’t cry.
I wasn’t sure why. Watching all of this, I felt something I couldn’t name — like I was at the edge of the scene rather than inside it. Liào Tíngxù cleared his throat and said: “Alright. Let’s now announce this month’s Helper of the Month.”
That feeling dissolved.
The winner was me.
When the results came in, Mǐnkuí typed ”!!!” in the chat, then: “Lánlán congratulations for real!! You were SO amazing this month!!” Yáng Hànshēng said “congrats” with a thumbs-up sticker.
Fúqú said: “Zhànlán, would you like to say a few words?”
I said yes.
Then I picked up the sheet of paper I’d prepared in advance, sitting on my desk.
A page and a half.
There was a thank-you list. A paragraph on “why I think helping others is also a form of healing for myself.” A line near the end about “hoping I can continue to be a source of support for everyone.” I read for about four minutes. When I finished, someone typed in the chat: “This is so moving.”
Right as I set the paper down, I had a sudden realization: the thing I’d spent the most time preparing was my acceptance speech — not any thought about why I’d actually wanted to help those people. That thought surfaced for exactly one second before the announcement of the voting results swept it away.
Liào Tíngxù said: “Okay, that’s a wrap on tonight’s Monthly Assembly. Thank you all for being here.”
I closed Zoom, sat back in my chair in my little studio apartment, and felt faintly weightless.
Five minutes after the meeting ended, Mǐnkuí messaged me: “Congrats!! You improved so fast, honestly — the way you handled the conversation with Yǔqíng was so good, you can tell you really learned it.”
I said thank you.
She said: “Oh, and you’ve been working with Xiǎo Lài lately, right? The family relationship stuff?”
I said yes — I was helping her prepare some things to say to her mom. Her mom had strong opinions about her career, and Xiǎo Lài wanted to try to express her own position to her family.
Mǐnkuí said: “Right, if Xiǎo Lài makes peace with her family, she probably won’t need us anymore. You know what that means, right?”
I read that line two or three times, then wrote back: “I know. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mǐnkuí said: “Exactly, you get it. Keep it up!” with a cheering sticker.
I put my phone down and went back to tidying my desk.
That night, I didn’t think much about what she’d said.
Later, I understood what she meant.
The second week of April, Mǐnkuí said she wanted to bring me to a Helpers Circle meeting.
I hadn’t known there was a Helpers Circle. She explained it was an internal group chat for the group’s active helpers — not all members knew about it, but everyone who was primarily in the helper role was in it, about eight or nine people. She said Fúqú had mentioned me — said I’d been doing well this month and was ready to officially join.
I said sure, and was added to a new LINE group called “Good People | Helpers.”
The first message posted in the group was Liào Tíngxù’s welcome, very formal. Then Fúqú said: “Zhànlán has joined, everyone please welcome her.” Then a row of clapping stickers.
I posted in the group: “Thank you all, looking forward to learning from you all,” with a smiley face.
Mǐnkuí sent me a private message alongside: “You’re still getting the hang of things, just follow my lead for now. Either way, if you have questions, come to me.”
I said okay. Something about that felt reassuring — having someone ahead of me, someone to follow in a system I didn’t fully understand yet. That kind of comfort is real, when you’re not sure what you’re doing.
That month I kept working with Xiǎo Lài.
She was getting ready to have a real conversation with her mom. Her mom wanted her to sit the civil service exams; Xiǎo Lài wanted to keep doing handmade leather goods. It had long since stopped being just a hobby — she had a few regular customers, brought in a little income each month, not a lot, but she said the feeling of “I made something and someone was willing to pay for it” was what made her feel like she was alive.
We talked a few times. I helped her figure out what to say, how to make her mom feel heard. I thought about how Fúqú used to talk to me — first acknowledge the other person’s feelings, then bring up your own position. I passed that on to Xiǎo Lài, and she said “that’s a really good approach, thank you.”
And then I thought about what Mǐnkuí had said — that if Xiǎo Lài made peace with her family, she probably wouldn’t need us anymore.
At the time I took it as a warning: be careful, don’t let things get too heated, don’t let her go to her mom in the middle of an emotional spike. I thought Mǐnkuí was talking about approach, about method.
I didn’t think further. I kept helping Xiǎo Lài prepare for that conversation.
Late April, a new member joined the group.
Fúqú posted in the main group chat: “Welcome Chápǔ’ěr. She’s going through some challenges at work and needs a bit of support — please take good care of her.”
Chápǔ’ěr posted in the group: “Hi everyone, thanks for having me,” followed by a waving sticker. Short, not much to read into — but that phrase, “thanks for having me,” made me think of myself five months ago, when even those few words hadn’t felt safe to say.
I replied: “Welcome, feel free to ask us anything.”
Three days later, Fúqú sent me a private message: “Zhànlán, would you be willing to be with Chápǔ’ěr for a while? She’s dealing with a manager who’s been targeting her at work, under a lot of pressure — she needs a steadier presence. I think you’re in a really good place for that right now.”
I said I was willing.
By the end of that month, I had a new person: Chápǔ’ěr.
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