The video's buffering circle spun for only half a second.
The screen abruptly lit up.
Xie Hui's face, her makeup immaculate, flashed before the camera before the main video began.
"He said he had returned from overseas with a doctorate."
Xie Hui's voice-over was calm and restrained, yet carried an indescribable mockery.
On camera, a young man in a ripped T-shirt, his hair a bird's nest, was stammering through a lesson for a group of rural children.
Standing before a battered blackboard, he wrote four crooked Chinese characters in chalk.
"Nüguo mends the heavens."
He had written "guo," meaning "pot," instead of the "wa" in "Nüwa."
Completely unaware, he raised his voice and read it aloud.
The camera abruptly cut to the children below. They froze for a moment, then erupted in waves of laughter.
Some children imitated him saying "Nüguo," while others loudly corrected him.
Xie Hui's voice-over sounded again, sharp as a knife. "This returning PhD claimed that if he had stayed in America, he would have been Silicon Valley's darling."
The scene changed.
It was the same young man, but this time, the camera panned from his designer shoes, limited-edition watch, and luxury trousers all the way up to his slick, gleaming hair. He no longer stammered, speaking confidently to the camera, his face animated.
"If I'd stayed in America, my annual salary would start at ten million! In dollars, of course!"
His face showed undisguised arrogance as he said it.
Xie Hui's voice rang out coldly, like a judge's gavel delivering a verdict. "What is the truth? Watch this special episode of Little Wei Interviews-'A fake overseas graduate's volunteer teaching story.'"
"What the fuck!"
Wei Zijin's irrepressible roar of anger and shock exploded through the quiet living room, piercingly loud.
She never swore, yet she had