“You should’ve spoken sooner about the rose petals; Oliver and I collected a whole basket of them at our last hotel room. I’m definitely free to wait below a flight of stairs though,” he says. “I can wait as long as you’d like.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling.

With the swift, determined steps of someone on a mission, Pei Jie leads us out into the night again, glancing behind her shoulder every few seconds to check that I haven’t tripped over the long layers of my skirts or gotten lost in the crowds. Instead of heading in the direction we came from, we walk farther down the street, where the architecture starts to draw inspiration from ancient China, designed with stone carvings and crimson pillars and curved roofs. It’s like existing in two time periods at once. Outside the noodle restaurants and pagoda-style art galleries are the cool white haloes of ring lights, where live-streamers are broadcasting themselves singing or talking animatedly about whatever makeup products they’re holding.

“This spot is good,” Pei Jie declares, fiddling with the lens on her camera as we stop outside a hotel that could pass for a palace. Crimson lanterns tumble from the gold-lit eaves, and scholar’s rocks pose artfully outside the double gates. “You stay where you are.”

The people are more scattered here, most of them also trying to get pretty pictures. A girl a few yards away is attempting to teach her boyfriend how to take photos of her, gesturing with increasing desperation for him to angle the camera higher, until she finally gives up, switches to selfie mode, and turns him into a human phone-stand while she records herself.

“Start walking toward me now,” Pei Jie instructs while Cyrus finds a safe spot behind the camera to watch. “Slowly. Move your left hand a little, like you’re brushing your hair but not actually brushing it. Look over there—you see that lantern on your right, by the door? Keep looking. Lower your shoulder. Your other shoulder. Keep your chin down. Okay, yes, good! Now hold—”

I stumble over some of the instructions at first, partly because it’s been a while since I had to do this, and partly because of my Mandarin skills. But I guess posing is a pretty universal thing, because even if some of her tips sail straight over my head and splatter on the ground behind me, I soon ease into the rhythm of it. I bring my hand to my cheek as if I’m suffering from a toothache, but in a high-fashion way. I tighten my abdominal muscles and arch my back. I wave my broad sleeves in the air and place one foot gracefully in front of the other and look up, look left, look pretty.