Tao Sister (Fan Caregiver)

Tao Sister (Fan Caregiver) is one of the most dependable figures in Shen Tang’s daily life. More than a household attendant, she is a caregiver, image manager, gatekeeper, and fan defender whose loyalty becomes increasingly visible as Shen Tang’s circumstances change. She helps transform a contractual marriage and a hostile entertainment environment into spaces where Shen Tang can be fed, protected, styled, defended, and treated as a person rather than merely as a scandalous public image.

Identity and Place in Shen Tang’s Life

Tao Sister’s first decisive function is domestic care. When Shen Tang returns late and finds the house otherwise empty, Tao Sister is there to receive her and ask whether she wants to eat. After Shen Tang’s work leaves her exhausted, Tao Sister brings up plates of food, notices that her skin has darkened and that her hands are injured, and urges her to eat more before offering to apply medicine. Her attention is practical and bodily: she observes fatigue, injury, appetite, and appearance rather than treating Shen Tang’s celebrity as the most important fact about her.

That care becomes especially important because Shen Tang’s public reputation is so poor. In this life, Shen Tang is a Z-list celebrity surrounded by constant rumors and hostile labels, while her company’s public-relations strategy pairs her indiscriminately with male stars to profit from controversy. Tao Sister’s loyalty therefore stands against an industry that treats Shen Tang’s notoriety as a marketable product and against the assumption that she has no genuine supporters. Her presence offers a counter-image: behind the scandal is someone whose injuries and exhaustion deserve immediate care.

Care, Food, and Domestic Protection

Tao Sister’s care is repeatedly expressed through food. She worries that watching a demanding program has exhausted Shen Tang and tells her to eat more. Later, meals specially prepared by Tao Sister are brought to the table for Shen Tang and Gu Huaian, who feeds Shen Tang mouthful by mouthful because her hand is injured. Even when Tao Sister is not the person carrying the meal, her preparation remains part of the household’s system of care. The food is not ornamental hospitality; it is a response to physical vulnerability and a means of restoring ordinary life after work, injury, and public pressure.

Her domestic role also includes protecting Shen Tang from unwanted access. When Gu Jinan arrives and greets Shen Tang as his sister-in-law, Tao Sister blocks his path with a mop. Whenever he attempts to move left or right, she shifts with him and continues obstructing him. The encounter turns cleaning equipment into a barrier and makes household labor a form of security work. After detergent spills during the ensuing chaos and Gu Jinan is taken away, Tao Sister guiltily claims that she may have spilled too much by accident. Shen Tang recognizes that the important question is not whether she believes Tao Sister, but whether Gu Jinan believes her. The scene captures Tao Sister’s protective ingenuity without reducing it to solemn heroism: her defense is both effective and comic.

Tao Sister also regulates access to information. When Shen Tang asks about matters Tao Sister does not wish to disclose, Tao Sister remains vigilant and refuses to tell her for the moment. She then redirects the conversation by offering food that Sister Lan gave her. This mixture of secrecy, deflection, and nourishment shows that her guardianship is not limited to physical protection. She tries to control what reaches Shen Tang, when it reaches her, and how much distress it may cause.

The Household as Backstage and Stage

Tao Sister repeatedly exposes the difference between public performance and private reality. At a formal banquet, Shen Tang enters arm in arm with Gu Huaian and is presented as his wife, participating in the polished social performance required by their marriage agreement. At home, however, Tao Sister’s attention falls on food, injury, timing, and the state of the people around her. She belongs to the backstage that sustains the front-stage image, yet she is not merely invisible labor. Her work helps make the public presentation possible while also giving Shen Tang a protected space in which the performance can be dropped.

She is present even when the boundary between those spaces breaks down. When Gu Huaian is moving close to Shen Tang after a drunken kiss, the door suddenly opens with a bang. Tao Sister covers her face and apologizes while asking the couple to continue, only for Shen Tang to notice that Tao Sister is plainly looking and that Gu Huaian’s laptop remains connected to a video call. Her exaggerated embarrassment becomes comic evidence that the household is watching the supposed private romance. Tao Sister does not simply maintain decorum; she punctures it, revealing how easily intimacy becomes spectacle in Shen Tang and Gu Huaian’s world.

Her involvement in Shen Tang’s appearance likewise combines care with performance management. When Shen Tang is dressed in a jade-colored cheongsam with pearl earrings, Tao Sister circles her twice, becomes excited, takes out her phone, and photographs her outfit for Weibo. Shen Tang is surprised that the pictures should be posted at all, but Tao Sister understands that appearance can alter public attention. The outfit becomes a controlled image rather than another rumor generated by the company. Tao Sister’s enthusiasm is affectionate, yet it also reflects the practical knowledge that styling, circulation, and visibility are forms of labor in the entertainment economy.

Fan Labor and Reputation Defense

Tao Sister’s loyalty extends beyond the home into participatory fan culture. Shen Tang initially believes she has no fans, noting that her supposed super-topic managers are all alternate accounts and that her fan group is too small even to fill two mahjong tables. Yet strangers begin defending her after a livestream performance is posted on Weibo, and the defenders are attacked in turn. Later, Shen Tang’s WeChat fills with messages and her fan group becomes lively with new members. These changes make visible a community that the old scandal narrative had concealed.

When a new controversy erupts and neither Shen Tang nor her studio has released a statement, fans begin public-relations control because they refuse to believe the material is genuine. Tao Sister joins the effort with diehard fans, using an application developed by Uncle He’s Son that allows users to send rapid replies without curses. By the time opponents finish typing, the defenders may already have sent ten messages. Tao Sister’s support is therefore not passive admiration. It is coordinated, repetitive, and technologically enabled labor that contests hostile narratives at the speed demanded by the platform.

This work complicates the usual division between celebrity and audience. Tao Sister is simultaneously a person inside Shen Tang’s household and a participant in Shen Tang’s public defense. She knows the actress’s injuries and routines, but she also understands the value of images, fan-group activity, rapid rebuttal, and platform visibility. Her devotion helps convert attention into protection: the same networked environment that once amplified scandal can be used to create solidarity.

Characterization and Narrative Significance

Tao Sister’s characterization rests on the fusion of affection and action. She feeds Shen Tang, notices when she is hurt, guards the doorway against Gu Jinan, withholds sensitive information, photographs her in flattering clothes, and joins online reputation campaigns. None of these acts alone defines her; together they establish a protective ethic that treats Shen Tang’s physical well-being, emotional state, privacy, and public standing as connected concerns.

She also gives the novel a concrete vocabulary for emotional labor. Shen Tang must smile professionally while viewers insult her, just as the entertainment company converts scandal into traffic and income. Tao Sister works in the opposite direction: her service is not designed to manufacture a profitable scandal but to preserve Shen Tang’s ability to live through one. Her food, medicine, vigilance, humor, and fan activity make care visible as labor, even when the household treats it as ordinary.

The contrast between Tao Sister and the entertainment industry is especially sharp. The company pairs Shen Tang with every male celebrity she has worked with in order to ride her coattails, while Tao Sister’s interventions are organized around Shen Tang’s actual needs. One system extracts value from her reputation; the other spends time and effort to shield her from the consequences. Tao Sister thus becomes a small but durable counter-institution within the story: a household presence whose practical loyalty helps Shen Tang survive the transition from reviled scandal figure to a woman with genuine allies and a more secure social world.