The Green Ribbon

When he was packing, Lao Zhou’s hand paused.

A 2.4-meter ribbon, fluorescent green, threaded through the collar, around the shoulder seam, tied into a dead knot at the zipper pull. He had been in women’s clothing for twelve years. At first he only hung tags. Then the tags grew as big as billboards. Then came anti-tamper buttons: one wasn’t enough, then two, then four. Now, on this coat, he counted twenty-three security points.

He knew it was useless. There were already tutorials online for removing combination locks without damaging them. But he tied the dead knot anyway, turned the coat over, folded it, and put it in the bag.

Three days later, the coat came back.

The return package arrived in the afternoon. When the front desk opened it, Lao Zhou happened to be walking by. The smell of sweat came first, then perfume. There was a foundation mark on the collar and some gray dust on the cuff. The ribbon was still there, but the zipper pull had been cut. The cut was neat, as if someone had sawed through it little by little with nail clippers.

He lifted the coat and held it up to the light. The hangtag was still on. The seven-day no-reason return label was intact.

He thought of the down jacket from last week. When it came back, there was a Disney ticket in the pocket. December 3. The jacket had been bought on November 28. He didn’t appeal. He threw it away. To appeal, he would have to shoot a video, fill out forms, wait for platform review, and in the end, it would probably still be refunded. He didn’t have the time.

He looked at the return-rate curve in the backend every day. After installing anti-tamper ribbons last month, the malicious return rate had dropped from 42 percent to 18 percent. He took a screenshot, thought about posting it, then deleted it. Eighteen percent was still too high. For normal returns in women’s clothing, one out of every five items came back. That didn’t even include the malicious part.

What unsettled him was something else.

Last week a girl bought a knit sweater. While trying it on, the ribbon caught on the doorknob and snapped. She took a photo, sent it to customer service, and asked if she could still return it. She said she hadn’t worn it outside, only tried it on at home.

Customer service forwarded the photo to him. He looked at it and said, refund it.

Later, the girl gave a five-star review. She wrote: “The anti-tamper ribbon is a little inconvenient, but I understand the seller’s difficulty.” He stared at that line for a long time, then put his phone face down on the desk.

He remembered when he first started selling women’s clothing. The return rate was only 15 percent. Back then there were no anti-tamper ribbons, no giant hangtags, no combination locks. If a buyer said it didn’t fit, he refunded. When it came back, he checked it. If it hadn’t been worn, he relisted it. Everyone did it that way.

Then things changed.

Some people bought twenty items, took photos, and returned eighteen. Some wore clothes on vacation and returned them afterward. Some wore a dress on a date, left lipstick on the collar, and still said, “I only tried it on.” Platform rules favored buyers. Winning one appeal out of ten was considered good. A fellow seller he knew had been forced to close his shop last year because of malicious returns. His last post read: “It’s not that I didn’t try. It’s that I tried in the wrong direction.”

He had also wondered why men’s clothing rarely had anti-tamper ribbons.

Because when he bought men’s clothing himself, if it didn’t fit, he returned it. He had never once thought of wearing something out and then returning it. Not because he was especially moral. The thought simply never crossed his mind. But women’s clothing was different. More styles, faster drops, impulse buying during livestreams, a naturally high return rate. Some people called it a free fitting room. The phrase only made him tired.

At two in the morning, he was still filling out an appeal form. The platform required an unboxing video, return receipt, and screenshots of chat logs. Miss one and it was rejected. He got to page three. The system said, “Please upload a photo of the original shipping label.” He searched his phone. Couldn’t find it. He closed the laptop, went to the balcony, and smoked a cigarette.

The next morning, he opened the product page and added a small line at the very bottom:

“Some items in this shop come with anti-tamper ribbons. Returns and exchanges are not supported after removal. Thank you for understanding.”

The line was small. You had to scroll all the way down to see it. But that afternoon, someone asked in the comments: “What does the anti-tamper ribbon mean? Don’t you trust us?”

He didn’t reply.

He thought of the girl who had snagged the ribbon while trying on the sweater. She hadn’t asked what the ribbon meant. She took a photo and said, “Sorry, it caught. Can I still return it?”

When he approved the return, for the reason he selected “seven-day no-reason return.”

In the corner of the warehouse sat last month’s returned clothes. Some unopened, some opened but unworn, some worn. He walked over and looked through them. A few still had ribbons tied at the collar, fluorescent green, like a row of little fences. The window wasn’t shut tight. Wind came through the gap. The ribbons moved.

He crouched, picked one up, and looked at it. The hangtag was still on. The anti-tamper ribbon was intact. He sniffed it. No smell. He hung it on the rack for relisting and marked the tag “brand new.”

Then he went back to his desk, opened the backend, and changed the order quantity for anti-tamper ribbons from five hundred to two thousand.