I was thinking that Shen Wei has strong ideals and is unwaveringly, unabashedly committed to them, like when he upfront challenges ZYL with "Do you really think Dixingren are so different from us?" -- and that makes him feel very grounded in a way that is kind of lacking from ZYL's life at that point.

Oh, that's true, I hadn't thought of it in those terms before! But that makes sense to me, yeah. ZYL definitely likes that about SW.