At eighteen, Yuan Shubei came to Beijing.
That day, the sky was exceptionally clear, and Beijing was especially beautiful and grand in September. The university campus was even more inviting. At twenty-two, she entered the workforce and left her campus romance behind.
Trying to make ends meet, she drifted along, working hard as an office worker for several years. Then one day, she suddenly realized she should find a boyfriend and get married. As it happened, fate came through for her: at twenty-seven, she met him, a thirty-year-old man. Even now, she still describes their relationship as love at first sight and mutual affection. In the second year after they met, she went to his hometown. It was so poor and backward that she could barely find the words to complain. She asked to break up. Although he did everything he could to make her stay, she was resolute: she did not want to bear the burden of his family's poverty from the previous generation.
At thirty, she was still unmarried. Aside from the passing years, the city had given her nothing. She was still renting an apartment and commuting by bus, and her savings could not support her for more than a year or so. Her parents in their small hometown urged her to get married. One after another, her friends her age were getting pregnant and having children...
This novel and its characters are purely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.
