Reborn in the Nineties, She Became the Beloved of a Legal Scholar

Reborn in 1989, Chu Yan, from the family of Lao Chu, an outsider who lived at the eastern end of the village, wanted to sit the entrance exam for Yanjing University. The villagers all said, “There are barely any college graduates in the whole county of Qiulin. How could a farmer’s daughter, born to work in the fields from dawn to dusk, get into university?” The village’s only woman to have passed the technical college entrance exam told her, “A girls’ teacher-training college is enough. The school will assign you a job after graduation, and that’s better than anything. You want to go to university too? Do you know how hard it is to get in? Do you think you can make it? If you fail, you’ll learn the hard way that ignoring your elders’ advice brings trouble.”

After the exams, Chu Yan was admitted to Yanjing University’s law program as the top liberal arts student in the province. Once she entered the capital’s legal circles, leading legal scholars began vying to take her on as a student. Eventually, Chu Yan followed her mentor into private practice, becoming one of the country’s ten best female lawyers and an outstanding public-interest lawyer, among other honors. Her suitors ranged from Yanjing all the way to Minxi, and any one of them would have married her at once if she had said yes. But Chu Yan had eyes only for her career. All she wanted was to take her little one and head toward a new life.