The Third Spring of Wild Reeds

She was widowed at the age of 19, forced to remarry at the age of 23, and her husband was imprisoned - Ji Xiaoli's life is a story of being torn apart by fate again and again, and mended again and again by her own hands. In 1995, she put her three-year-old daughter into her grandmother's arms and jumped on the green train heading south with only 37 yuan. In the garment factory in Guangzhou, the steel needles of the sewing machines pierced the fabric and also pierced her longing for her daughter. Until that lame man appeared - Niu Guang, a young man who could repair any machine with a wrench. He taught her that what she picked up was not a sewing needle, but the hair scissors that cut off her destiny. In five years, they went from being workshop workers to barber shop partners, but there was always a restrained distance between them. She was still bound by the shackles of her old love, but he just waited silently for her to make a decision. Until one day, Niu Guang pushed a brand-new hair scissors in front of her - "This time, you can cut it yourself." From rural areas in southern Shaanxi to urban villages in Guangzhou, from a widowed young woman to a mother of three children, Ji Xiaoli spent thirty years completing the most difficult journey for a woman to turn around. There is no fairy tale in her story, only the blood pricked by the sewing machine, the cocoon created by the scissors, and a stubborn soul that never bows. This is not a counterattack novel, this is a story about a real-life woman who forcibly carved a way out of a desperate situation.