New Life, Starting from Scratch

When I discovered that my wife was cheating on me, I was going through the retirement procedures at the Human Resources Department. It turns out that my wife Xu Li, together with her first love when she was a teenager, travels to the mountains, seas and rivers every year. From the age of twenty-two to fifty-two, from the snowy Mount Paektu to the shadows of coconut trees with clear water and white sand, from black hair to white hair, they traveled all over the motherland. Half their lives seemed like a blink of an eye. I sat there for an afternoon, thinking carefully about what I had been doing in the past thirty years. I am a mine worker. I have worked conscientiously in our local Hongtu Mining Industry for more than thirty years. I have three meals a day, food and clothing, and taking care of my wife and children. I have finally reached the age of retirement, and I think my happy old age is about to begin. But when I took all the procedures to apply for retirement, everything changed! I looked at them and asked myself repeatedly: Yes, I am over fifty, why do I still need to get divorced? Life is rarely confusing. If you pretend not to know some things, you will slowly forget them. But as a man, I cannot deceive myself, nor can I forget. I looked at my family members with different expressions and said firmly: "This marriage must be divorced..."