No one who lived through that era will ever forget the mark it left on them. They will never forget the sweeping family-planning campaigns, or what life and study were like back then. The story's protagonist is Xu Shunlai, the third of his siblings. After graduating from middle school, his parents had him learn carpentry. He married a girl from a neighboring village, and together they had six daughters. The fifth daughter died of chickenpox at the age of six. Xu Shunlai was the only household in the village with daughters but no sons, so in the end his second daughter married a live-in son-in-law to care for him in his old age and see him laid to rest. Xu Shunlai died in a car accident at the age of sixty-five.
