Swapped into Marriage: Xiulan’s Tragic Life

Exchanging Brides In the early 1980s, in a mountain village in a certain city, there lived a poor, old-fashioned family in a place called Xingziyu. The father had died young, leaving the mother at home to raise the children. One of the two brothers tended the sheep at home, while the other worked away from home. They also had a sister with an intellectual disability. One day, a marriage proposal came for the younger brother: an exchange marriage. In an exchange marriage, the younger brother would marry the other family’s daughter, while his sister would marry one of the two brothers. The elder brother agreed, but the younger brother did not. The man who would marry their sister was perfectly ordinary. The girl promised to the younger brother had an intellectual disability, but was better off than their own sister. Character traits: The mother is selfish and embodies the image of a cruel mother-in-law. The elder brother is illiterate and stingy, and only wants to look after his twenty sheep. The younger brother works away from home and is more shrewd than his elder brother. The sister was born with an intellectual disability and also has polio. The brother in the exchange marriage is an ordinary man who is fairly kind. The sister in the exchange marriage has a mild intellectual disability because she suffered a high fever as a child.