A Copper Thimble

In the autumn of 1945, Zhaojiazhuang in southwestern Shandong was filled with the sweet smell of ripe sorghum. Eighteen-year-old Shuan Zhu followed his father, Lao Zhaotou, and drove a donkey cart for thirty miles to a dilapidated market. In the corner of the market squatted a few ragged human traffickers, with several sallow-looking girls standing beside them. "That's it, two bags of sorghum, no more." Old Zhaotou poked one of the girls on the shoulder with his rough fingers. The girl trembled in fright, but did not dare to raise her head. Shuan Zhu secretly looked at the girl who would become his wife. She was pitifully thin, and her wrists were so thin that they seemed to break at the first break, but her drooping neck was unexpectedly white, glowing like pearls in the autumn sun. "You're sixteen, you can have children." The trafficker grinned, showing his yellow teeth, "The family suffered a disaster, and both parents starved to death. They are still clean." In this way, sixteen-year-old Chuntao was bought into the Zhao family with two bags of sorghum. On the way back to the village, she sat on a bumpy donkey cart, clutching the only baggage she had - a copper thimble her mother had given her before she died. "When you arrive at the Zhao family, you become a member of the Zhao family." Old Zhao said without looking back, "Serve your man well, have a baby as soon as possible, and don't imitate those sluts who don't follow the rules of women." Chuntao lowered her head, tears falling silently on her knees. She remembered what her mother often said: "A woman is the life of rapeseed, and it will take root wherever it is sown." Now, she was sown in this strange land————