Xiuxiu's Story, Book 103

Do widows really need to erect a monument to their chastity? Whoever wants one can put one up. On lonely nights, when all you can do is dream of romance or douse the flames with cold water, how could you possibly keep your virtue intact?

They say there’s always gossip around a widow’s home. Tian Jiao was widowed at twenty-five, and on top of that, her wicked mother-in-law made life difficult at every turn. Men came knocking in the middle of the night, asking to sleep with her, while women snuck into her fields during the day to scatter poison. Tian Jiao handled every incident with cleverness and poise.

When the village’s intellectually disabled residents were struck dead one after another by lightning, and later began disappearing during the construction of a highway, both events became local mysteries no one could solve.

Follow a widow’s entrepreneurial journey, witness strange happenings in a mountain village, and explore the impulsiveness, tenderness, weakness, courage, pure love, and calculated marriages of that era, along with all the little stories unfolding from one end of the village to the other.

Enjoy the story.