My husband, Gu Yan, died, leaving me with just one inheritance: a torn one-mao banknote.
In his notarized will, he left his hundred-billion-yuan fortune and company shares entirely to my stepsister, Lin Weiwei.
To stop me from claiming any of it, he even set up a trust fund worth tens of millions specifically to deal with me.
In a video, he tossed our wedding rings into the trash.
"Lin Shu, you married me with just one mao. Now we're even."
With those words, he erased the sacrifices I had made throughout forty years of marriage.
I knew he hated me.
He hated me for using a scheme to take Lin Weiwei's place in the city all those years ago, forcing him to marry me.
Now, with that one-mao coin, he trampled my dignity and ground it to dust.
As Lin Weiwei passed me, she spoke in a voice only the two of us could hear, her words dripping with scorn:
"Do you see now, Sis? So what if you married him? His heart, his body, his money, it's all mine. You're nothing but a joke, sitting on a throne you don't deserve."
At the funeral, after the guests had left, I clutched the one-mao coin. My heart stopped, and I collapsed in front of his coffin.
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to 1975, the day before the decision about who would be sent to the countryside.
This time, I tore up the application I had prepared and signed up for the most remote border region instead.
I would let him be with the woman he had always loved.
Yet the moment I boarded the train heading west, he went mad with desperation:
"Lin Shu! Come back! I was wrong. I'm begging you, come back!"
