In the third year of the natural disasters, the land was strewn with starving corpses. For half a sack of grain, my mother-in-law planned to sell me to Zhang the Butcher, who lived at the village entrance, as his new wife. Blocking the doorway, she haggled with the matchmaker, spittle flying. "My Wan'er (my surname is Lin, and my given name is Wan) is a fine, fertile girl. She's sixteen and strong. Zhang the Butcher has buried three wives and needs someone who can bear him a child. Twenty taels of silver, and I won't take a penny less!"
The matchmaker lowered her voice. "People are starving to death. Who cares about having children? Five taels of silver and a sack of coarse rice. Not a grain more!"
While they argued themselves red in the face over my "price," I was sitting in the empty