A Caged Bird in His Palm

The honest, down-to-earth Liu Zhi is the bottom, while the unhinged doctor Shu Yu is the top

Poverty is a word with no lower limit. Liu Zhi was born as his family’s last hope. In this poor rural household, his two older brothers had barely glimpsed the world before they hurriedly left it. The villagers said the family must be cursed. Illness and poverty, impossible to escape, clung to them like a venomous snake with its tongue flicking out.

Liu Zhi’s name was the hope his mother had “embroidered” into him. “Zhi” suggested a tender sprout reaching for the sun, still untouched by wind and frost. Fate has never understood the meaning of “mercy.” It only keeps pushing those who already suffer deeper into the whirlpool. When Liu Zhi was five, his mother fell in a field blooming with wild chrysanthemums. The flowers, stained red with blood, bloomed so vividly.

His father was a rural old man who had been bedridden for years. He had spent half his life confined to that bed, his rusted legs swallowed up by damp bedding until they seemed to merge with it. Liu Zhi should have been a carefree child, going to school and enjoying his mother’s love, but instead he was forced to shoulder the burden of the family.

Liu Zhi had little education. To him, any work that paid was worth doing. Besides farming in the village, he went into the city to do grueling labor. As the days wore on, his mother’s original wish for him had long since been worn into calluses by the hoe, soaked into scabs by sweat, and drenched like a match in the rain, no longer able to spark a flame.