The Child Bride from Beggar's Ravine

From the moment a woman crosses the threshold into her husband's family, she's expected to wash clothes, cook, and serve her in-laws. Even getting a hot meal depends on their mood, as if she were born to be her husband's family's unpaid maid. In the famine of 1937, Fuying's father, who had gone to fight the Japanese, vanished without a trace. To survive, Fuying's mother remarried a regimental commander. She believed a household couldn't do without a man, and that her daughter would marry someday anyway, so she took Fuying's younger brother, Fucai, with her. Sixteen-year-old Fuying was left behind in an empty village. Auntie Wang pocketed the life-saving grain her mother had sent back and left her to starve. Desperate to stay alive, Fuying fled to Beggar's Ditch and sold herself as a child bride to the declining landlord Sun family. She was married to a rooster. Her husband, Sun Youcai, was four years younger than her, a frail scholar. For six years, she worked like an ox and a horse to keep the Sun family afloat, tending to the household and making ends meet. She hauled cargo at the docks and worked the fields, supporting the family with her blood and sweat. Yet Sun Youcai stayed home writing poetry and matching couplets, taking her support for granted while calling her uncultured and dull, and sneering at her day in and day out. In a small courtyard untouched by the flames of war, Fuying stayed by her indifferent husband and crumbling home, struggling to raise their five children. Was this life, bought at the cost of her own, worth it?