Fen's Wonderful Life

In the countryside of the 1990s, Xu Fen was like a wild weed transplanted into a crack in the rocks. She married Liu Jun, an elementary school teacher, only to enter a family that saw her as an outsider. Her cruel in-laws and cold-hearted brother- and sister-in-law made life’s hardships and trials begin under the very same roof. The neighbors’ sympathetic looks were silent footnotes to her suffering.

An even heavier burden came from the times. The iron fist of family-planning policy hung overhead, and Liu Jun, a public-sector employee, carried the equivalent of a “ticking time bomb” in the form of their three children. He lived in fear day and night: afraid the children would be discovered, afraid he would lose his job, afraid their family would collapse in an instant. Caught between his in-laws’ reproaches and pressure from the outside world, this timid yet loving man was silently squeezed into the role of the family’s “sandwich layer.” In the end, he died consumed by anxiety.

The family’s breadwinner was gone, and everyone thought this wild weed, Xu Fen, would wither away. Instead, she dried her tears and carried the weight of the world on her frail shoulders. She had to fight poverty and stubbornly put her children through school in the face of the common prejudice that “daughters are useless.” Her life was an epic struggle to rise from the soil: from a daughter-in-law who was always mistreated to a mother who stood tall and strong. Half a lifetime of hard work earned her children college degrees and helped them establish families and careers. At last, she won the respect that had been so long denied her.

She had never received much schooling, yet she became the greatest teacher in her children’s lives.