When Ruan Tang woke up, she had not only become the ill-fated cannon-fodder character with the same name in a novel set in a bygone era, but was also straddling a handsome man whose hands were tied with hemp rope and whose eyes were red at the corners.
The original owner had gone mad with love and accidentally tied up her younger brother. Then Ruan Tang, drunk and carried away, went all the way and slept with him.
Facing an impending accusation of hooliganism and a creditor demanding the exorbitant sum of three hundred yuan for surgery, Ruan Tang just wanted to cover her face and pretend she was dead.
To her surprise, the seemingly aloof and frail man grabbed her wrist and confronted her, his eyes rimmed red. “Comrade Ruan Tang, you’ve taken my innocence. You have to take responsibility.”
Soon the whole village knew that Ruan Tang, who had once chased after an educated youth, had “bought” Qin Jiming, the pretty boy sent down to work in the cowshed, as her live-in son-in-law with a meal of coarse rice and 280 yuan in compensation.
Everyone laughed at Ruan Tang for trading a watermelon for a sesame seed, and at Qin Jiming for bowing to five pecks of rice. They predicted that this couple, brought together by a forced bargain, would soon split up.
That is, until the college entrance exams were reinstated and Qin Jiming came first, becoming the center of everyone’s attention as a top scholar.
