Love on a Construction Site

[New book]+ [Lots of beautiful women] This story is adapted from real events (it contains content involving minors, so minors should read with discretion). In 2006, when I joined the people from my village heading to a construction site, the tears I’d shed on the day my red bridal veil was lifted hadn’t even dried. My name is Zhou Xiaomei. I once dreamed of a wedding with a phoenix crown and embroidered robes, but in the end I bowed to a bride price of 88,000 yuan and married a man from the neighboring town whom I’d met only three times.

Fate was like the sand blowing around the construction site, blinding me until I could barely open my eyes. When my husband lay in the hospital, his amputated left leg thinner than the medical bills, I knew I would never get to ride in a bridal sedan chair in this lifetime. Then I ran into him again among the cement and rebar: the man who used to make me wake up crying in the middle of the night, now standing beneath a tower crane with a hard hat on.

The splashes of mortar on my trouser legs looked just like the stains on my seven-year marriage. The moment he handed me a new hard hat, I suddenly heard something crack inside me, like the enamel washbasin from my dowry smashing against the threshold all those years ago.