The Shadow Child of the 1970s: My Daughter Is No Harbinger of Disaster

1970s era + suspense + supernatural + literary metaphor

On a spring night in 1971, I suffered a difficult labor and gave birth to a baby girl whose whole body was purplish blue, a “purple baby.”

My mother-in-law called her a shadow demon who would bring ruin to the whole family, and the villagers wanted to report us for feudal superstition.

Only I knew that the black shadow slipping into my daughter’s heart was no god of calamity. It was a talisman meant just for her.

In these times, everyone is engaged in class struggle.

And I, Zhou Xiuqin, am waging a struggle against the shadows.

Using the cleanest characters in the dictionary, I won her the name Chen Qingheng.

I watch out for my vicious mother-in-law and stay wary of my cold husband. And late at night, I stare intently at the eerie shadow outside the window, its head topped with a uniform cap...

Then the educated youth arrive in the village. A cold-faced young man named Shen Yan picks up the cigarette butt outside my door, his gaze like a knife as it pierces straight toward the baby in my arms.

He shouts, “Xiuqin, don’t you remember me?”

In one sentence: In the 1970s, a baby girl branded a “shadow demon” and her mother fight for survival and innocence in a dual hunting ground of reality and the supernatural.

[1970s era + suspense + fantasy + revenge + protecting her child + devoted mother + comeback + outsmarting the enemy]