Reborn: I Raise My Whole Family into Powerhouses

On a winter night in 1975, Lin Sumei was reborn at the age of twenty-eight.

The first thing she did was chop down the old locust tree in the courtyard, the one carved with the words “filial son and worthy descendants.”

Her mother-in-law called her crazy, and the children cried that it had been passed down by their ancestors.

Only her taciturn husband, amid the whole family’s protests, took her blistered hand in his. “Does it hurt? Next time, call me. I’m stronger.”

It was only later that Lin Sumei learned that his “Next time, call me” would last for thirty years.

She helped the widows weave corn husks into a path to prosperity, while he stayed up late making three hundred weaving frames.

The night before an earthquake, she woke the whole village, and he was the first to bring a quilt and sleep on the threshing ground.

When she adopted an abandoned baby girl with six fingers, he quietly made a little wooden bed. “We’ve got a new member of the family. She needs somewhere to sleep.”

Their five children gradually changed, too. They went from waiting to be fed to earning points through hard work, staying up late weaving baskets to pay for their little sister’s treatment.

Years later, a reporter asked, “Chairwoman Lin, what are you most proud of?”

Lin Sumei looked at the man beside her. Chen Housheng was carefully straightening her collar, just as he had once tended to the blisters on her hands.

“What am I most proud of?” She smiled. “Teaching this taciturn man to say three things.”

Chen Housheng looked up, his ears a little red. “The first is, ‘I’ll help you.’ The second is, ‘I believe in you.’ And the third...”

He paused. His voice was quiet, but filled with tenderness. “In our next life, I’ll chop down the trees and walk the road by your side. You just keep moving forward.”

Later, her grandson asked, “Grandma, why did you chop down that tree back then?”

Lin Sumei stroked his head. “Because once the tree was gone, the sunlight could shine in.”