’60s Military Wife: I Raised Pigs and Earned Seven Medals!

When Lin Wanqiu opened her eyes, she had become a young wife in 1960, one who had just been angered into fainting by her sister-in-law.

Her husband was an officer stationed far away with his unit. Left behind were two children with sallow faces and a pile of gossip from people who said she refused to work in the fields, called her wasteful, and mocked her for digging a deep well.

She split from the family! Taking the children, she moved out, spent every last penny they had, and dug three wells, each twenty-five meters deep, in the courtyard.

The whole village laughed at her for being crazy. “There’s no drought in sight! Why dig wells that deep? Got money to burn?”

She shut the doors tight. The vegetables in her courtyard were fresh and lush, the chickens and ducks plump, and every meal her children had eggs and meat.

Then the severe drought really came. The rivers dried up, and the village wells ran dry.

Only the deep wells at her home still gushed with clear spring water, saving Kaoshantun and helping the villages for miles around.

The very people who had mocked her lined up outside her home to beg for water.

While others chewed tree bark, she used her modern knowledge to teach the villagers how to raise seedlings and grow vegetables. Her own courtyard produced out-of-season fruits and vegetables that became rare delicacies in the county town, and her eggs were always in high demand.

She didn’t work in the fields or earn work points, yet she secretly bought a house in the county town for each of her children and snapped up a whole row of courtyard homes in the capital.

Later, she had five more children with her officer husband. With seven children gathered around her, every one of them grew up fair and bright.

Her mother-in-law went from nagging every day to keeping quiet. Her father-in-law praised her to everyone he met, and she even brought him to the capital to see the world.

When her husband finally came home on leave, he saw his wife, more radiant than any city girl, his sturdy, bright-eyed sons and adorable daughter, a lively courtyard, and a well-stocked home. The iron-blooded soldier’s eyes turned red on the spot.

A military wife who never worked in the fields or followed her husband to the army, yet made the whole family rich and held countless properties in her hands.

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