On My First Night as a Widow in 1970s China, I Stumbled Into a Rugged Man's Arms and Got Kissed

“Get out.”

On a stormy night, Lu Zheng, the whole village’s most feared “Living Yama,” glared with a murderous look at the little woman standing at his door, drenched from head to toe after fleeing the moment she was widowed.

Shen Zhixia trembled, but clung tightly to his burning-hot arm. “Brother, please… save me.”

To stay alive, she barged into the Yama’s lair and became his “distant cousin” in name.

Everyone expected the delicate young widow to be thrown out to the wolves by Lu Zheng.

But then

When she complained that the food was too coarse, Lu Zheng went up the mountain in the middle of the night to hunt pheasants and get her finer grain.

When someone bullied her, Lu Zheng showed up at the ruffian’s door with an axe. “Who dares lay a finger on her?”

After she repaired an abandoned sewing machine and dazzled the whole area with her skills, winning the local commune secretary’s repeated advances, the usually taciturn, rugged man cornered her against a wall, his eyes red and his voice hoarse and dangerous. “Making clothes for other men? Shen Zhixia, have you forgotten who your man is?”