Pei Yan, the aloof, proud heir of a powerful Beijing family, proposed to me in public when he was twenty-nine and I was forty-seven. No one believed in a marriage with an eighteen-year age gap. But he didn’t know that I owned a home and a car, and my ex-husband’s alimony was enough to last three lifetimes. After we married, my young husband clung to me every night. Until one day, he slapped a report down on the table. “Honey, am I going through early menopause? We only did it five times last night, and you were already saying you couldn’t go on.” I adjusted my reading glasses and made him a cup of goji berry tea. “Be good. Mom says it’s time to take care of your health at your age.”
