On the day she became a widow at the age of twenty-five, Chen Guizhi bought a sprig of peony at the intersection in the south of the city.
She is illiterate and cannot settle accounts. She lives with her five-year-old daughter in a tube building with an area of 8 square meters. The first time she purchased goods, she was defrauded of 20 yuan - which was the personal money she had saved for eight months. She squatted and cried at the door of the supply and marketing cooperative for five minutes. She stood up, patted the soil, and went in again.
Later, when she became a householder with ten thousand yuan, she still lived in that house. The daughter asked her why she didn't change to a bigger one. She said: "You can see the coal shed from this house. Behind the coal shed is the station. The station can go to Guangzhou."
When my daughter grew up, she really went to Guangzhou. Being cheated, sleeping on the bus, washing dishes, opening a restaurant, getting divorced, learning to make clothes - every step is like her mother, but every step is farther than her mother.
Forty years later, the flower stall in the south of the city is still there. The flower sellers have changed for five generations, and the flower buyers have also changed for five generations. Peony sticks still cost five yuan each, and they are still wrapped in newspapers.
Someone asked her granddaughter: "What is passed down in your family?"
She thought for a while and said: "A tube of toothpaste. A wall of embossed flowers. And one more thing - have you eaten?"
