In the 16th year of the Republic of China, Tianjin.
Yu Wan was a female actor in the Qinghe class and became famous after singing "The Peony Pavilion". She was sold into a theater troupe by her father at the age of nine, and went on stage at the age of twelve. At the age of eighteen, she was redeemed by Wen Chi, the adjutant of the Marshal's Mansion, and changed her surname to Wen Yuwan, and enrolled in the Zhili Women's Normal School.
Wen Chi was the concubine of the Marshal's Mansion, and his biological mother was an actor. She died in a side courtyard. He had been standing in this mansion for more than ten years, and no one asked him to sit down. Redeeming Yu Wan's life was the first time he made a decision for himself.
The two of them lived in a small courtyard in the south of the city, with a pomegranate tree and a lantern, and lived a frugal and quiet life. She painted advertisements, carved wax boards, and saved money to study. He stands guard, performs tasks, and finds a way to survive in the cracks of the times. No one said "I like it", but he stuffed the cotton socks into her blue cloth bag in advance, and she put the scarf around his neck and said "it looks good".
From the theater troupe to the female teacher, from literacy in Baoding to hanging up the "Wen Yu Ji" sign, Yu Wan redefined her own life using the words taught by her father. In the spring of the year when the Marshal's Mansion collapsed, the pomegranate tree blossomed, and her father and younger brother entered her home for the first time. She made him a pot of hot tea. It's not forgiveness, it's enough.
——A slow-burning story in the marketplace of the Republic of China. Write about the dignity of ordinary people, neither humbleness nor arrogance, and the stable daily life in troubled times.
