Bitter Vines, Hard to Untangle

In the winter of 1920, at the age of seven, she knelt before her parents’ cold bodies with her little brother in her arms. At sixteen, her aunt sold her to an old bachelor for half a dou of rice. At twenty-three, her husband died a cruel death, and her mother-in-law sold her off for two silver dollars. She endured beatings and humiliation in the Wang family and gave birth to five children, only to lose her husband again and be driven out. She struggled to keep her five children alive as they fled from disaster, but in her old age, the youngest son she had doted on abandoned her in the old house, leaving her to starve until she was barely alive. Like a bitter vine, she spent her whole life crawling through turbulent times. In the end, she never even got a bowl of hot porridge, and died alone in an empty, dilapidated house.