Divorced at Forty, I Was Kissed to Tears by a Rough Dockworker

At 38, Su Qingmei had spent half her life as an unpaid nanny. In return, her husband cheated on her with a pampered young woman, and her own daughter thought she was an embarrassment, serving the chicken soup Su Qingmei had simmered all afternoon to her father's mistress.

Su Qingmei neither cried nor made a scene. She took a cleaver and smashed the rosewood dining table, then walked out with nothing but her divorce papers.

Everyone laughed at the dried-up, sallow-faced woman, certain she wouldn't last three days before coming back on her knees to beg for forgiveness.

Then came a snowy night at the chaotic riverside docks. Su Qingmei set up a huge iron wok, and one steaming plate of stir-fried pork intestines had the sailors along the whole river drooling.

When local thugs came to overturn her wok, Su Qingmei grabbed a pair of red-hot tongs, ready to fight to the death. But Huo Ye, the 26-year-old living Hades who controlled the river's shipping routes, kicked over the thugs' table, swaggering with menace.

Muscles bulging, he held a cigarette between his lips and slammed a whole stack of ten-yuan bills onto the chopping board. “I've got two hundred men under me, and from now on, every one of them eats at Boss Su's place! Anyone who dares overturn her wok, I'll crack his skull first!”

Later, her scumbag ex-husband went bankrupt and ended up homeless, while her ungrateful daughter wept and knelt, begging to be forgiven.

But all they saw was Huo Ye, once a river-shipping magnate famed far and wide, wearing an apron and pinning Su Qingmei against the stove, his eyes bloodshot. His voice was hoarse as he asked, “Boss Su, I chopped half a ton of onions for you. Can you finally give me a proper place in your life tonight?”