The Brooding Beauty and the Roughneck

Marriage Before Love + Falling in Love Over Time + Building Wealth + Fiercely Protecting His Wife Hangcheng suburbs, 2006. Eighteen-year-old Wen Yining has a disabled father and a mother who favors her younger brother. At home, she's both the unpaid maid and the family ATM. Before she can even graduate from vocational school, her parents are already plotting to marry her off for a bride price to save money for her brother's wedding. With her heart broken, she chooses Xie Wang, a quiet, dark-skinned man who looks rather rough around the edges. Everyone laughs at her for being foolish, giving up a good life just to jump into another pit of misery. Only Wen Yining knows that life anywhere is better than life in that house. She stakes the rest of her life on this one gamble, never expecting to win. Xie Wang is awkward and quiet, with no talent for sweet talk, but he hides all his tenderness in what he does. When her family comes demanding money, he blocks the doorway with a hoe and coldly drives every one of them away. When she wants to get a job and learn a trade, he saves up without a word to pay for her training classes, and always waits outside the factory to walk her home after dark. People say a rough country man doesn't know how to cherish a woman, but Wen Yining knows how warm his hands are and how steady his shoulder feels. Later, the couple start out as street vendors and make a solid life for themselves in Hangcheng, living more prosperously with each passing day. When someone asks Wen Yining if she regrets her choice, she smiles and leans against Xie Wang. The best decision I ever made was marrying him.