In 1930, eleven-year-old Ma Zhenshan knelt down to watch his mother die, but his father was not there.
In 1937, on the third day after getting married, he was arrested as a laborer and escaped with a narrow escape.
The Japanese asked him to be the security chief. While collecting and storing grain, he reported news to Huzi and helped the Red Army pass on information. After the contact person Lao Zhou was arrested, he was forced to be a "traitor" for five years, and the whole village spat on him.
A crumpled IOU from the Red Army cleared his grievances.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he sent his younger brother to join the army and built a house for his younger brother to get married - spending all the wedding clothes and the money he had saved for many years to build a house. The younger brother turned his back on the debt, and the couple paid off the debt for ten years.
He raised eight daughters and supported his father until he was ninety-nine.
In 1995, two years after his death, his younger brother stood in front of his ancestral grave - "If you don't have a son, you can't enter."
Grandma said: "Put it down. Bury him alone. I will go with him in a few years. He is afraid of the cold."
Grandma was sick for three days. For nearly two decades, she battled cancer and passed away at the age of 83.
This time, the six daughters had a huge quarrel - the third and sixth children were gone, and the fifth and eldest children took the initiative to separate the family. In the end, only the youngest daughter and the visiting son-in-law were mourned alone. They were buried in a grand ceremony, and the old couple were buried together.
The younger brother who stood in front of the ancestral grave in 1995 did not say a word.
This is the story of a man without a son who carried everyone on his shoulders.
He had never accepted his fate in his life.
Neither did his daughter.
