In the late stages of stomach cancer, fifty-one-year-old Shen Ruowei lies in her hospital bed. Her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Zhao Qing, has just paid the final hospital bill. She asks only one question:
“Mom, why didn't you get divorced back then?”
In 1998, twenty-three-year-old Shen Ruowei had already discovered that her husband, Zhao Jianguo, had run up thirty thousand yuan in loan-shark debt through gambling. But she had only a middle-school education. She didn't know how debts were divided, or where to go to file for divorce. Her parents urged her to endure it, and the Zhao family knelt and promised things would change, so she swallowed her words.
Then came the creditors kicking down the door, the sewing machine being sold, and her daughter growing up amid demands for repayment. Meanwhile, life pushed Shen Ruowei through factory assembly lines, illness, and one unpaid bill after another.
When she opens her eyes again, she's back on the morning the gambling debt's IOU first appeared.
This time, she decides to get divorced.
But she also knows that if she leaves this marriage, Zhao Qing from her previous life will never be born into the same life again.
Shen Ruowei has no System, and she doesn't suddenly gain the skills of a lawyer, accountant, or business owner. She won't understand the forms, she'll get the sums wrong, she'll believe people who promise “it'll sell later,” and when she's afraid of losing money, she'll agree to overtime on someone else's behalf.
All she can do is start with forty-six yuan, an old treadle sewing machine, and a borrowed room at the back of a house.
She hems trousers, mends work uniforms, rushes to make school uniforms, and repairs wedding dresses. She has orders returned, gets docked pay, and owes wages. Her own impatience even hurts someone who was genuinely trying to help her. Every time she gets back on her feet, it comes at a real cost.
Getting another chance doesn't mean knowing in advance how to win.
It means finally being willing to ask, before putting her fingerprint on anything:
Whose debt is this? Whose money? Who agreed to it?
