My maternal grandmother married my maternal grandfather in 1956 and gave birth to their eldest daughter, Xiangxiang. But for more than a decade after that, she had no more children, so they adopted my eldest maternal uncle, Laishun. Laishun was sickly from childhood. My grandparents sold everything they owned and borrowed from everyone in the village, spending two years before finally nursing him back to health. Then my grandmother gave birth to her own son, Laifu, followed by a daughter, Xiuxiu, the next year.
The story took a turn after my eldest maternal uncle got married. His wife was lazy and idle all day long: she never went to work for the production team, never did housework, and constantly criticized the family, looking down on the poor and fawning over the rich. She even ran off to town with someone else to find a man. When she couldn't find anyone willing to take her on, she wrote to my grandparents and eldest aunt, asking them to come get her. After she returned, she became even lazier. Once she had a child, she treated herself like a princess and ordered my formidable grandmother around like a servant. My grandmother had no tolerance for nonsense. Even though my usually mild-mannered grandfather strongly opposed splitting off my eldest uncle's family, she ignored him and did it anyway. As a result, my eldest uncle's family grew to resent her.
The already complicated relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law grew even worse. As the years went by, and my eldest uncle's wife had three or four children, my grandfather unfortunately caught pneumonia, coughed up blood, and died.
My widowed grandmother wept as if the world had ended.
Later, my younger maternal uncle needed to get married, so he married Xiuxiu off and used her bride price to pay for his own wedding.
His wife was no pushover either. She criticized my grandmother every day, and the two of them fought every other day.
In her old age, my grandmother hanged herself.
