Liu Biying is unattractive but an excellent student. At the beginning of the century, she landed a permanent teaching job. Then she fell in love at first sight with Kuang Dong, a handsome man who had dropped out of rural high school. Even when she became pregnant before marriage, she was willing to marry him despite his modest family background. After the wedding, Kuang Dong’s overreliance on his mother came to the fore. And because Liu Biying gave birth to a girl, contrary to the Kuang family’s beliefs under the one-child policy, their conflicts intensified and their marriage teetered on the brink.
As their daughter Kuang grew up, she witnessed her father’s unhealthy devotion to her grandmother. Because her father cared for her, her grandmother grew jealous and tormented her. Her mother had originally championed gender equality, but the pressure of her environment led her to pursue a male child as if possessed by a nightmare. After the policy allowing a second child was introduced, she became obsessed with having a boy, harming her daughter in the process. She even made Kuang sleep in the basement while she was in her final year of high school, after giving birth to a boy, so that she would not disturb her little brother’s sleep. After enduring harm from two generations of elders, Kuang finished college and took revenge, further worsening the conflict between Liu Biying and her mother-in-law. Eventually, time wore down their sharp edges. The grandmother was so crippled by illness that she could no longer get out of bed and cause trouble, while Liu Biying, exhausted from caring for her son, had no choice but to try to rebuild her relationship with her husband. Their daughter, meanwhile, finally found her own path in a more accepting world.
The conflicts among three generations of the Kuang family seemed to have come to an end. But when the youngest son, Kuang Boqian, grew up and married, another cycle began. The conflict between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law across three generations escalated once more. The daughter-in-law who had slain the dragon ultimately became a dragon herself. To be continued.
