In the winter of 1980, Shen Xiyan was set up by her stepmother and sent from the provincial capital to the remote Hongxing Machinery Plant in the northwest "for a period of hard work."
She fell into an icy river and was hauled out by a man built like a block of iron. Too frozen to speak, she remembered only how scorching hot his army coat felt around her, and how his chest was like a slab of steel.
By the next day, the whole workers' compound was buzzing: the factory director had carried a woman back to his single dorm, her clothes soaked and clinging to her body, leaving nothing to the imagination.
The authorities called them in for a talk, and the neighborhood office applied pressure.
Lu Suichen spoke in a cold voice: "Let's get married."
Shen Xiyan thought it was a fake marriage, a convenient arrangement for them both.
Until the seventh day of their marriage, when the 12-square-meter dorm room was stiflingly hot. She stood in front of the electric fan, wiping sweat in a thin nightdress, and turned straight into the man's dark, reddened gaze.
He told her not to move.
His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping against iron.
Only later did she learn that this man, who showed no mercy to the plant's thousands of workers, could shut the door and press her into his very bones, asking her over and over if she'd had enough.
Later still, someone came from the provincial capital, saying they had come to take the eldest daughter of the Shen family home to reclaim her place in the family.
Lu Suichen stubbed out his cigarette and looked up at the visitor, his voice colder than the wind in the depths of winter. "She's my wife. Let's see who dares take her away."
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