I spent forty years surviving in the palace, starting as the Empress Dowager's maid who did her hair and ending up as Matron Rong.
As she lay dying, she gripped my hand and said, "Don't go into the palace in your next life."
I closed my eyes, opened them again, and became a widow with three children in the 1980s.
Looking at the mud-brick house with nothing in it and three little dependents crying to be fed,
I pulled out the Empress Dowager's gifts: The Imperial Kitchen's Secret Recipes, Beauty Treatments for a Thousand Gold, and Infant Massage Techniques.
A village thug next door tries to take advantage of me?
I retaliate with a packet of secret palace-made itching powder, keeping him scratching day and night for three days straight.
Later, everyone in the commune knows that the braised meat this widow makes smells delicious for miles, and the embroidery patterns she sews can earn foreign currency.
The township head comes to my door in person. "Comrade Li, the organization would like you to teach the women a few things."
The three children I'm raising cling to my legs and call me Mom.
I'm wondering whether to start a chicken farm or open a tailor shop,
when the demobilized soldier who often comes to buy braised meat slips two extra yuan into my basket, his ears red.
