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At seventy-three, Huo Qinghe of the Agricultural Sciences Academy collapsed in a breeding field. The last thing she saw was the drought-cracked soil of the experimental plots. When she opened her eyes again, it was 1973, and she was a military martyr's widow who had just been driven to her death by her husband's family. Her three children sat beside a cold stove, waiting to be traded in a marriage exchange to secure a bride and a dowry for their foolish uncle. The people inside were still scheming over the compensation money when she knocked over the ancestral tablet and grabbed two steamed buns. "I'm not trading anyone in. I'm taking the children with me."
She traveled 120 li of mountain roads with three children and a certificate honoring her husband as a martyr, riding all the way to the border regiment's gate. She told the guard, "Tell Yu Zhenchuan to come out."
The notorious Regiment Commander Yu, a living King of Hell said to have blood on his hands and a scowl for every woman he met, stared at the woman and her three kids, his brows furrowing into the character for "river."
Later, the entire military district was abuzz with rumors. Regiment Commander Yu, a man even officers ranked above company commander went out of their way to avoid, was squatting in his courtyard washing cloth diapers for three children. And when someone smeared her name, he silently investigated their entire family down to the last detail.
Meanwhile, the saline-alkali land in her hands, which was supposed to remain barren until 1980, produced the county's first harvest of a thousand jin per mu that year.
