Mr. Jiang, Please Take Care of Me for the Rest of Our Lives

Lu Ning loved Jiang Yan for all four years of college. She thought that once they graduated, she and Jiang Yan would get married. But her parents opposed the idea, refusing to let her marry a penniless man from the countryside who was about to spend three years teaching in a remote area. Under the crushing pressure of bride-price demands, homeownership, civil-service exams, and comparisons with others, Lu Ning decided to fight back and follow her heart. She went to Liangzhou, where Jiang Yan was teaching. Seeing its barren land and the people of Cliff Village, whose lives were filled with both despair and hope, only strengthened her resolve to start a business. Riding the entrepreneurial wave of 2005, Lu Ning started with a small tutoring center. From renting a home to building one herself, and then entering real estate, she steadily grew her business into a major success. Bride-price demands, cars, and homes were no longer problems, and Cliff Village eventually achieved a modestly prosperous life... Keywords: bride-price, civil-service exams, teaching in remote areas, poverty alleviation and education, entrepreneurship, hard work, period fiction