Who Here Is Worth Touching These Hands?

Lin Qiuqiu was a seamstress. For twenty years, her hands had felt every kind of fabric.

The moment she laid her hands on cloth, she could tell its history: whose hands had woven it, whether it had been adulterated, and how many inches it would shrink in water.

Those hands had kept her whole family fed in Qinghe County.

For six years, she saved up twelve thousand yuan to pay for heart surgery for her daughter, Xiaoman.

Three days before the operation, the money was gone.

The drawer was empty. Her husband, Zhou Mingyuan, hadn't come home all night. A neighbor said they'd seen him in the early hours, carrying a child onto a bus bound for the city. The child's mother was his first love.

Her daughter's life had only seven days left.

Lin Qiuqiu didn't cry.

She clutched the ledger with three pages torn out, stood at her worktable, and took out a bolt of burial-clothes fabric.

“I'll finish this job today. Once I get paid, I'll save my daughter's life myself.”

Seven days later, she had pulled her daughter back from the brink.

Then she turned around and began to reclaim everything this family, this man, and all those people who'd laughed at her had taken from her over the past seven years:

One item at a time.