Zhao Zongbao couldn’t understand how his perfectly good home had suddenly fallen apart, how things had spiraled to the point of divorce.
To him, sending Xiaoxi away was a minor matter. She was just a daughter. He wasn’t the only family doing this.
Everyone around them was doing it!
The slightly better ones sent their daughters to hide in their maternal family’s mountain villages for a few years. The worse ones, like his own family, simply gave the child away. Even more extreme cases, like his Second Sister, went straight to the hospital to have a doctor check the baby’s sex. If it was a girl, they aborted it. If it was a boy, they kept it.
And what if the check said boy, but a girl was born? The truly heartless would just toss the infant into a manure pit to drown. The slightly softer-hearted would place the baby in a wooden basin and set it adrift downstream. If she was lucky, a kind soul would find and adopt her. If she was unlucky, encountering rainy weather or starving before anyone found her—well, that was just her fate!
Who told them to be so unlucky as to be born female?
With so many such examples around him, Zhao Zongbao, a male who had enjoyed every privilege of boyhood since birth, saw nothing wrong with giving away a daughter.
In his heart, anything that didn’t harm his own interests was perfectly reasonable.
Now that Xu Huiqing wanted a divorce, he clearly found that unreasonable.
Xu Huiqing was the woman he had waited three years for. The moment she graduated, he had frantically pushed Father Zhao and Mother Zhao to propose marriage again, spending three thousand yuan in betrothal gifts to wed her.
That had caused quite a stir back in Xu Family Village at the time!
If he hadn’t been the Zhao family’s only son and heir, if Father and Mother Zhao hadn’t taken a liking to Mother Xu’s ability to bear sons and assumed Xu Huiqing would be the same, combined with Xu Huiqing’s status as a ‘college student,’ how could they ever have been willing to spend so much to marry a country girl as a daughter-in-law?
And Xu Huiqing had indeed matched their expectations and all the neighbors’ chatter: virtuous, gentle, obedient, sensible. She was exactly the model daughter and model daughter-in-law that society had spent centuries cultivating, fulfilling every fantasy they had for a wife and daughter-in-law.
Zhao Zongbao was naturally immensely satisfied with Xu Huiqing.
Zhao Zongbao, who had originally been filled with hatred for Xu Huiqing, wishing he could just kill her, felt the raging fury in his eyes recede like the tide upon hearing she wanted a divorce. He only said one thing: “Tell Xu Huiqing to come here. I want her to tell me this herself!”
When Xu Huiqing heard this message, she couldn’t even be bothered to sneer.
Although she and Zhao Zongbao hadn’t registered their marriage, in their local area, de facto marriages were recognized. She filed for divorce with the Water Wharf Town People’s Court.
These were both chaotic and orderly times. The court’s handling of divorce cases wasn’t the kind where the first hearing refused to grant divorce, forcing you to wait a year to file again, then wait another half year for a court date, go through mediation, and wait yet another half year for another hearing. A simple, ordinary divorce case wouldn’t drag on for two or three years without resolution.
Because of the ‘human trafficking’ case, with Old Zhao definitively sentenced to death, and Zhao Zongbao and Mother Zhao also receiving their sentences, the case was essentially settled. Combined with the fact that Water Wharf Town People’s Court handled only a handful of cases a year, her divorce application was processed extremely quickly. Zhao Zongbao didn’t even need to appear in court to consent—the town court simply granted her the divorce.
When she emerged from the courthouse, a government worker inside saw the child in her arms and asked, “Is this the child you went searching for?”
Xu Huiqing gently stroked Xiaoxi’s head and gave a soft “Mm.”
The court worker said to Xiaoxi, “Be good and listen to your mother. Your mother went through so much to find you. She didn’t even care about her own health, going into the mountains to search for you right after her postpartum confinement ended.”
Xiaoxi, who had been very quiet lately, lifted her head from her mother’s neck and looked at the town court worker, blinking her large eyes, seeming to half-understand.
Xu Huiqing didn’t know what kind of impact her Second Sister Zhao’s words from her previous life—”Your mother doesn’t want you anymore, your mother told me to sell you!” “Your mother will sell you off once she has a little brother”—had on Xiaoxi’s young heart, day after day. Nor the words spoken by the family in the deep mountains after she was sold: “You’re just cheap! A girl child in the mountains is meant to be drowned! Who would want you? Even your mother doesn’t want you!” “If your mother wanted you, how could she have sold you?” “If your mother didn’t agree, how could your second aunt have sold you?” She didn’t know the impact these daily repetitions had on Xiaoxi’s young heart back then, nor did she know the impact the court worker’s single sentence had on Xiaoxi’s young heart now.
Xiaoxi still didn’t understand many things, but she did understand what Second Aunt and Grandma meant by “Your mother doesn’t want you anymore now that she has a little brother!” and “Your mother told me to sell you.”
She also didn’t understand the meaning of the court worker’s words: “Your mother went searching for you, uncaring of her own health, going into the mountains right after her confinement.” But these words too were stored in her heart, and as she grew day by day, she would come to understand them, day by day.
Xu Huiqing’s own memories before the age of seven were extremely thin. She only remembered a few vivid fragments. So she didn’t know that Xiaoxi, barely three years old, was already forming lasting memories. She simply smiled and nodded at the town government workers, then carried Xiaoxi away.
With the divorce certificate issued by the town court in hand, she returned to the Zhao family home to pack up her and Xiaoxi’s belongings and prepare to leave.
Ever since she had announced her intention to divorce, the Zhao sisters had moved into the Zhao house, terrified that Xu Huiqing might sell off the entire Zhao estate or take anything valuable with her. They practically watched her day and night.
This task should have fallen to Fifth Sister Zhao. After all, among the Zhao sisters, only Fifth Sister Zhao and her husband had nothing better to do. Fifth Brother-in-law Zhao was an unemployed loafer, perfectly suited to living at his in-laws’ home.
But since Fifth Sister Zhao had gotten the idea of adopting her natal family’s nephew as her own son, she had been terrified that Xu Huiqing would fight her for the boy. She had directly taken Keke back to her own home, not daring to let Xu Huiqing see Keke anymore.
That left only Eldest Sister Zhao and Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao in the house.
Originally, Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao’s parents had been unwilling to let their eldest daughter-in-law go out again. But now, their in-law’s father had been sentenced to death, the mother-in-law to two years, and the grandson’s uncle to a year. The only remaining daughter-in-law wanted a divorce. This vast family wealth of their in-laws—how could they not seize some of it? All those televisions, electric fans, radios… if they could get their hands on the Zhao family’s supply channels, and while the in-laws’ house was empty for a year, couldn’t their family just take over the business?
Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao had long been coveting his little brother-in-law’s electronics shop. Father and son were in perfect agreement. And since Eldest Sister Zhao was a woman who followed her husband’s lead in everything, just like that, Eldest Sister Zhao and Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao moved into the Zhao house, treating it as their personal marital property.
Of course, Eldest Sister Zhao still harbored some fear towards her natal family and her younger brother. Plus, her brother would be out in a year. In her heart, she was actually here to help her brother guard the family property. She was terrified Xu Huiqing would take away even a fraction more than she should, so she followed Xu Huiqing wherever she went.
Seeing Xu Huiqing pack a huge bundle of things, she didn’t dare say a word.
On the surface, Xu Huiqing only took her wages from the past few years and the red envelopes relatives had given when her youngest son was born at his one-month celebration. Eldest Sister Zhao still wanted to say something about even that, but one look from Xu Huiqing silenced whatever she was about to say.
Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao also held Eldest Sister Zhao back, stopping her from speaking.
He was now afraid of his little sister-in-law too. She had directly called the police on his father-in-law, mother-in-law, and second sister-in-law for selling her daughter, and gotten the old man executed by firing squad while the mother-in-law, second sister-in-law, and little brother-in-law were all thrown in prison. Who would dare provoke someone so ruthless?
Eldest Sister Zhao didn’t dare either. So she could only watch helplessly as Xu Huiqing packed up her and Xiaoxi’s things and left.
As Xu Huiqing stepped out of the Zhao family’s main gate, Eldest Sister Zhao spat fiercely at her retreating figure, then drew water from the courtyard and vigorously washed down the doorstep.
Once Xu Huiqing was gone, Eldest Brother-in-law Zhao was overjoyed. That very night, he took a sledgehammer and smashed open the door lock to his father-in-law’s room!
Xu Huiqing didn’t return to her maiden home. She only had someone driving a tricycle in town pass along a message: she had gotten divorced.
Father Xu and Mother Xu had thought her divorce wouldn’t be so quick. They expected she would at least come back to her maiden home first to tell them, then rally her parents and older brothers and sisters-in-law to go together, take what needed taking, move what needed moving. Who knew she would silently handle all the divorce procedures herself, and then just leave alone, with no one knowing where she went.
When Mother Xu heard this news, she cried until her eyes nearly went blind: “This is your fault for letting her study! Her heart has grown wild! How did she become so capable? Something as big as a divorce, and she didn’t even come home to tell us, just left on her own. We don’t even know where she went. The world is vast, no word at all—how are we supposed to find her? How could she know the dangers out there? And she took a child with her!”
“It’s not like the family has no place for her to live! We fixed up the old house for her, waiting for her to come back and stay. And instead, she just vanishes without a word!”
Mother Xu’s heart was truly shattered. It wasn’t as if no young girls from the village went out to work. Some worked for a few years and then ran off with men from distant provinces, not returning for years.
Some just vanished without a trace once they left, no one even knowing if they were dead or alive.
In Mother Xu’s heart, the outside world was incredibly dangerous for girls. If a girl didn’t go out with the village elders to work, she might never come back!
Right now, in Mother Xu’s heart, her daughter might very well never return in this lifetime, or might never be able to return in this lifetime!
Father Xu also sat on the doorstep, holding his head in his hands, his heart full of regret and guilt.
Ever since he learned his daughter wanted a divorce, even though he didn’t want her to divorce in his heart, he had still transferred her household registration back to her maiden home. After returning, worried she would have no place to stay and would have to live under the watchful eyes of her sisters-in-law, he had discussed with Mother Xu about fixing up the old house.
During this time, the old couple had bought cement and some red bricks and were repairing the old house. They didn’t need to fix the whole house, just one room, so their daughter would have a place to stay when she came back.
They had even imagined all the gossip and finger-pointing their daughter would face upon returning. But they had never imagined that their daughter would silently handle such a huge matter as divorce all by herself, without even notifying her maiden family, without a single member of her maiden family accompanying her throughout the entire process, and then just leave.
In Father Xu and Mother Xu’s hearts, their daughter was still young.