Chapter 119: Chapter 121: Matters of the Zhang Family
So even though her heart was torn apart, she still let her husband go. When the educated youth returned to the village, he promised to come back for Zhang Xiangcao and her daughter after his exams but never did. Soon after he left, Zhang Xiangcao found out she was pregnant. But who was it that said that waiting in itself was a sign of growing old? The flower of the village was gradually withering away. Flowers were never meant to bloom forever; they eventually wilt and waste away.
Just before their child was due, a message finally arrived from the educated youth, but it wasn’t his physical presence but a divorce letter. Many men can fall passionately in love, but how many can maintain it?
Not long after, Zhang Xiangcao gave birth to a girl, Sisi. She constantly called out for her child, her heart filled with resistance. Yet one year passed, then two, then three. Xiangcao’s mother left this world when Sisi was just two years old. And even when drawing her last breath, she never closed her eyes.
The child was still young, and Zhang Xiangcao was a woman.
What was she supposed to do? How was she going to live and survive?
Even though Xiangcao’s mother was reluctant, she eventually left this world with regret. Zhang Xiangcao buried her mother and started her life anew, raising her two-year-old child alone. She was a woman, incapable of many tasks. At that time, individual ownership of land was just beginning. Her family comprised only her and her innocent and oblivious child.
Zhang Xiangcao went from being the village’s flower to an ordinary village woman. Her child Sisi spent her childhood on her mother’s back, toiling away together, often uncertain when their next meal would come. Their life was truly pitiable.
Little Sisi, who was three years old but seemed no different from two-year-olds, was tiny and skinny. She didn’t talk much and hid from people whenever she could.
This was the state of Zhang family. Everyone in the village knew it. Zhang Xiangcao never considered remarrying. She was a divorced single mother, poor, aging, and not as alluring as she was when she was a young woman. She’d aged, and in the village, there were no suitable men that she could marry, only older bachelors.
Zhang Xiangcao might have been poor, but she was also strong-willed. No matter how tough it got, she gritted her teeth and raised her daughter by herself, working the fields. She managed to keep both of them alive.
Well, Tang Yuxin rubbed her chin in thought; it seemed okay. She felt that Aunt Xiangcao was quite suitable to be Zhijun’s wife if he intended to marry.
However, she probably felt this way because she was living in an era of fast-food marriage, where getting married and divorced was as easy as sipping water. If the couple felt compatible, they’d stay together. If not, they would separate.
Expressing love one day and trading blows the next.
But things were different now; people were rather apprehensive about divorce, especially those women who were divorced and had children.
If Tang Zhijun were also a divorcee, then it wouldn’t matter.
But he wasn’t. He was still a young man in his prime. And he was physically whole, spirited, diligent, and had made quite a bit of money with his brother from farming. With such advantageous conditions, he was sought after in the village.