Chapter 90

“Widow Village” has many troubles?

Lotus Pond Village, a very pleasant-sounding name, yet locally, not many people still remember this village’s original name.

Because locals all call it “Widow Village.”

Widow Village was once an extremely glorious village. Decades ago, when the entire land of China was in turmoil, bandits invaded, and the threat of genocide loomed! At that time, Lotus Pond Village was a wealthy village famous for miles around. The eldest son of the clan leader’s family, He Qiuyuan, had returned from studying in the big city, having learned soap-making skills. He planned to utilize the lotus flowers and leaves that the village couldn’t use up each year to make lotus soap, leading the fellow villagers to prosperity together.

Who knew that war would soon sweep across this land.

When the nation doesn’t exist, how can the people survive?

He Qiuyuan rallied everyone, leading all the able-bodied men in the village to join the ranks defending the homeland.

However, over a hundred strong laborers from the village marched out heroically, but not one returned!

Ten years later, someone delivered a half-burned family letter that He Qiuyuan had prepared to send home before going to battle, but it was never finished, nor had the chance to be finished.

After the war, someone found Lotus Pond Village based on the remaining address on the envelope. But by then, He Qiuyuan’s parents had long since passed away, and his only sister He Chunmiao had also suffered harm from the enemy. Though she survived by chance, she forever lost the ability to become a mother.

At that time, Lotus Pond Village, like most villages across China that had been burned by war, was devastated and nearly empty!

The surviving women regrouped together. Many of them, having been violated by the enemy, were not sympathized with or protected, but instead were isolated and rejected by ignorant villagers. In just a few short years, several women who couldn’t bear the pressure died not in the flames of war, but in the gossip and slander of their compatriots.

It was then that He Chunmiao stood up. She went house to house seeking the opinions of survivors, binding all the victims together like a rope, leading them to town to seek justice.

Of course, seeking justice meant nothing for their current difficulties. What He Chunmiao really wanted to do was split the former large village in two!

Since you look down on us so much, let’s just live separately!

Divide the former Lotus Pond Village in two, with them establishing a separate village, farming and planting on their own, never to interact again until death!

The town officials, after all, weren’t ignorant rural folk. Hearing that the martyrs’ widows and relatives from Lotus Pond Village who had sacrificed for the country were being ostracized and isolated, they were furious and immediately wanted to seek justice for He Chunmiao and the others.

But He Chunmiao persuaded them otherwise.

“If you scold them, besides venting our anger, what problems would that solve?”

“We still have to make a living in the village. If we really anger those people, look at us – a bunch of old, weak, sick and disabled – which of us could match them?”

Not to mention rural areas decades ago, even now, a woman with no one to rely on, living alone in the countryside, is very dangerous. Village idlers, hooligans, and bullies can all come to bully you.

He Chunmiao led a group of widows and elderly to make trouble in town precisely to openly break ties with these people. She believed that even for the sake of their sacrificed relatives, the town leaders would help them find a solution.

Indeed, after calming down, the town leaders decided to respect He Chunmiao and the others’ wishes, using a ditch as the boundary to divide the former large village in two.

The area near the mountain was carved out separately, becoming the current Kaoshan Gou Village.

The smaller area near the embankment retained the name Lotus Pond Village, because they really did have a large lotus field!

The town leaders were ultimately biased, unable to bear seeing the heroes’ widows and relatives being bullied.

Moreover, being near the embankment had another advantage – their town’s river had a hydroelectric station not far from Lotus Pond Village, with people on duty year-round. If something really happened in the village, they wouldn’t be unable to find a place to seek help.

Time flew to the present. In recent years, grassroots efforts focused intensively on the poverty alleviation campaign, and the town sent a poverty alleviation official to station in this village for targeted assistance.

The plan was originally very good – taking this opportunity to help these helpless widowed women in Lotus Pond Village find a way to make a living. But who could have expected that after the county sent poverty alleviation officials down to station there, and even introduced a batch of high-yield lotus root varieties to Lotus Pond Village and secured funds for beautiful rural construction, with everything ready, the mask incident came…

Several consecutive years of lockdowns brought domestic tourism to a freezing point. The high-yield lotus roots that were finally grown had no tourists to admire when the lotus flowers bloomed in full glory. When the lotus roots were harvested, outside lotus root diggers couldn’t come in, leaving large stretches of lotus ponds unharvested.

Only the villagers themselves dug out a little to sell at the market for money to buy rice and oil.

This was also the second time poverty alleviation official Xiang Wenchun entered “Widow Village.”

She refused to give up!

She wanted to try once more!

Most importantly, she had watched every episode of Wei Sheng’s team’s programs over these two seasons and had developed some mysterious confidence in the program crew’s ability to “turn decay into magic.”

Wei Sheng must have a solution, right?

Whether Wei Sheng had a solution, he didn’t know yet, but he certainly had a belly full of anger.

What he hadn’t expected was that, all being compatriots, when the grandmothers of Lotus Pond Village had suffered such great hardships back then, instead of taking care of these elderly people who had been violated by bandits, their fellow villagers and relatives treated them like plague viruses, wishing to stay as far away as possible?

Your mothers who gave birth to you bunch of animals who can’t distinguish right from wrong must deeply regret it, right?

Under Xiang Wenchun’s guidance, the program crew came to the home of Lotus Pond Village chief He Ruizhen.

He Ruizhen was an abandoned baby that He Chunmiao had adopted many years ago. At that time, when villagers all ostracized them and wouldn’t let them go up the mountain to cut firewood, He Chunmiao and the others went to the riverbank to cut reeds for cooking fires. It was in a patch of reed marshes that she found the dying infant who had nearly been eaten by leeches.

In that era, rural preference for sons over daughters was really severe. Some families desperately made their daughters-in-law have children – if they gave birth to boys, they kept them, but if they gave birth to girls?

The more conscientious ones would find a family to adopt the girls, at least giving the girls a chance at life.

More often, they were like He Ruizhen – without even properly treating the umbilical cord, they’d wrap the baby in a torn piece of clothing and throw it outside, where it would die before long anyway…

So stop complaining about rural older single men having difficulty finding partners.

They just have difficulty finding partners. The rural girls who could have become their brides were killed right after birth.

He Chunmiao originally didn’t plan to adopt children. After all, people like them had special status and already faced discrimination in the countryside. Children they raised would inevitably be implicated by them in the future… Her life was already like this, so why drag an innocent little life into it?

But this child He Ruizhen seemed to have chosen her! She cried when anyone else held her, but once in He Chunmiao’s arms, she would suck her little fist and look at her with a face full of grievance.

At that moment, He Chunmiao suddenly had a feeling that this child might really be Heaven’s compensation for her life of suffering…

What shocked everyone was that this abandoned baby adopted by He Chunmiao was extraordinarily intelligent, practically a literary star descended from heaven!

How difficult it was to get into university decades ago, yet He Ruizhen fought her way through all obstacles, from this remote rural village all the way to a key university in the capital.

If she hadn’t been unable to leave her elderly mother in her hometown, He Ruizhen’s achievements now would definitely not be limited to this.

However, Wei Sheng didn’t feel there was anything to regret at all.

If he were He Ruizhen, he would definitely also choose to stay by his mother’s side.

Money can be earned anytime.

But He Chunmiao was already over ninety years old, and having suffered such terrible harm in her youth, who could guarantee how many more years she could live in this world?

And so, He Ruizhen, who had such a bright future, resolutely returned to her hometown after university graduation, taking over her adoptive mother’s baton to become the second village chief of this “Widow Village.”

Over the years, besides these women who were victimized during the war, Lotus Pond Village had also gradually welcomed many women who couldn’t survive in their original villages.

Among them, some were abandoned by their in-laws and husbands for failing to give birth to sons after several pregnancies, left homeless and taken in by the kind-hearted He Ruizhen.

Some had husbands who were violent, addicted to gambling, or even borrowed high-interest loans they couldn’t repay and wanted to use their wives and children as “collateral.”

In that era, there were too many such tragedies in the countryside. With the saying “a married daughter is like spilled water,” many women without family support had to either continue enduring this inhuman life or resort to drinking pesticide, jumping into rivers, or hanging themselves…

Fortunately, the women who fled to Lotus Pond Village encountered He Ruizhen.

After all, He Ruizhen was a rare college graduate of that era, always ready to file complaints in town, report to the police station, or seek help from the women’s federation in the county. Those bullies in the countryside who were harsh when bullying their own wives would either be arrested or face social death once they fell into He Ruizhen’s hands – pick one!

He Ruizhen never married in her lifetime. She feared no one. Compared to her adoptive mother’s submissive endurance and silent suffering, this elderly lady was like a walking string of firecrackers, ready to explode at the slightest provocation!

If anyone crossed her, and if it warranted police intervention, He Ruizhen would let the law punish them.

For matters beyond legal reach, she would take action herself. Since she controlled the village’s loudspeaker system, she would turn it on whenever she pleased, randomly picking a few enemies to publicly scold and broadcast their “glorious deeds” of bullying their wives and children.

Over time, having witnessed He Ruizhen’s formidable nature, the local thugs and idlers would rather take detours than mention this “widow village.”

Women from surrounding areas regarded He Ruizhen as their “guardian deity.” They all knew that if life became unbearable, instead of seeking death, they could find Sister Ruizhen, who would surely find a way to help them.

On his way there, Wei Sheng listened to county officials describe how formidable He Ruizhen was, automatically imagining a burly, fierce-looking female warrior. When he met her in person, his jaw nearly dropped in surprise.

He Ruizhen was petite, around 155cm tall, with slightly dark skin and delicate features. Her eyes were particularly beautiful – gentle yet determined. Looking at her, one would never imagine she was the ruthless person who would grab the loudspeaker and continuously scold the neighboring village for a whole month.

However, thinking of his own face, which fans described as “harmless,” Wei Sheng immediately felt at ease.

In this day and age, who doesn’t have a few different personas?

(End of chapter)